That was the graph. GDP per capita was higher in Russia under Communism than under Capitalism. That argues against the notion that the economic principles employed by the Soviet Union “didn’t work out well”.
You take things out of context.
After the dissolvent of USSR, the frail economy collapsed, why you have read the figures wrong.
wikipedia:
Thanks, at last some useful facts, instead of this 1 sided distortion of factual statistics, which is a shameful act of moderator.
Henchforth I shall not pay any heed to Xunzian, as he of late only have provided misleading and distorting information.
On a tangent, a related article I was just reading
the-american-interest.com/ar … ?piece=939
The thesis being that Russia is not transforming into a capitalist state, but a neo-feudal mediocracy.
I don’t think any multinational pharmaceutical or oil companies are fine-tuning the sales staff’s salaries against what they can just afford to pay to get the best. These values are not determined objectively; sales is seen as a job/skill that deserves a certain salary, just as nursing, teaching, engineering and so on. Salaries are market-conform for sales just as much as others.
I’m surprised it was so high! It would be interesting to compare the figures for 1913 to see what the relative changes were over the period of communism - although how much you’d have to allow for the difference in conditions of WWII is possibly a large enough unknown that it makes any direct comparison impossible.
Now we’re getting somewhere 
This is a good point. So the ultimate value of a good salesman is in deceiving the consumer into paying more than a product is worth on quality?
Erm, I haven’t to my knowledge distorted anything, and Xunzian is not a moderator. Nor can I see him distorting any statistics. Please keep things civil.
It’s by law in most countries illegal to decive the customers, but it’s to motivate the customers to buy more, even when they don’t needest to. Much of the answres lies in psycology “group think” and “flock instinct”.
Fine, staff then.
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only posting a graph without any following comparison, which is blantly trying to favoritize his own arguments.
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even arguing against posting graphs for comparison.
I think mass psychology is probably more relevant to marketing than sales. But OK, substitute “preying on the psychological weaknesses of” rather than “deceiving”, which may have legal connotations.
Supporting his arguments with evidence? That seems par for the course. On a discussion forum. Where people have arguments and sometimes produce supporting evidence. Like GDP being higher under communism in Russia. If you disagree, you’re welcome to explain why, but I see no distortions and it’s a fairly uncivil claim in an otherwise civil discussion.
I honestly don’t see him doing that anywhere in the thread, except where he argues for comparing like with like. Please keep the tone respectful.
I belive it’s the aim for staff members and all other officials of this forum, to observe neutrality and objectivity to any discussion, which fails by only providing 1 sided information.
This?
Hex,
Are you arguing that when I say you’ve made an improper comparison I mean to argue against comparisons at all?
Phyllo,
Sure, I more-or-less agree with that set-up. I’ve said as much throughout. That is why I outlined the relationships between them going so far as to point out many of the advantages of these middle men.
My question isn’t: “why do we have salesmen at all?” That is a dumb question. My question is: “why do we value salesmen more than producers?”
Hex and Phyllo,
You’ve got to compare like to like. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense.
There are two runners in a race. One runs 5m/s and has to run 50m. The other runs 9m/s and has to run 100m. Which is the faster runner? Which runner wins the race? Two totally different questions. Gotta have your controls.
If you think that the transition in Russia creates special circumstances, why don’t we look at 4 moribund empires at the end of the long 19th Century: Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian, and Chinese. The capitalist portions of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires (Austria, Greece (nominal), Turkey) tended to be the most developed parts of the Empire but after division went from being the head of empires to playing a subordinate role to other powers. Russia and China, on the other hand, developed into world superpowers. In both cases there was a near doubling in life expectancy (not observed in Austria and Greece), a massive increase in literacy (not observed in Austria and Greece) and an incredibly expansion of the economy (not observed in Austria, Greece, nor Turkey).
You can hardly argue that such an economic model doesn’t work in light of those facts. Russia dominated much of the 20th century. During a boxing championship, you don’t argue that the loser is completely unable to box. Got it all backwards man.
