Even though this reading was a somewhat brief introduction to the next couple of units, I wanted to comment on the success of capitalism. In brief, one of the many problems that pre 1980’s China and the Soviet Union had with their economies is that they essentially walled off their country to the world market. That’s not to say that the people didn’t want to work hard, but, for example, the government would dictate how many crops their farmers could grow regardless of the fact that their people were starving and didn’t have food sources, so that they could control the aggregate output and thus sustain their exports of grain. This meant that they were punished for working too much, which showed when they starting allowing businesses to come in and produce goods.