Why is Eastern Europe so poor?

yeah Poland is pretty great

Because you're looking at it through the illusion of GDP. GDP can fluctuate heavily and also have an "unrealized" portion, which in the case of Russia, is quite massive. It can also easily inflate above its true value due to geopolitics or other factors, like in most of the west. Think about it - why does the entire west see Russia as a rival when they're a poor shithole with wages equal to ours? Because as Germany proved once some time ago, a nation can go from unrealized potential to hyperinflated potential within just 5 years - the Russia today, with the correct totalitarian regime, can be the China of tomorrow in just 5 years. Except that Germany had half of modern Russia's population and was way poorer than Russia is right now.

So what metric can we possibly use to show the true power of a nation's economy? That's actually quite simple to answer, what's the ultimate goal of a system within this universe? To take energy from the environment, transform it into a higher order structure, and shit out the waste - basic thermodynamics. So therefor, societies that consume the most energy should be most successful in achieving this goal. Let's go further and normalize for energy per capita to evaluate the efficiency of the state infrastructure in delivering affordable energy to the average citizen, and we get quite a different picture.
Now you can see places like Poland and Bulgaria managing to make affordable ~2450t of oil per year to their average citizen, which is exactly equal to Spain, above China and slightly below the UK. The translation of this is that under the correct geopolitical conditions, these economies can all be valued equally as they obviously are equally energy-efficient, or in other words - Eastern Europe is greatly undervalued for the energy efficiency of their economies, being able to have an industry producing products equal to British in terms of both quality and price. That, or the UK is greatly over-valued.

Attached: 1541827118066.png (812x678, 129K)

Mexico already reached 10k, this map is bullshit

Because of communism and earlier nonassimilating German and Jewish minorities

Still under 10k

imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=68&pr.y=3&sy=2018&ey=2019&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=512,668,914,672,612,946,614,137,311,546,213,674,911,676,314,548,193,556,122,678,912,181,313,867,419,682,513,684,316,273,913,868,124,921,339,948,638,943,514,686,218,688,963,518,616,728,223,836,516,558,918,138,748,196,618,278,624,692,522,694,622,962,156,142,626,449,628,564,228,565,924,283,233,853,632,288,636,293,634,566,238,964,662,182,960,359,423,453,935,968,128,922,611,714,321,862,243,135,248,716,469,456,253,722,642,942,643,718,939,724,734,576,644,936,819,961,172,813,132,726,646,199,648,733,915,184,134,524,652,361,174,362,328,364,258,732,656,366,654,144,336,146,263,463,268,528,532,923,944,738,176,578,534,537,536,742,429,866,433,369,178,744,436,186,136,925,343,869,158,746,439,926,916,466,664,112,826,111,542,298,967,927,443,846,917,299,544,582,941,474,446,754,666,698&s=NGDPRPPPPC,NGDPDPC&grp=0&a=

I mean, Belarus IS pretty powerful, but not quite your weight category yet.

So here's the exact map for that - GDP produced per unit of energy consumption. In short, the bluer a country is, the more overvalued its economy is and the harder the impact of a recession/depression will be on them, and the whiter it is (excl fully white), the more resilient will it be in the next crash. It also shows another thing - blue nations are reaching their peak growth that an infrastructure of energy delivery such as theirs can support, and there's literally no physical way that they can grow further in a peaceful environment, unless a 3rd world war happens, they join the winning side and they destroy their rivals' economies, which is highly unlikely.
It also shows that in the lighter blue nations, an infrastructure of energy delivery exist that can produce GDP as or even more efficiently than Western Europe. Scaled up to their overextension, which is on average ~12:

>Russia can grow +126.76%
>Bulgaria can grow +71.25%
>Canada can grow +107.65%
>S. Korea can grow +88.97%
>Finland can grow +79.91%
>China can grow +99.66%
>Iran can grow +103.05%

Suddenly, all of the US' strategies start making sense and you get why they're so desperate to asphyxiate countries like Russia, Iran and China - the moment they stop doing that is the moment that growth gets realized.

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Most of them are subhumans + communism + historical poverty
Same goes for the Meds, but they were lucky to have escaped communism.