OH,
I suppose it depends on what we mean by “capitalism”. I think that formerly Communist countries like Russia and Singapore are capitalist. Heck, China is capitalist nowadays. But nobody is claiming that they are functioning democracies, which is a different kettle of fish. It is a pretty common path to modernization. Basically the way I see it is that the German sonderweg isn’t so “different” it is actually fairly common, it just isn’t what happened in America and France (the House of Lords and the Monarchy in Britain kept their power for an absurdly long time after modernization) so we perceive it as strange.
Interestingly, that article also feeds into the discussion of values that this thread has been discussing.
Whe be a producer (which is hard) when you can make easy money by being a middle man and tweaking the system? Pretty much the same phenomenon observed when distributors and non-workering “owners” make more than producing brewers.
Then you believe mistakenly.
Neutrality applies to moderation, not to debate. If Xunzian acts uncivilly, I will request he stops; if you do, I will request the same of you. I can hold whatever opinion I like in a discussion, though.
This?
[/quote]
Yes, that. Comparing like with like.
Do some research and show him how wrong he is.
Could it be that life expectancy was already so high to start,in Austria and Greece, that a ‘doubling’ would have been impossible? Same for literacy. I will guess that both Austria and Greece had significantly higher literacy rates than the USSR to begin with. So the numbers don’t mean much.
If you want to compare like with like then why not USSR and Japan. Both were backwards at about the same time, both had a monarch or emperor, both participated heavily in WW2. Both became world powers. My stats say that Japan had 80% of the GDP(PPP) of the US in 1990. That is significantly higher than the 36% -50% that the USSR had.
I know very well that communistic economy is vastly inferior to capitalism, that I’v known for over 30 years, and that touching anecdote about “Jeltsin and the supermarket”, I know about the russians standing in que for hours at the supermaket waiting to get their tiny scraps of meat, I know about all big factories having milk cows to stay self sufficient because of total inefficient infrastructure.
What infuriates me, is a staff member blatantly tries to manipulate me and moderator siding with this staff member.
I really should find another site to roam, as this site seemingly doesn’t have staff and moderators with sufficent integrite run a sober debate, nor the mental aptitude to comprehend simple basic systems for a society.
The value is determined by market forces with a sprinkling of government intervention. Do you have an alternate method for determining value?
As I understand it, the principle advantage of market forces (at least in ‘pure’ capitalism) is that they reflect the values that society apportions to things. The price of bikinis in Greenland is not determined in the last case by market forces, as those market forces are determined by the cultural and (in this case, predominantly) physical state of the society in which the market operates.
Why has the price of petrol gone up? Well, yes, market forces, but what are those forces? Market forces can tell us that we value salesmen more than producers, which we all agree on, but not why.
If you have complaints, please contact Carleas, the site owner.
This may be best; I can’t see you’ll be happy on a site that asks you to defend your arguments.
Dear HHammer,
One day, HHammer went to visite Daoist11. Daoist invited HH to sit down on a chair, & invited tea. Daoist poured tea into the cup. The cup was full but Daoist still poured more. Could not bear that, HH said: Don’t pour tea any more; the cup is full. Daoist said: like this cup, your brain is full of prejudices and fixed ideas, how would I discuss Taoism and zen with you except you empty your mind ?
Forgive me for my outburst, but isn’t it a bit arrogant to assume that your teachings automaticly are superior to mine?
There has already been a discussion spanning 3 pages where arguments from both parties has been presented, and it wouldn’t be in the modern spirit of gaining knowledge to throw everything away of rationallity, logic and reason.
The intelligent mind should automaticly recognize a superior system, if it’s indeed a superior system in itself, and not because the person are prone to brainwash by being naive, simpleminded and/or stupid.
That story is not about throwing away everything, it’s about being open-minded and receptive to new and different ideas. Once you consider the ideas, then you can accept or reject them.
Perhaps the why is explained by the fact that we have no better system of determining value.
One also has to consider that people are not in general saying that some merchant is worth X dollars per year. They are saying that the convenience of being able to purchase a product in this way/store is worth an extra Y percent increase in the price. The total amount of money that a merchant ultimately makes is not controlled by the customer.