• @UnderpantsWeevil
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    22 months ago

    Not that it didn’t have own downsides.

    Not unreasonably, people in these very structured economies would balk when they felt they were on rails heading into a profession or career that lacked prestige or a high quality of living. Everyone wants to be the company boss, nobody wants to be the guy working the line.

    Except Putin’s command economy will exist only to build more yachts for him and his oligarchs.

    Hardly. One of the critical impacts of sanctions on the Russian economy have been a deficit of luxury goods. But they’ve got tons of legacy capital from back when they used to make shit and export it to their allies abroad. Russian commercial airlines may become a thing again. Russian automobiles already are. And there’s quite a bit downstream in the economy that’s very lucrative to produce without needing to be larcenous.

    The string of wars Putin’s getting his country into makes these kind of industrial centers vital. He doesn’t have the luxury of building yachts.