I also think it showed the difference between capitalism and communism.
Whether we like it or not, what drives people to create businesses, to make them better, and to run them well, is MONEY (mostly) and power.
Capatilism encourages that, competition between different companies encourages them to improve, offer better products, better prices, better deals.
Communism, where the state owns everything, only encourages mediocraty, lack of growth, and no reason to make anything better.
It is well known that during the period of communism places like hotels and restaurants in Russia were awful.
They were state owned, and nobody had any incentive to make their hotel any better than anyone elses. No point in spending money doing it up, or offering better food, as the people that worked there gained nothing.
Whereas in the west we have hundreds of hotel companies competing with one another. If you go to a Hilton and it is awful next time you go to a Holiday inn.
In Russia they were all as bad as each other so you had no choice.
While capitism is not perfect at least it encourages enterprise, communism just stifles it.
This I think was the long term problem in the USSR and in the end it imploded.
It is a bit like the benefits system in the UK. At first it was for those that really needed it, and the rest of the population had to get off their backside and work.
Then people found it was easy to get benefits without going to work, so people began to live off benefits and now we have a huge number of the population who dont need to go out to work because they can get everyting they need while living on benefits.
Take away the incentive to work and you breed lazinees, mediocraty and lower standards.