wow, there's some shitty reasoning there

The countries that were mainly part of the Eastern Bloc were already poor and undeveloped before the institution of the Soviet Union and its associated economic structure, along with countries around it, but part of the overall system. The only real exception to that is Eastern Germany, which was destroyed by World War II anyway.

The Western countries had for a long time the benefits of their colonies in Africa and Asia (most notably India for the UK, Africa for the UK and France, and South America and a good amount of Pacific islands for the U.S. After decolonization, they continued the economic exploitation of the third world, along with having the majority of world trade since they benefited from already being the richest countries in the world, due to their previous colonial exploitation, as well as support from the U.S., which was built by settler colonialism against Native Americans.

The countries that were generally able to develop the most in this post-war period, disregarding city states like Singapore and Hong Kong, which is obviously purposely disingenuous since other countries cannot follow their example, were generally those within the Soviet sphere of control or those who were able to remain separate from the control of either the Americans or Soviets.

Compare most of Eastern Europe today to how it was under Soviet rule, today there's more crime, more suicide, more alcoholism, the population is decreasing because it basically doesn't want to live anymore. Russia invaded the Ukraine, but Ukrainians were already killing themselves with heart disease and alcoholism.

Cuba has much higher education and living standards than El Salvador or Haiti, other Caribbean islands.

Nigeria is very rich in oil, but they can't stop their population growth and they don't have control over their own resources, which means the government has not been able to invest in infrastructure and education.

Social mobility is not an issue in a socialist country, though the population became much more literate and wealthy, when compared to earlier. The idea of social mobility is a capitalist concept, that there are classes and that people can ascend classes, the idea in socialism is to move with your class, not above it.

tldr

well you have to write a little bit to counter the amount of incorrectness in his posts, I wrote it concisely and clearly

I assume that whole wall of text is a statement and you think it's poorly written, or is a part of it your refutal

umm, isn't it obvious?

I was commenting on timo's point of view

ah

his reasoning was shit

well okay, I thought it was out of context

ahh, sorry

guess I came a little late to the convo anyway but I just joined 😛

it's mostly just me not wanting to read it that's the problem heh

tl;dr socialist countries started out poor and developed, capitalist countries were already rich before, Hong Kong and Singapore are city states and don't count

How come Japan turned into a richer country than China?

They were equally poor at around 1860

Same thing with Chile, how come they are the most wealthy latin country?

US sugardaddy

China was exploited by Western countries for centuries, also yes, U.S. support

US supported Pinochet but not with subsidies

Japan's industry today is based off of the Korean War

Fact is Chile adopted the free market approach

Japan became more wealthy than their neighbours because they dropped the isolationism and adopted the free market

simple as that

umm, no

Japan did not adopt a free market

Show me a country that improved greatly without millions suffering that didn't use the free market

Yes they did

they had intense protectionism

like the U.K. like the U.S., like Germany

And after that in 1860 they adopted the free market, duh

no, in 1860

and after

they protected Japanese industry so it could compete with other countries

which is exactly what Germany did to develop

No that came even later still, and that's why they suffered in the 80s

before that they had the free market

and it's what the U.S. did as well

they had tariffs, they had government support of industries

Which is a bad idea