The line going up just means GDP per capita increased, not that the system was healthy. USA’s GDP continues to go up, would you consider our current economy healthy? Post 60s, Soviet growth slowed and was mostly driven by oil, not productivity. That hides a lot of inefficiency and fragility that GDP doesn’t show. When oil prices dropped and reforms started, the economy collapsed because it had very little resilience left, not because capitalism suddenly “killed” a thriving system.

To be clear - I’m not saying that shock therapy didn’t cause harm, I’m just saying that the USSR was clearly not booming by the time it was applied.

Blaming capitalism alone ignores that many socialist economies were already in long-term stagnation before the 1990s. Shock therapy often caused real harm, but it didn’t destroy thriving economies — it was applied to systems that were already failing.

The legality is in their head.

President has a D in his party, so it’s socially legal I guess

Why is there so much Chinese propaganda on lemmy?