AH Challenge: The Largest USSR you can manage by 2006

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Paul

Yes, life still sucked for many people. There were serious social problems left and right. The fact remains, however, that Victorian Britain was able to provide a higher material standard of living for a larger portion of its population than just about any other society that had existed before or existed at the time.

I think there are a lot of debates about the figures. There were an established middle class and fairly well off 'working class' people in a lot of the artisan and specialist trades prior to the industrial revolution. A lot of those suffered badly during the industrial period. In the longer term things did improve but as many other nations showed it could have been done a lot better. I remember reading a quote a while back from an expert who had analysed Britain's decline and included the standard comments about while we would lose some of our lead as other industrialised but not as much as we actually did. This was made about 1890! If we had introduced the sort of education and trade support programmes that our rivals had Britain would have been in a much better economic and social position. It was not just a matter of economics but also the decline in social cohesion during this period.


Saying that it was backward because it didn't come up to early 21st century standards of good living is kind of like saying that everyone in Victorian Britain was an idiot because they didn't have the internet or satellite television. :rolleyes:


Who said that? Don't think Marka has said anything like that and know I didn't. I said that by adapting laisse-faire polices Britain accelerated its economic and social decline relative to our main economic rivals. Not a matter of living standards but of policy, in this case largely a policy of not having a policy.

Steve
 
Something on which we might all agree....

The course of its history, and the degree of its actual "federalism" would make things rather interesting.


Further, the implications for Language policy could be different as well.
 

Tielhard

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stevep wrote,

Tielhard

What are you defining as communism and capitalism?

I didn't neither as far as I can see did the thread call for such a definition.

If you refer to what dominated the USSR as communism, which you appear to be,

was not the USSR dominated by large conniferous forests, snow and the Urals?

then I wonder what your on.

I am on the Alternative History Discussion Board - what are you on?

It [that which must be defined?????] drastically crippled Russia for generations and not only inflicted millions of deaths directly but did more than just about anything else to deny Russia a large place in the world system.

I think I see, I am the Alternative History Discussion Board you are on the Do Down the Soviet Union irrespective of the facts trip?

Extreme capitalism is highly incompetent as well. The sort of thing you get in Britain in the high Victorian period.

I think Victorian Britain was imoral and was not a Benthamite nation in any sense but incompetent? Probably not.

It has occasional partial revivals in periods like Thatcherite Britain and to a degree Regan in the US but is generally recognised as a failed system.

It may well be a failed system but until you decide on what you mean (he said tossing the definitions back in his face) by success and failure I could not comment

Not as bad as the Soviet system but also bitterly opposed to the involvement of humans that is required for economic efficiency.

I am unsure what this means
 
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