If you can find a copy, read Steeltown USSR

https://www.amazon.com/Steeltown-USSR-Soviet-Society-Gorbach...

The factory was producing substandard steel. Often they'd ship it to customers and it would arrive in an unusable condition because it had been stored outside and was more rust than steel. But they'd try and use it anyway, because if they complained the bureaucrats in Moscow would brand them troublemakers and route the next shipment to someone else and then they wouldn't meet their production goals, which meant their pay would be drastically cut, and their family would starve.

Your "blue shirt vs. tan shirt" is absurdly simplistic, and makes enormous incorrect assumptions, like "Is there even a shirt there to buy that day?"

Some other reading for you would be about Krushchev's visit to the US in the 1950's. He visited a few supermarkets and assumed that they had been set up just for his visit (Potemkin villages) as that was what the Soviet Union would have done. Because having that much product on the shelves was absurd.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/gallery/090611...

About Yeltsin:

"During a visit to the United States in 1989 he became more convinced than ever that Russia had been ruinously damaged by its centralized, state-run economic system, where people stood in long lines to buy the most basic needs of life and more often than not found the shelves bare. He was overwhelmed by what he saw at a Houston supermarket, by the kaleidoscopic variety of meats and vegetables available to ordinary Americans.

Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his biography, “Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000): “For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. ‘What have they done to our poor people?’ he said after a long silence.” He added, “On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the ‘pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments.’ ”"(1)

Capitalism has many evils - most notably the tendency to eat its own young - but it does do most things very very well.

(1)- http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/europe/23cnd-yeltsin...

Yeltsin was definitely a patriot and wanted the best for his country. But his education and experience prior to the 1991 attempted coup meant that there were a lot of stumbles as he struggled to change the direction of Russia. I don't think anyone could have been more successful at it than he was.

Boris Yeltsin's grocery store visit: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...

Once again, debates over definitions completely derail any sensible discussion of socialism. The word "markets" as used by people criticizing command economies for not having them does not simply mean "places where radishes are kept with numbers attached to them".

It is perfectly reasonable to use the term "market" that way. After all, what else would you call a place where radishes are stored with price tags? But that's not what the person arguing with you is saying, and trying to rebut them based on an alternate definition is unproductive.

You know, debates over definitions give people who have nothing of substance to contribute a chance to be "right" about a subject. I wish we'd see less of them here; in this comments section, we could probably trim out 90% of the back-and-forth chatter.

Alternate definition? A market is a place where you exchange currency for commodities. That is a definition of what a market is, not an "alternative definition".

There is no being coy at all, I can't even twist my head around how these similar places in the US and Russia are not the same. What is his "alternate definition" where such a place in Russia is stripped of the word market?

Perhaps you can tell us more about how the USSR stock market worked. People in the US know very little about it, even believing it may not have existed.

As I said, that is indeed one definition of a market. But the parent commenter is referring to markets in the free market sense, in which the markets perform price discovery.

You refer to a market in the US that sells radishes for dollars as "free", which presumably means the identical market selling radishes for rubles in the USSR is unfree, and I am the one playing around? I have trouble fathoming definitions so steeped in ideology, it reminds me of the US Congress cafeteria renaming French fries as Freedom fries when France chose not to join the US on some imperial venture.

That's a minor point as you answered the question, sort of. But not to satisfaction. A market in the US or USSR sells commodities at a set price. People buy goods or they don't. The markets operate exactly the same.

As you're attempting to make a rational argument unlike others, I will get to the point. The markets in the US and USSR were the same, despite you following some US ideological line and calling the US one a "free" one. It is production that was different, and control of production. Misdirecting the difference from control of production to "free" markets is just more misdirection and sophistry (which is widespread, not particularly pertaining to you).

The difference was already pointed out by tptacek - price discovery is an emergent phenomena in "free" markets, as opposed to set by some central authority. There's of course plenty of debate to be had about how "free" markets are in the West, as there are a variety of markets that are heavily regulated. But it is obvious which one is more "free" if we're comparing the USSR to the West, even if the difference is mostly symbolic.

It always amazes me when people vehemently defend the USSR and similar, especially in a place like HN. The USSR was nothing like the United States. You did not start a "radish and milk" store in the USSR without approval from the government. To argue that the USSR was anything remotely close to a free market is absurd and a dangerous reinterpretation of established history. I'm afraid you have very skewed, incorrect understanding of facts and of human nature.

You did not start a store in the USSR, period.

That was one out a few countries where all business was tightly state-owned.

You could grow some radishes and sell them at farmer's market, but that's it.

This is just false. All business in the USSR was not tightly state owned. Yes, the "commanding heights" of the economy were. You're claiming Kiev had no privately owned stores? Like many people here you're talking about a subject you don't know much about.

I've not been to Soviet Kiev, but yeah, I'm claiming that Late Soviet Moscow had no privately owned stores. I would be very interested to read about these if they existed.

First ones began to appear around 1987 I think in the form of КООП.

I know people who have opened stores in the US, and all of them have needed permits and various bits of government approval, sometimes zoning board hearings and whatnot. The larger the enterprise, the more approval needed, just like the USSR. You seem to lack knowledge of how tbe economy in the USSR functioned.

You keep using this word market. A market in the US was the same as a USSR market. Yes, other things varied, but markets were the same.

Also you are attributing and inferring some statements to me that I did not say.

While there are a couple of good books about the economy of the soviet union - just this NYT article quoting Yeltsin should be enough - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/world/europe/23cnd-yeltsin...

The light industry and consumer good sectors of the Soviet Economy were woefully underdeveloped - the Brezhnev Stagnation, didn't improve matters and robbed the Soviet economy of much hard currency that could have been used to invest in the economy - but to an extent just like us - the elephant in the room was the amount of GDP spent on the Military - there is a report of a perhaps apocryphal conversation between Gorbachev and Reagan about how each of their respective generals are always demanding more money, more for planes, missiles, tanks, and more.

The soviets lost the cold war not due to any inherent moral issues with their system (where there were many) - but due to economic collapse.