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Communism or Capitalism don’t make things better or worse. Corruption makes things worse and regulations and oversight make them better.
Endless stories about garbage made on both sides leads to some greedy fucker rigging the system.
Ah yes, the good old communist Mercedes W123.
I guess they were looking for a photo of a broken down lada but didn’t find one 🤣
That is the peak chassis form, you may not like it, but its true.
Smh just found another communist Mercedes.
Don’t ask Mercedes what they were doing between 1934 and 1945.
And BMW, and Krupp, Hugo, Bayer, blah, blah…. Yeah. Any industry that could industry produced for the Reich.
I’m not saying that to be “everyone was doing it,” but wondering why the need to point out what historically is well known and definitely not a secret.
well you can, they’re forced by law to acknowledge it.
Nazi weren’t communists. But you did find a Nazi car
Ok. But far right fascists are trying to convince people that the Nazis, or the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”, was a leftist socialist party.
Funny how communists didn’t have a problem with that brand, isn’t it?
Was it actually a communist car? Trying to sift through info online it looks like it was made by west Germany, which I associate with the western postwar powers, but I really dont know much about any of this
Anyone know if it was a particularly good car?
It’s a Mercedes, which is pretty much a symbol of German capitalism. I was trying to point out the irony of using this as a talking point to support communism.
Neither capitalism or communism gives you reliable cars. What helps is good regulation for minimum warranty periods, mandatory maintenance and spare parts availability for 15+ years, interdictions of dark patterns (e.g: end user should be able to replace the headlamps, oil filter and such easily with basic tools). And also, industry standards, ODB2 for diagnostics for instance. And now, Cybersecurity and data privacy is super relevant, you don’t want OEMs or bad actors to be able to disable your car remotely.
I need respectable 90s Japanese cars that are competing to destroy the American automotive industry. But with electronic vehicles.
Yeah. Electric vehicles with no computers (beyond microcontrollers for batter chargers and stuff).
There was a period about 15 years ago where you going get a not stupidly expensive electric refit kit for a bunch of cars - someone I know did it with a 90s Rav4 for like $10k. Unfortunately they seem to be stupid expensive now.
TVs made to soviet design famously caught fire, this was before this all printed circuit board deal was perfected. they just used cardboard-like material for that, it was flammable, absorbed water over time, and there were too closely spaced traces with high voltage on them
People just don’t remember shit that broke down quickly
fr4? that’s still the cheapest pcb material around. great for prototyping.
tvs were made before fr4 was a thing
This comparison is just head-up-ass silly without statistics.
There are 75+ year-old Ford F-1s running around, with their original engine blocks:
https://classiccars.com/listings/view/2115325/1948-ford-f1-for-sale-in-prescott-arizona-86305
https://classiccars.com/listings/find/all-years/ford/f1
brought to you by capitalism!
Even without that, any old car can be made to work if you throw parts and labor at it. This idea that “communism made a car that ran for 30 years” is completely worthless with a single example. What matters is how many were manufactured and how many of those are still functional at 5, 10, 15, 20+ years. One sample is bad statistics.
Capitalism also produced the world’s most reliable and repairable pickup truck - the Toyota Hilux. If you were going to make a comparison just on lifetime operating hours vs. maintenance cost, Toyota would win globally no problem. If you were going to make a comparison based on operating hours in harsh conditions, Toyota would also win that.
That’s a capitalist car btw. Mercedes from West Germany
you’re making too much sense for some neomarxist kiddie dimwits here.
Eastern Block cars definitely didn’t have the reputation of working well. They were more known to be easy to repair, but they had to be since shit broke constantly lol
Btw, it’s Eastern Bloc, not block. I’m sure autocorrect is to blame, but it seems like neat trivia regardless.
Why is that? Does it come from a Russian word translation? Does it mean something different?
Nope, it’s a French loan word. In English and French, a bloc is a political group. The original French meaning was a block, like a block of wood or cheese, and that meaning is still used, but came to also mean political group or alliance at some point. When it was imported into English, we only kept the political meaning since we already had block.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/bloc
Like all quirks of English the French are to blame.
Trabants were shit.
And you had to wait ten years to get one.
In .ml terms that means you got 40 years of enjoyment out of your communist car!
Plus going 0-60 in five minutes gave you more time to bask in awe at all the slate gray brutalist architecture!
I’m confused, there are no 30 year old cars under capitalism?
I get what you’re trying to say, but I don’t think this is a great example to use.
The Lada Riva. That symbol of communism.
Was just a rebadged Fiat 124.
It was originally a capitalist invention that the commies took credit for.
If you haven’t seen already most if not all of USSR technology was stolen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if tradition continued to Russia
Learning is not stealing… That aside. There were a bunch of FIAT license cars in the socialist states.
Perhaps not, but stealing is stealing.
Consider computers in the Soviet Union. Asianometry has a great video on this. Initial Soviet computers were promising, but fell behind American ones by several years, and the gap only worsened as time went on. Eventually, to close the gap, Party leadership made the decision to buy an IBM System/360 compatible computer from an enterprising American supplier and reverse engineer it. This closed the gap from roughly 15 years to roughly 5, but also meant the Soviets had no R&D talent of their own and had to keep buying American computers and reverse engineering them until American computers became too complicated for them to do so.
I love the communist side of the picture - western car, but with bonnet up and no available spares
