From the Communism we never had to the Capitalism we’ll never achieve

3 comments on “From the Communism we never had to the Capitalism we’ll never achieve”

1. Just on the off chance that you do read these comments, I will say thank you for having the courage to look at things and admit mistakes. Seems like everyone “should” be doing this but in reality they don’t.

   Thomas Aquinas certainly spent years discussing the “First Mover” or the original impulse which created the world. I will tell you this – if you want Romania to ever change, the primum movens has to be via the judicial system.

   By that I mean that all court cases, trials and hearings need to be made public, as in published, indexed and searchable online. I’m sure you’re an educated man but you’ve never been IN a Romanian courthouse. I’ve had people become frightened to death just by me filming openly in the main lobby (not in a court ROOM). Why? Because the entire thing is cloaked in mystery and influence peddling and extorted leverage.

   Publish the cases, publish the transcripts, publish the verdicts and get it in the hands of the people and from there everything else will flow towards a participatory democracy.

   Thanks,

   -Sam

   1. Dear Sam, thanks. I assure you I do read and value your comments. And I think your point about the justice system is quite right. I have visited a Romanian court by the way (in Timisoara), but will take your advice and sit in on a trial too.

2. Your former colleague, Charles Crawford, makes a related point on the limits of aid-based know how projects as tools of transition:

   “I was posted to Moscow in mid-93. It seemed that the Model Farm [aid-based] project was, er, getting stuck. Squabbles over land boundaries. Or something.

   Moscow had not had fresh milk in any quantities since the Revolution. Behold, it started to come into supermarkets in 1995. Why?

   In part because of McDonald’s.

   The then biggest McDonald’s hamburger outlet in the world had opened not far from Red Square. Russians queued en masse to sample the food – and the glamour. But to run an operation on this scale required milk shakes and meat, ie cows. And importing meat/milk to meet Russia’s surging demand was not sustainable.

   So McDonald’s set up their own farm in Russia. And it worked.

   Thus a magnificent case study in failure of development assistance.

   On the one hand, an intelligent well-designed and expensive socialist model farm which never produced a single sausage as far as I know. Launched with such a fanfare it quietly crawled away to die in a KHF cupboard. I still wonder what it all cost.

   And on the other a real-life farm, complete with cows, set up and run by the much-derided McDonald’s.”
   http://charlescrawford.biz/blog.php?single=223

   Here market demand – the desire of post-communist Russians to sample the western lifestyle via a fast food chain – and an integrated supply chain set up to produce a homogenous product at low cost through local infrastructure are in alignment.

   The counter example is of Pizza Hut in Moscow which couldn’t source and deliver an economically competitive product for the local market and so shut down despite its similar ‘western’ appeal to Moscowvites.

   This is not to denigrate the very important and valuable government to government economic assistance, but to suggest that the ‘central planning’ aspect that has often characterised such projects can be a significant obstacle to their success.

   The case of Russia also supports your central point about the importance of institution-building, rule of law and a flourishing civil society in opening up a country and creating the accountability necessary for fuller democratic and economic freedoms to be enjoyed by the country as a whole.

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