Not only in wartime. The USSR, when led by their WW2 generation, constructed the second-largest period of sustained economic growth by any nation ever.
In the 50s and early 60s under Khruschev, innovation and risk-taking were rewarded, and the Soviet economy grew by double-digit percentages every year, going from a 3rd-world hellhole to the world's second-largest economy by 1970. Despite the glaring disadvantage of being a largely non-market economy, requiring significant expenditures of effort to gather data by non-market means.
Then the Soviet Boomers came of age, the cultural wheels fell off, and the USSR became the bureaucratic, risk-averse, gerontocratic, ethnic-quota-led, empty-shelved, everything-is-politics percursor to the modern EU/UK/AU that we love to mock.
Culture is upstream of both politics and economics - the right culture can make even State Capitalism ("Communism") work to some extent. Respect to those 50s and 60s Soviet citizens.
State Capitalism's failure modes are horrific, however...
Low Information Voter
npub149…tzmp0
2025-05-09 06:44:43
in reply to nevent1q…dssg
Author Public Key
npub1494rtg3ygq4cqawymgs0q3mcj6hucvu4kmadv03s5ey2sg32df5shtzmp0Published at
2025-05-09 06:44:43Event JSON
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"content": "Not only in wartime. The USSR, when led by their WW2 generation, constructed the second-largest period of sustained economic growth by any nation ever.\n\nIn the 50s and early 60s under Khruschev, innovation and risk-taking were rewarded, and the Soviet economy grew by double-digit percentages every year, going from a 3rd-world hellhole to the world's second-largest economy by 1970. Despite the glaring disadvantage of being a largely non-market economy, requiring significant expenditures of effort to gather data by non-market means.\n\nThen the Soviet Boomers came of age, the cultural wheels fell off, and the USSR became the bureaucratic, risk-averse, gerontocratic, ethnic-quota-led, empty-shelved, everything-is-politics percursor to the modern EU/UK/AU that we love to mock.\n\nCulture is upstream of both politics and economics - the right culture can make even State Capitalism (\"Communism\") work to some extent. Respect to those 50s and 60s Soviet citizens.\n\nState Capitalism's failure modes are horrific, however...\n\n\n",
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