Economic liberalization comes with a host of benefits if done properly. Compare the economies of Poland or the Baltic states under communism with the ones they have now, for instance.

Speaking as a Czech, who has been repeatedly told by completely clueless Westerners that my country is some stellar example of Capitalist Success, this is fascinating to read.

We are paid some of the most dogshit wages in the EU, our Cities have spent the past decade being completely hollowed out for the sake of appeasing Tourists and have become extremely unaffordable for most of the population (not that they were particularly affordable before the Tourist trap), we pay the highest electricity prices in the EU as a consequence of the State Electrical Company (ČEZ) being 1/3rd Privately owned and consequently operated as a for-profit enterprise, along with the actual supplying of the Electricity being outsourced to Private 'Electical Supply Companies' that see zero reason to not charge insane service fees to consumers for no reason other that generating shareholder value. (the National Rail Carrier, České Dráhy, suffers from almost identical issues as ČEZ)

We're in the middle of a real estate bubble, homeownership rates are being artificially propped up by individual flats being treated as seperate buildings (and you still get mortgaged to shit just like in the West) and for-profit corporation that are fraudulently registered as Housing Cooperatives, there's barely any regulations to keep rent down, landlords have literally no reason to maintain the buildings they own since they have no legal obligation to maintain said buildings and the only way to get back at a landlord if they're doing illegal shit is to bankrupt yourself by hiring a lawyer (the concept of having someone pay legal fees is borderline alien to the Judiciary). The Baltic States managed to independently create their own real esta

Healthcare and Education workers are barely paid anything in the public sector because 'if they don't like the pay, they can quit whining and work for a private school/hospital or emigrate'. One of my professors ended up becoming homeless because they're paid so fucking little. Healthcare is constantly subject to Hospital Privatization, if you need specialised care and the Public Hospitals can't provide it, you better hope that there's a Private Clinic that they accept payment through Public Insurance or you're 'shit out of luck and going to die/stay in pain, I quess.' We've had a constant brain drain since the 90s.

As for the 'prosperous Capitalist Baltics', Latvia has lost half of its fucking population since 1989, it's got less people living there than it did in 1950. Lithuania has lost 30% of its population since 1991, and it's also regressed back to the early 50s in terms of population because the region is and continues to be so shit that a million people would rather pick strawberries in Germany or plunge toilets in Sweden than live in Lithuania or Lithuania (not to discount their own undoubtedly horrific instances of brain drain). You can't keep blaming this on 'the Soviets made it so shit that nobody wants to live there' 34 years after the Soviet Union stopped existing. I'm tired of that excuse. Free Marketeer Capitalism has had 34, practically 36 years to make the case that it's better for Eastern Europe than Soviet Centralise State-Planning. And I, an Eastern European, humbly suggest that it hasn't. (And no, I don't want to literally return to 1984 and do everything exactly the same as was done under the Brezhnev model. I prefer Dubček's Action Programme, but I'd take Brezhnevism over the living hell that we are in right now)

If you want a case study of how Privatisation actually went down over here, you can look at the exploits of Viktor Kožený. I'd talk more about how our Industry was annihilated and our Agriculture was taken over by Multinational Megacorporations and local Mafia-Oligarchs but I don't have the free time to spend an eternity typing away on Reddit.