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Originally Posted by Feanor
Or perhaps that the military spendings needed to be lowered to a reasonable level, and the army cut down in size? Parallel this with a management overhaul, and you had a quite stable system that could provide Russia with everything.
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Lowering military spending does not change a little. If USSR spent less on military, it could supply citizens with twice as much terrible-quality goods we enjoyed (though you may not remember it). Who the hell needs that? Isolated market economy (with competition only on internal market) is a bit better than soviet isolated planned economy, but remember - the more competition you face, the faster you develop. By cutting foreign competitors out, you slow down your development, so sooner or later your country turns out to be inferior.
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Absence of a free market? Define free market (for the purposes of our conversation) please.
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Every market can be placed on the scale - from full protectionism, when all foreign goods that have domestic equivalents are not allowed to enter the market - to absolutely free trade, when only buyer decides what goods he buys. In reality most countries are somewhere in the middle of the scale, so we have to talk about more protective / more free markets. Russia does not need more protectionism than she has, and in all probability needs less.
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Have you read the book? I don't want to be reciting chapters here.
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Thanks God! If the whole book is about points you made, it's not worth reading, because author is whether unfamiliar with subject we writes on, or just has some agenda we're unaware of.
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Also consider that Southern Norway is warmer then Moscow, and palm trees grow in London. In Europe temperature gets colder the further east you go.
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Please note also, that Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy is southern city compared to Moscow and today, in december there's +1 C outside. It's not the point. It's more profitable to built factory in China than in London or southern Norway anyway. Want to argue?
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And finally notice how European economy has switched into effectively a world-exploiting system that doesn't actually produce anything?
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Europe doesn't exploit the rest of the world. Taking aside their own production, Europe, US and other coutries invent things other countries produce. Yes, some countries can produce goods cheaper, but, for example, outstanding China's production capability means nothing without western knowledge and technology. That's how modern world's economy works, it's called 'division of labour'. Russia still has to find her place in global economy, and closing ourselves inside our borders isnt' a way to follow.