Maybe it looked different from the perspective of people living then and there, but I feel like I couldn't feel any reward from working in an inherently rewarding feel, because I would constantly be worried about being randomly awarded a winning ticket for a one-way trip to Siberia.

I mean, some of the stuff I read about the famous Soviet names in aeronautics, space exploration or cybernetics, makes it feel like back then, NKVD was the HR department, PIPs involved a time in a gulag, and getting fired had a quite literal meaning to it. Look the wrong way at your manager or a co-worker, and the next day you have a 1:1... in a prison cell.

> Capitalism prevails but the overhead for everyone is orders of magnitude more than under communism for the chosen.

Curiously, I do have an impression that, on the capitalist side of the world, the highest productivity and the greatest achievements both are to be found in those little bubbles that isolate people and their work from the capitalist concerns. Smart people, survivable budget, a specific direction, and zero questions about how the work will contribute to the profits next quarter. Then there's that old adage that corporations tend to be capitalist on the outside and communist on the inside. Makes me think that we're naturally drifting to a mixed model here.