Yeltsin's Story in an American Supermarket

Boris Yeltsin saw the freezer. He saw the cheese samples. But it worked because it was true. The average fell to five. It's about resisting the acceptance that your ability and effort do make a difference. Capitalism didn't invent that rule. It just copied it. I see you on my networks. Until next time, Manuel. He won it in the dairy aisle. But this is where the story gets more interesting. The question isn't whether capitalism is fair. Two years later, he left the Communist Party. Sometimes it's up to others. The incentive to strive is not an invention of capitalism. And inaction, in biology, in economics, in any living system, is death. Capitalism is not perfect. He arrived with the Russian ambassador and a line of journalists. Those who studied a lot were annoyed. Those who didn't study were happy. In communism, everyone receives the same thing always, regardless of age, work, effort, or preference. Without competition, all products are mediocre. Everyone has a purpose. As I wrote in this column a few years ago, that strategy had consequences that go far beyond the Cold War, some of which we still pay for today. Capitalism won the Cold War not with missiles. For the second group, those who were striving decided not to strive as much. He saw that you could choose any cheese you wanted, any brand, any flavor, at any time, without queuing, without a ration, without a stamp. The question is whether there is something in the structure of nature that is fair. I'm not just talking about money. He came out and said: “We don't have stores like this in Russia.” That same year, Nixon took Khrushchev to a model kitchen in Moscow. Expecting things to change without effort is not just denying biology. More than any speech. It was no accident. In 1947, the U.S. brought a whole supermarket to an exhibition in Yugoslavia. It's the mechanism by which life, in any form, advances. There's an example that circulates a lot in economics universities. They walked into any Randalls, in any neighborhood, on any Saturday. Yeltsin walked the aisles. Before markets. It didn't impress him. On the way to the airport, he asked to stop at a supermarket. The manager got a call with fifteen minutes' notice. Dozens of cereals, a variety that didn't exist in communism, all available without lines or rations. Without heavy security, without press. Before any economic system we've invented. The hunter who came back with more prey ate better. The bacterium that reproduced faster survived. The tree with deeper roots withstood the storm. The plant eaten by the insect, the insect eaten by the bird, the bird hunted by the cat. It has deep vices, it generates enormous inequalities, it produces incentives that sometimes have nothing to do with effort. But it's the system that most resembles how nature works when no one is editing it. Yeltsin returned to the Soviet Union. In 1991, he was elected president of Russia and led the country out of communism. They flew fresh fruit from America because the local wasn't attractive enough. It isn't. It wasn't Trump Tower, which he also visited. People don't operate on pure stick. When you eliminate the difference between effort and reward, you don't produce equality. More than any missile. He died in 2007. Those who get a ten and those who get a five get the same. A professor proposes to equalize all the grades in the group. Only one reporter from the Houston Chronicle. It wasn't the Statue of Liberty. His successor was Vladimir Putin. The story is more complex than a happy ending. But that afternoon in Houston, standing in front of a freezer with a great variety of ice pops, something in him understood what no political speech had managed to: that the only real purpose, in biology, in economics, in any aspect of life, is to grow and improve. And that to grow, the incentives have to be where the effort is. For the third group, no one studies for anyone. They all failed. If there's no carrot, no one is going to try to do anything. Two leaders discussing the future of the world in front of a refrigerator and a washing machine. Every time a Soviet leader entered an American supermarket, something collapsed inside him. They called it the Kitchen Debate. During his tour of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, he had seen rockets, command consoles, the most advanced NASA technology. Sometimes it's up to some. It seemed like another planet. An aide who accompanied him later wrote that at that moment “the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed inside him.” It wasn't NASA. It was a simple supermarket. What Yeltsin didn't know was that he wasn't the first. Thirty years earlier, on January 6, 1959, Anastas Mikoyan, Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, entered a Giant Food supermarket in Maryland. First exam: everyone gets a seven. He bought $9.29 in groceries: avocados, pickles, romaine lettuce, olives, shredded coconut. He saw twenty varieties of cereal. It was propaganda, yes. Boris Yeltsin, who would go on to become the first president of Russia, was visiting the United States in September 1989. It produces inaction.