China should be red, wouldn't be surprised if there are more mistakes on the map

this is a weird way to look at it. first, there might be differences in how efficient the energy is used by country, just like . secondly, can't there be large differences in what kind of industry different countries have and how much energy the require?
but you're right that gdp isn't an entirely good way to measure total economic output. this is obvious since certain things just vary extremely in price between countries. for example, getting your hair cut in usa is adds more to their gdp than getting your hair cut in russia adds to the russian gdp because of price differences, even if the services are equal in quality. in the end, i think gdp with some kind of adjustment, like gdp ppp, is a better way to measure economic output than energy use.

Lost wars, occupations, communism, backward society etc.

Communism was over 30 years ago, just move on already

>first, there might be differences in how efficient the energy is used by country, just like
Actually, it's the opposite - the more inefficiently energy is utilized in a country while maintaining a high energy consumption, the cheaper that energy is and the better the infrastructure of delivery is. So having a society where lights never go out and cities shine so brightly that they block the light of the stars, like in the USA, is an obvious indicator of prosperity. On the other hand, a society where energy is very "optimized" and not used to light up anything during the night, like North Korea, is incredibly poor and energy-inefficient. The wasteful usage of energy is a byproduct of the infrastructure of energy delivery.

>secondly, can't there be large differences in what kind of industry different countries have and how much energy the require
No because every manufacturing process ultimately boils down to energy cost, even the service economy like the IT sector of the USA. Wages are, contrary to popular belief, irrelevant - energy for production and energy for cheap transportation is far more important. And even in nations like China where both the energy is cheap but also wages low, the cheap energy will eventually lead to a rise of standards and rise of wages, so the low wages are only a temporary luck, it will all eventually boil down to energy cost which is the ultimate bottleneck.
So since every manufacturing process boils down to energy, copying that process in a nation with cheaper energy would ultimately lead to that nation's companies being more competitive, so any difference in production would pretty much instantly vanish. If Germans could copy the IT sector of the USA and provide similar cloud services for an example, they would in a heartbeat, but their energy cost prevents them from doing so, so they're forced to rely on selling quality and brand value, well, and pushing stuff through the EU of course.

That doesn't explain why Eastern Europe was poorer even before that though.

Attached: GDP1890.png (678x626, 46K)

means little when all the wealth produced from whatever energy moves to another country

that is to say capital flows are the biggest indicator of a countries well-being

Nice link

landlocked countries don't have culture and presence.

Thats a very interesting approach to looking at it, but currently your model fails to account for inefficiency. It doesn't really tell us how much output you get for every unit of energy input, because GDP is distorted by too many factors to be a accurate accounting of actual production output.

But still, a very interesting way to look at it.

Because they border mostly poor countries themselves.
Economy is trend based, if you neighbour poor regions you are more likely to be poor yourself and if you neighbour rich regions that enables you to be richer too.
Thats why, besides oil economies like the middle east got, wealthy countries are always close to other wealthy countries.
Germany is richer than poland, because it borders the Netherlands, France, Italy (at least is close to it). While poland only borders germany and to some extent the other baltic states, most of its connection is to other poor countries however.

If the economic activity of the balkan states were better, or north africa, Italy would do better too.

we werent allowed to plunder italy after ww2

I would usually argue for an hour or two more but I got too lazy plus I have stuff to do, so I'll just leave you with this in case you're interested in this kind of view of how society functions. Of course it's quite complex and there's an entire essay to write around it, so here's a good video that got linked about it not long ago on /sci/ that is close to my interpretation in case you have an hour to burn. Also the book that this guy is basing his lecture on, this one gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=95D1F492D6186FC1676042FA835D224E , is very good as well.

youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8

Also here's the chart data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?end=2014&view=map . Use the slider to play with the year below, and notice a very interesting change of energy consumption in the past half century, something you probably wouldn't expect to have been happening. On that topic alone, the stagnation since the 60s and the fact that if you subtract displays from a room we're literally in the 60s, there's a whole another essay to be written, so if you have an extra 3 hours to burn after watching the other link, watch this youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s

Eastern Euopre was about as wealthy as East Asia

Attached: national wealth.png (731x414, 72K)