🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec25.002926.4218@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>their Shuttle.
>
>Nonsense. The Russians have built no space stations and are having
>trouble raising the funds to operate the one they inherited from 
>the Soviet Union. Comparing what was done by a command economy using
>what amounts to slave labor to what's done in an open society where
>people expect to get paid fairly for their work is meaningless accounting.
>


a
Consider that the russians/CIS/USSR  built a major space program with
the GNP the size of France.   And by the Way,  unlike the germans, or chinese
i dont believe the russians have ever been charged with using slave
labor.  Now the russians had a strange command economy,  but things still
cost, but there were major problems in distribution.  the russian/SU
economy was sorta like massachusetts meets new york via sweden.

high taxes,  severe rent control and social provision of major services.

SUre,  they didnt pay their scientists what we paid them here,  but they
provided them with housing, medicine, etc.   Also,  the motivation of most
russian space workers was so great,  that they didn't mind the bad conditions.

the problems within the russian system, were of productivity,  design cycle,
and provision of consumer goods.

The chinese use slave labor,  and then sell it over here.  the russians
paid their workers poorly,  and the workers pretended to work.

the gulags were not used as factories to my knowledge.