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Belarus’s Soviet Economy

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Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#71

Post by onetimemanytime »

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.

Pretty sure you can find veggies too, but the price might not appeal to you. As others said, their climate is cold and importing veggies cost a lot, especially relative to wages there.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#72

Post by shmerl »

> Glaz also pushed back against the whole concept of Russian subsidies, arguing that Moscow is obliged to sell energy to Belarusian companies at the same price as to Russian ones under the integrated market rules of the Eurasian Economic Union, to which both countries belong.

Russian mafia run by Putin sees "Eurasian Economic Union" as a source of money for their thief pool (obtshak). I.e. it's designed for the sole purpose of extracting resources from those territories. It's not built to give anything back to the people in the participating states, except for collaborationists which sell off their countries to that mafia. So joining it is clearly a damaging idea for any state, and only happens due to corruption of the local government.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#73

Post by ekianjo »

> At the plant’s health clinic, 560 doctors and staff use sleek Western equipment to provide care from routine checkups to surgery, including laser eyesight correction.

So they are showing off equipment produced by Capitalism? How does that work to prove their point?

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#74

Post by lnsru »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #65
vkou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look at Germany. It’s a better experiment. Former democratic part got billions from westerners and didn’t evolve far. They got basically new infrastructure build from western money, but people left former communistic paradise. Salary gap is still huge. That’s why Tesla picked location there and not in the western part of the country.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#75

Post by petre »

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…

Sadly the EU is not that eager on taking new memberships right now. Look at North Macedonia and Albania's potential membership negotiations getting initially opposed we are too busy right now and then conditioned by France ok, but one step at a time.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#76

Post by petre »

sparkling wrote: post #13
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…

I would argue that in the case of Ukraine and Moldova, the main reason for their bad economy today is the large scale corruption that took place during post-soviet privatization in the 90s. This has lead to the extreme Oligarch power structure that we see today.

And relying on trade with Russia which has shunned them after their pro EU escapades.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#77

Post by TulliusCicero »

lnsru wrote: post #74
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look at Germany. It’s a better experiment. Former democratic part got billions from westerners and didn’t evolve far. They got basically new infrastructure build from western money, but people left former communistic paradise. Salary gap is still huge. That’s why Tesla picked location there and not in the western part of the country.

The US has similar variation in GDP per capita in its states, despite having had essentially the same economic system at least back to the civil war over 150 years ago.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#78

Post by dep_b »

petre wrote: post #75
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…

Sadly the EU is not that eager on taking new memberships right now. Look at North Macedonia and Albania's potential membership negotiations getting initially opposed we are too busy right now and then conditioned by France ok, but one step at a time .

After the backlash they got after opening up the borders with Bulgaria and especially Romania it would be political suicide to open up for Albania.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#79

Post by netcan »

We're now a full generation since the west "won the cold war" and I think it's just now that our "wartime" mentalities we're ready to think past simple binary communism-x-capitalism binaries.

For example, "privatisation." In Russia & parts of the west, privatisation was a major 90s policy.

But like everything else, details can outweigh labels. One privatisation is not like another.

There's a massive difference between encouraging/allowing entrepreneurship, & "selling" state sectors to "private" owners.

I use scare quotes there because the "sales" were generally paid for with state-backed loans and the "private" owners are either multinationals or "oligarchs" as we now know the "private" Russian buyers.

The former is closer to a capitalist ideal, but doesn't affect the "key industries, at least not fast. The latter is instant, but it also involves something approximating giving away a state's wealth for free.

One big hindsight problem Soviet privatisation encountered is a running theme in modern "capitalism:" the failure/inability of states to get value for/from it's owned assets & wealth.

Neither western economies, Soviet ones or post-soviet ones have a tool in their toolbox for this. Norway's oil fund might be the one exception.

Re: Belarus’s Soviet Economy

#80

Post by ernst_klim »

zzzcpan wrote: post #18
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…

Only Belarus from your list didn't "liberalize" its economy and retained central planning.

Also Belarus is benefiting mostly from 1) refining Russian oil, which they buy at lower prices, 2) gambling (which is illegal in Russia, so Russians go to Belarus) and 3) reselling European food to Russia to bypass Russian anti-sanctions.

Their economy is quite shitty and simply parasitizing on Russia.

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