I am not in the mood to argue ideology or world politics with Throbert McGee this beautiful morning, as I am off to pick mushrooms!

Not that it is anyones concern, but I am not some starry-eyed communist who thinks that the USSR was a fantastic worker's state etc, etc. Additionally I have been Christian all my life which means I have a certain natural reservation against it. But this said, I do think that the USSR is far too harshly judged in Western countries and that it had a lot of very good sides. It went through phases and was not a static entity, so the situation varied. And anyway, who are we to cast stones, eh? Particularly, IMHO, Americans!

Primarily I think that it is for the Russians and others from the ex USSR area to judge or praise this experiment which took place in their country. Particularly those who have their own memories of this time.

My only response to your comment would be that surely it is much more relevant to hear what the "eyewitnesses" have to say, rather than regurgitate 25 year old propaganda from the other side of the planet...! And I personally suspect the fluent English speaking Russians here are more pro-West than the majority of Russians, so what people are saying here is probably fairly nuanced. Why don't you ask questions instead of telling the rest of us what the answers are?

Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
AFAIK, it's not a question of "know-how," really -- it has more to do with (a) labor costs, and (b) "exporting" high-pollution manufacturing processes abroad.
Because , God forbid, you would not want to have production of essential equipment in your own country and actually create jobs that generate tangible value. Right? Let the Chinese have all that, as long as the American shareholders and banks get their profits.

Anyway, according to an article I read a couple of years ago, this IS a problem. It is an extremely specialised industry. Setting up factories for this, is an enormous investment in time/money. Staffing them is a massive challenge because it is such a specialised skill. At this point, you'd have to initially bring people in from Asia if you wanted somebody with hands-on and contemporary experience of commercial production. A sort of reversed corporate expat situation. Additionally, the rare earth elements needed for producing computer components are commercially mined only in China. China is exercising increasingly tight control on trade with them.

In a situation where the dollar lost a lot of value, or the USA had a big falling out with East Asia, you literally would not be able to get hold of new computers. Or more precisely, certain essential computer parts. Without computers, your country would essentially stop working. Obviously the situation is the same in Europe. Whereas China nowadays, no matter what happens, can build a computer from scratch even if its currency lost all its value (which seems unlikely anyway).

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PS - For the record - Bitpicker is a programmer too! And Crocodile!