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Belarus’s Soviet Economy

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Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#61

Post by jjjensen90 »

stevesimmons wrote: post #26

I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…

Indeed! I worked very closely with a team of contracted software engineers from Minsk for 5 years and I learned a lot from them. It's anecdotal of course, but the Belarusian team members I managed had amazing work ethic and positivity as well. The level of skill in English was also impressive. I was told there is a "tech district" in downtown Minsk with a budding tech scene.

The company they worked for had an open invitation for me to visit Minsk, and apparently it is very easy to visit on a US passport for a short period, someday I'll go and check it out.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#62

Post by pilsetnieks »

stevesimmons wrote: post #26

I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…

I don't want to sound like a Negative Nelly but you all in this thread are swooning over a dictatorship with pretty awful human rights abuses.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#63

Post by rayiner »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #29

Does anyone else find the pictures of tractor engines hypnotizing? It's a total antithesis of American or Chinese-for-American manufacturing, where everything is maximal or minimal. Instead everything is "reasonable", a reasonable cost, a reasonable engine efficiency, a design that makes simple sense, parts that aren't optimized to the micron in order to save plastic...it's so refreshing to look at the inside of a ma…

Nothing refreshing about it. Soviet technology being stuck in a state of “reasonable” was why, before the fall of the Soviet Union, America was several times more energy efficient per unit of production.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#64

Post by Scoundreller »

throwaway8941 wrote: post #59
l1g2d5 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main downside I noticed was meals based on meat and potatoes, not many vegetables. Do you realize where belarus is? It gets cold in belarus. Meat and potatoes are food that can be grown locally. Also, it is environmentally devastating to transport all the vegetables all over the world like we currently do. Look at how much globalism has damaged the environment, not to mention the problems with climate change. M…

I'm not sure why this comment is being downvoted. I live in Kazakhstan, and while it's not exactly the same as Belarus, we're living in very similar conditions. In winter time, fruits and vegetables are very expensive here. Most of the cheaper ones (the only kind available to most people, myself included) look and taste like they're made of plastic, and are packed with nitrites. I tend to avoid them altogether, you d…

> In winter time, fruits and vegetables are very expensive here. Most of the cheaper ones (the only kind available to most people, myself included) look and taste like they're made of plastic, and are packed with nitrites.

It's not much different in the "West". We already plant crops for yield, and in winter, we eat crops grown for yield and shipability. Out-of-season crops will cost substantially more than what cost in-season.

Though storage tech is improving: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/11/26/668256349/th...

And thank god for bananas.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#65

Post by atlasunshrugged »

vkou wrote: post #33
dsego wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when is Slovenia a former soviet state?

It's not a former Soviet state, being a part of former Yugoslavia, which was a member of the non-aligned movement. It was, however, a stong-man communist dictatorship.

I'd also be curious the effect of EU funding - I know Estonia received hundreds of millions if not billions over the years on development and I'd guess it's much the same for Latvia/Lithuania as well

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#66

Post by riffraff »

l1g2d5 wrote: post #55
stevesimmons wrote: post #26

I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…

> The main downside I noticed was meals based on meat and potatoes, not many vegetables. Do you realize where belarus is? It gets cold in belarus. Meat and potatoes are food that can be grown locally. Also, it is environmentally devastating to transport all the vegetables all over the world like we currently do. Look at how much globalism has damaged the environment, not to mention the problems with climate change. M…

there's a ton of vegetables that grow in old climates. Basically all brassicae grow fine (cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, chard etc), and if you want to stick to roots you have carrots, beetroots, turnip, parsnip, radishes, chervil, onion, rutabaga, jerusalem artichokes etc. And beans preserve well.

I would bet the persistence of meat and potatoes is due to the higher amount of calories they provide, which historically made more sense as the productive capacity of the country was lower, and while it'd probably be ok to eat greenhouse tomatoes now, it just takes time to change habits.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#67

Post by riffraff »

literallycancer wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #8

The former soviet states are a great natural experiment in economics. Countries that liberalized their economies, like Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Latvia (the "mostly free" countries here: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking ) have grown much faster than countries that retained socialism and central planning, like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17…

Check out Slovenia for a counterexample. You can do either approach badly or well.

sorry I don't get it: what is Slovenia a counterexample of? It seems to be a fairly wealthy country now, with a market economy and liberalised services.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#68

Post by riffraff »

m0zg wrote: post #34

>> Rolled over through the centuries with Moscow's wars with other parts of Europe What a profoundly backward perspective. It's the other way around. Belarus was a part of the Russian Empire. So much a part of it, in fact, that the long form of the title of the Russian monarch contained its name. You can't "roll over" something you already own. It wasn't Russia's wars with European states that repeatedly fucked up Be…

> the long form of the title of the Russian monarch contained its name

the British royals had "Emperor/Empress of India" in their full title until 1948.

Titles don't doesn't mean much.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#69

Post by rapsey »

literallycancer wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #8

The former soviet states are a great natural experiment in economics. Countries that liberalized their economies, like Estonia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and Latvia (the "mostly free" countries here: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking ) have grown much faster than countries that retained socialism and central planning, like Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. See: https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/17…

Check out Slovenia for a counterexample. You can do either approach badly or well.

What are you talking about? Counter example to what?

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#70

Post by diminish »

l1g2d5 wrote: post #55
stevesimmons wrote: post #26

I had my second trip to Minsk last week to work with a local IT company. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the people there. Belarus and Minsk are advanced in many ways (metro with trains every 2 minutes), electric busses (powered by capacitors, not batteries), mobile phone (MTS shop at the airport sells a $9 SIM with unlimited data for a month), Yandex taxis beats Uber, etc, etc. The main downside I…

> The main downside I noticed was meals based on meat and potatoes, not many vegetables. Do you realize where belarus is? It gets cold in belarus. Meat and potatoes are food that can be grown locally. Also, it is environmentally devastating to transport all the vegetables all over the world like we currently do. Look at how much globalism has damaged the environment, not to mention the problems with climate change. M…

unfortunately other westernized east european mainstream diet moves usually to burger, fried potatoes and pizza and corn.
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