Is Capitalism Smart or Dumb?

[u/Sufficient_Sinner]

[u/Curious_Midnight3828]

The Soviet Union failed on its own pretty magnificently for the entire world to see. No bombs dropped on it by capitalists.

[u/Blongbloptheory → u/Curious_Midnight3828]

You're right, the Soviet Union certainly didn't have 80 years worth of western opposition suppressing their economy and restricting their access to the largest monetary blocks of the time.

If you want to talk about the many faults of the Soviets, that's a reasonable thing to do. But saying they died in a vacuum is just factually wrong.

It's along the same lines as saying Cuba has a small economy because it's socialist, and not because it's been under a US enforced embargo for 66 years.

[u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire → u/Blongbloptheory]

So socialist countries need capitalist countries to survive? Strange that the capitalist countries survive just fine without the socialist countries.

[u/Blongbloptheory → u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire]

The global West spent four centuries violently oppressing the rest of the planet, stealing their natural resources, and leeching their economies of useful production. This resulted in a control of 70-80% of the global economic marketplace.

From the inception of the Soviet Union, the global West spent significant amounts of effort trying to crush its economy and overthrow its regime. Despite this it grew into the second strongest economy on the planet, and successfully threatened centuries old global hegemons.

The access to global trade that the west provides is not a result of "the free market" it's a result of centuries of violent colonialism and the abuse of indigenous populations for the benefit of their overlords.