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Comment by pmarca | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. Communist societies build less, and somehow also pollute more.

Citation needed. The USSR and PRC both went from agrarian societies to industrial powers in under 50 years.

You'd need to argue that they did it faster because of communism. In fact, China starting growing when opening up to markets. Oh and tens millions dead each. And the pollution & resource use is worse too. See https://www.amazon.com/More-Less-Surprising-Learned-Resource...

No, that would be moving the goalposts. The GP post claimed that communist societies "produced less" (I made no claim about "polluted more," which the GP post also stated). I gave 2 examples showing very large countries that went from zero to world industrial power in 50 years. China is very near the top in world GDP right now. The USSR put both the first human and the first artificial satellite into space in that timeframe. Show me a capitalist country that's accomplished so much so fast.

The reason you are talking about growth over a 50 year span is because your basic capitalistic countries like the USA didn't get to play catch-up, because they were always riding the front edge of technological advancement.

Since the PRC's timespan was post-WWII, it's fair to compare them to the Asian tigers and Japan. It's easy to see which did better. Edit: Same goes if we're talking about "building more" rather than doing better.

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