I have made your point about econ growth not being so low under Soviet system, if one even believes in economic growth as it’s usually reported. I’m fantastically skeptical of Soviet life expectancy data from Stalin’s life, especially when they are one year short of current (57 Year later!!!) figures. What was the population of the USSR in 1953 and in 1917? What birth rates were reported? Are the data even consistent?
What I have seen in this thread is an amazing collective display of this.
Every single claim like that (“but Soviet gdp is not real”, “what about East vs West Germany”, “what about Stalin killing millions of people” etc. etc.) is refutable with modest effort. What will have no effect on anyone, as in any context only one of the claims is refuted, so people look at their lists of arguments—most still unrefuted—decide by proportion that Communism must have been an economic disaster, and forget about that particular problem and their original extremely low prior probability they attached to it.
As for life expectancy, I’d bet you on intrade the data is self-consistent.
Given the fact that Czarist Russia had poor organization, wars and revolutions create chaos and destroy information, contemporary people have difficulty agreeing to within a factor of two as to how many people the Gulags or Chinese Cultural Revolution killed, and Russian population numbers in 1960 may have been lies (see http://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_06-20-2002.html ) I am very skeptical of the claim but much less skeptical of its logical consistency.
I’m seriously curious about the life expectancy consistency (and even more about Cuba’s life expectancy legitimacy, but that’s less easily checked) but not willing to do a serious analysis myself, as it sounds time-consuming. Don’t want to set up an account on in-trade, but it you will do the analysis with even odds for $10 and propose a third party judge who I find credible to look over my counter-arguments and make a decision it would be worth my time to look over your data analysis and look for counter-arguments. My experience on Long Bets though makes me doubt that the third party judging etc can be done all that easily and in that satisfactory a manner, but it’s worth a try.
i definitely don’t accept your claim that the other claims are refutable, but that doesn’t deny me the opportunity to gain a some new factual knowledge cheaply or profitably.
Describing Mexico under the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which was a member of the Socialist International, and nationalized large chunks of the economy, as “captialist” is something of a stretch.
You are not allowed to do this kind of cherry picking. No country is fully Communist/Capitalist/Socialist/Whateverist so every time you dislike some results you recategorize a country. Criteria must be clear, automatic, and up-front.
I’m not cherry picking. Describing a largely nationalized economy as capitalist is false. If you had called it a socialist mixed economy, that would have been more accurate, as it is, you mentioned socialist mixed economies with largely nationalized production as “capitalist growth failures” which is obviously disingenuous.
As I pointed out in my other comment, this is true of all of those other countries you mentioned as well. Again, as TGGP put it, you do need more categories, or else you might list countries with minimal property rights and nationalized production as capitalist just because they weren’t a member of COMECON or whatever. Instead, it makes more since to list countries according to economic freedom, then measure the relevant statistics wealth/growth/quality of life statistics.
Theories that Soviet growth was fake are nonsense. If you don’t trust GDP you can look at hard to fake proxies like life expectancy.
1917 Russia − 29 years (last full year before the war)
1953 Russia − 65 years (at time of death of Stalin)
For comparison, during the same time life expectancy in Capitalist Mexico (closest dot on 1913 gapminder chart) grew only from 30 to 52.
I think you need to think in more categories than just capitalist and communist.
I have made your point about econ growth not being so low under Soviet system, if one even believes in economic growth as it’s usually reported. I’m fantastically skeptical of Soviet life expectancy data from Stalin’s life, especially when they are one year short of current (57 Year later!!!) figures. What was the population of the USSR in 1953 and in 1917? What birth rates were reported? Are the data even consistent?
What I have seen in this thread is an amazing collective display of this.
Every single claim like that (“but Soviet gdp is not real”, “what about East vs West Germany”, “what about Stalin killing millions of people” etc. etc.) is refutable with modest effort. What will have no effect on anyone, as in any context only one of the claims is refuted, so people look at their lists of arguments—most still unrefuted—decide by proportion that Communism must have been an economic disaster, and forget about that particular problem and their original extremely low prior probability they attached to it.
As for life expectancy, I’d bet you on intrade the data is self-consistent.
Given the fact that Czarist Russia had poor organization, wars and revolutions create chaos and destroy information, contemporary people have difficulty agreeing to within a factor of two as to how many people the Gulags or Chinese Cultural Revolution killed, and Russian population numbers in 1960 may have been lies (see http://www.heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/AIM_06-20-2002.html ) I am very skeptical of the claim but much less skeptical of its logical consistency.
I’m seriously curious about the life expectancy consistency (and even more about Cuba’s life expectancy legitimacy, but that’s less easily checked) but not willing to do a serious analysis myself, as it sounds time-consuming. Don’t want to set up an account on in-trade, but it you will do the analysis with even odds for $10 and propose a third party judge who I find credible to look over my counter-arguments and make a decision it would be worth my time to look over your data analysis and look for counter-arguments. My experience on Long Bets though makes me doubt that the third party judging etc can be done all that easily and in that satisfactory a manner, but it’s worth a try.
i definitely don’t accept your claim that the other claims are refutable, but that doesn’t deny me the opportunity to gain a some new factual knowledge cheaply or profitably.
I’m confused—your link suggests one thing, but your comment text could mean the exact opposite. What are you arguing?
Describing Mexico under the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which was a member of the Socialist International, and nationalized large chunks of the economy, as “captialist” is something of a stretch.
You are not allowed to do this kind of cherry picking. No country is fully Communist/Capitalist/Socialist/Whateverist so every time you dislike some results you recategorize a country. Criteria must be clear, automatic, and up-front.
Also, half of the world is ruled by member parties of Socialist International. Socialist International = Social-Democrats = Capitalists.
= *falls out of chair*
I’m not cherry picking. Describing a largely nationalized economy as capitalist is false. If you had called it a socialist mixed economy, that would have been more accurate, as it is, you mentioned socialist mixed economies with largely nationalized production as “capitalist growth failures” which is obviously disingenuous.
As I pointed out in my other comment, this is true of all of those other countries you mentioned as well. Again, as TGGP put it, you do need more categories, or else you might list countries with minimal property rights and nationalized production as capitalist just because they weren’t a member of COMECON or whatever. Instead, it makes more since to list countries according to economic freedom, then measure the relevant statistics wealth/growth/quality of life statistics.