Once Perestroika liberalized their economy, they had distribution issues, sure.
But before then, housing, food, clothing all were cheap and available. The food was simple, the apartments small and the clothing dull, but it was all there and for very little cost.
But they liberalized their economy in order to compete on the consumer goods boom in the West. That desire for consumer goods had a big role in destabilizing the system.
And today, the converse desire for cheap staples and necessities in the face of intense asset inflation may be destabilizing our current system.
Cheap wants, expensive needs. This is our economy now.
"I love my iPhone, but I worry about health insurance." as I've heard it put here on HN.
Ironically, the Soviet system fell from opposite. Expensive wants, cheap needs. Everyone saw the West getting cheaper and cheaper consumer goods and central planning failed to keep up.
| The WPATH standards of care also state, however, that male chest reconstruction surgery for female-to-male
patients “could be carried out earlier” than the age of majority in certain cases, and ultimately should be considered on a case-by-case basis “depending on an adolescent’s specific clinical situation and goals for gender identity expression.”
What do you think that specific clinical situation was in those situations?
Mastectomies are performed for non-gender-related reasons, such as prophylactic mastectomies, so it's arguable whether that falls under the definition of SRS/GRS. For any reason, it is exceedingly, vanishingly rare in children.
It seems like an oddly small number to obsess over, especially considering over 8,000 non-trans teenagers between 13 and 19 receive breast augmentations each year.
From your link:
| the mean (SD) age was 19 (2.5) years for postsurgical participants and 17 (2.5) years for nonsurgical participants
Surgical patients would be the ones who are in the most danger of suicide or self-harm or for whom nonsurgical (hormone) treatment is not an option.
Also,
| Self-reported regret was near 0.
Here is the document that the report refers to as the standard for care for transgender patients:
That seems unnecessarily pedantic, since obviously it should be assumed to mean "not recommended by anyone who matters", but I've upvoted you for providing the source.
I was editing my comment with that exact link when you posted.
| Professional organizations such as the Endocrine Society recommend against puberty blockers for children who have not reached puberty, and recommend that patients be at least 16 years old before beginning hormone treatments for feminization or masculinization of the body. The last step in transitioning to another gender, gender reassignment surgery, is only available to those 18 and older in the United States.
| a much smaller house, much less technology, a very cheap car or public transit, vanilla food, only a few suits of clothes, and bare bones health care.
You would have to be highly skilled to do that, the average worker couldn't get anywhere close to that lifestyle on 10-20 hours a week.
Right, but that's why we (ideally) put infrastructure costs under the control of an entity (the government) which doesn't have to operate within a system of profit and market competition.
| It's bad now, but in the future it might be great?
Not be able to reverse transaction is not a feature, it's a fundamental flaw. There is absolutely no advantage to the consumer or the producer to have all transactions immediately permanent.
The rest of your comment reveals your bias: You don't really care about it working technologically, you just wish you had made money on it.
One aspect I'm fascinated with is the way that consumer goods are continually dropping in price offsets the increase in necessities. We get a supercomputer in our pocket for $40 a month, but rent has ballooned. We can have hundreds of video games for free but we'll never own a home. And so on. We all get wikipedia for free, but a college degree is painfully expensive in a world that doesn't let you apply for jobs on the strengths of self-education.
As someone on here said years ago, "I love my iphone but I worry about health insurance."
What good is cheap frivolities if the necessary building blocks of life are skyrocketing.
I live in Trump country, too. Which means I know a handful of people (not even anywhere near a majority) love to throw their impotent tantrums and we need to stop letting that scare us.
Restricting the greatest excesses of the rich and militaries (the US specifically) and some form of aggressive carbon sequestration, but I don't think any of that requires some kind of Year Zero political program.
But before then, housing, food, clothing all were cheap and available. The food was simple, the apartments small and the clothing dull, but it was all there and for very little cost.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R0006014...
But they liberalized their economy in order to compete on the consumer goods boom in the West. That desire for consumer goods had a big role in destabilizing the system.
And today, the converse desire for cheap staples and necessities in the face of intense asset inflation may be destabilizing our current system.