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Capitalism and Authoritarian State-Capitalism can both be bad.

I agree with your general sentiment in that the general populace is OK with minor annoyances given a cheap price.

It seems you are confusing USSR with China. There was no "Authoritarian State-Capitalism" in USSR, no free-ish market with some level of competition, no entrepreneurship, no shareholders, no nothing and yet somehow car quality was significantly inferior to Ford, BMW, etc. and TVs were much worse than Sony ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Arguably, Soviets were prioritizing military production (up to 14% GDP going to military in the 80s), and everything else was an afterthought. They didn't need to give population quality cars, as they could just send them to Gulags if they bitched about the quality too much.

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