Enough about the bad, what was GOOD abot the Soviet Union?

[joshcryer]

149. Cronyism is more apparent in these so called "socialist" systems, and easier to hide.

You have Libya where the Gaddafi's and his tribe had all the luxuries in the world (whose son owned a million dollar mansion in London), you have Cuba with its party owned villas, you have North Korea where the party officials and high end leaders have all the luxuries that they want. The Soviet Leaders were no different, living in extravagance as the peasants starved. This does not require "peer review publishing" on my behalf, as it has already been established in numerous books on the matter.

When you have an authoritarian system you can show that the overt extravagance by party officials for what it is. We live in a plutocracy, ourselves, of course, and are not fundamentally different from those systems.

Blaming the "Emmanuel Goldstein" of the "west" is just part for the course. A small country like Cuba could've easily, trivially, become self-sufficient. It didn't happen because like all authoritarian systems, it relies on hierarchies and power structures which ultimately does not allow as such (if a country is self-sufficient then the peoples are self-sufficient and don't rely on the party or power structures to provide them anything).

Perestroika was the greatest thing to happen to the Soviet Union. The USSR dictatorship was utterly shocked when the people voted against them when they actually had a choice with which whom to vote for. The people that they chose were chosen for them in the past, the ballot wasn't "I want to elect this person" the ballot was "yes or no to elect this person we have chosen for you." The "elected officials" were chosen beforehand, with no actual democratic self-determination on behalf of the population as a whole, it was highly centralized, and crony to the core.