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A comment on My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starving Land. Parent comment

Re:My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starv... by seibelj on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:26PM (#12116566)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starv... by guard-of-terra on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:53PM (#12116821)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starv... by pastProlog on Monday July 18, 2016 @02:28PM (#12117102)
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.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starv... by guard-of-terra on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:19PM (#12118119)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:My Venezuela Nightmare: A 30-Day Hunt for Food in a Starv... by pastProlog on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:59PM (#12116876)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]