Wasn't that deliberate oppression though? Not that I'm pro-communism as an ideal or anything (I favour free-market conservatism) I'm just not sure it can be blamed for ineptitude/mismanagement there as the joke implies?
It was mostly incompetence mixed with a lot of corruption and petty theft.
Publicly owned businesses had no incentives to compete on quality, had to fulfill centralized plans designed by distant bureaucrats that weren't completely attached to reality. Western products were mostly unavailable or extremely costly, so no substitution possible. Lots of ossified monopolies. Factory leaders were often chosen on the base of being someone's nephew or protégé rather than expert.
If you applied for a phone line (plain old copper wire), you could wait up to 10 years before you actually got it, as there was a waiting list of 300 000 applicants in a country of 15 million ... ugh. The mess.
It is hard to describe the omnipresent dysfunction of everyday life back then. Communism was a theoretical system dreamed out by intellectuals who never engaged in any commerce. All the violent oppression aside, economic side of Communism was just crazily inefficient.
every "open and capitalist" country also had 10yrs wait for a copper phone line. besides the top 3 countries economically at the time from were you hear your make believe stories, most other countries until the 80sv phone line contacts were used to buy cars and homes. sometimes the lines were not even installed.
If you want to be a dictator, then you have to say you’ll be a benevolent dictator and that people will have work and there will be food and they will have shelter and an education. Would-be dictators don’t get very far telling people they’ll be cold and hungry.
