Indeed, in Eastern Germany most electronic devices even came with a complete circuit diagram to ease self repair.

Sadly, as much as, I too would like to pin every bad thing on communism, I have to agree with you. If anything the economic realities of communism created a mindset of creating things as simple and reliable as possible. The AK 47 probably being the prime example of this mentality and the Mig being another.

DRM is a purely capitalistic endeavor and does show the dark side of unfettered capitalism.

From my childhood memories, appliances requiring payment to work is literally the first example of why capitalism is bad in somewhat propagandist children's book Dunno on the Moon.

Great tip, thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capita...

I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a teenager. Part of the techno-anarchy-libertarian (or whatever we call it) corpus for us nerds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

Now I want to read both, compare and contrast, against each other, and against the real world.

Why is this comment downvoted.

I'm pretty sure the USSR would have loved to have technical enforcement mechanisms available so that the great unwashed masses could only use "domestic products" anywhere.

Although, to be fair: a capitalist fears nothing more than a truly free market.

'Free' markets are fine there are a multitude of ways to avoid competition without regulatory oversight. From lying about weights & measures to monopolies.

What capitalists fear is a competitive or perfect market. But you'll never see anything close without strict policing of firms.

That is precisely it: for a hardcore capitalist the idea of having to compete only on price and quality is horrifying.

If you can't have maintainable moats, rent-seeking environments, or bought regulators/lawmakers, what's the point?

To be fair: communists didn't have refrigerators[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_goods_in_the_Soviet_U...

Well, they did have refrigerators, but they indeed were less widespread. I remember visiting relatives in my childhood and they didn't have a refrigerator sometime in late 1970s. Consumer goods were in short supply, that is true, and they actually never cought up with the West until the fall of the USSR. Not to mention personal cars, that was a real luxury.

I'm actually curious as to how much of that was the overall inefficiency of the Soviet system, and how much was simply due to the lack of industrialization that the Russians had to overcome.

Something a lot of (North) Americans take for granted is that, after WWII, we had the only functioning manufacturing base in the world -- we were China before it was cool.

To be fair: this is not true.

> in 1976, only two thirds of Soviet families had refrigerators https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-durable-goods/

Surely not as widespread as in the US, but your view of the USSR might not correspond to reality.