enditall727 said: wait so let me get this straight the state owned.. everything? EVERYTHING!? O_o like if i bought a new house and a car in the ussr basically it wouldn't actually be mine? it would be owned by the state?
can you give me a few examples of some thing's that were forbidden? |
You didn't buy a car, or a house. That's not how it works. You ask the Government if they can provide you with one (or, more often than not, the Government will tell you what you need, and give it to you).
It can be a little hard to get your head around at first, and those who grew up in the communist world also had a hard time understanding our system. I have a quote from one of my books that I will paraphrase:
" In your system, who controls the supply of bread to London?" - a quote from a Soviet leader, about Britain. To him, the system is frightening - with no one person directly responsible for controlling the food supply to a major city, how can we be sure that there won't ever be any food shortages? And yet, our system works extremely well. When was the last time we heard of a bread shortage in London? Food shortages were very frequent in the Soviet system - simply because such an enormously complex chain, such as food supply, can not be organized by a single person, or institution. The only way that it can work is through the price system of capitalism, which provides the necessary signals to allow for thousands of people and institutions to come together to keep the food supply stable.