You won't find some of Hans's material anywhere else. It's a very long talk that I published in two parts on LRC. Part 1 and Part 2.

Because of the talk's length, probably many readers won't get through the whole thing. In this week's article, I'm going to summarize some of Hans's points and comment on them. Murray Rothbard would have called this talk "epochal." By the way, here is an example of PC censorship. When I published the articles, both parts included a YouTube video of Hans delivering his talk. The video for Part I has been removed "for Violating YouTube's Terms of Service." The video for Part 2 is still up.

People usually contrast Communist East Germany (the DDR) with "capitalist" West Germany. Of course Hans is a strong critic of the DDR. "There were excruciating border controls, also internal controls within East Germany. You always had to register with the police. Stores were empty, and there was a near total lack of many normal goods, normal in the West.

There were always long lines that you could observe. There were huge waiting times. Sixteen years, for instance, you had to wait to get a car. And all people engaged in hoarding activities. As well, you could observe miserable work ethic and lousy service in restaurants, stores, and workplaces, constantly recurring shortages of supplies—we would call now supply chain disruptions—and much standstill and idleness. Overall, you got the impression of stagnation or even decay. There existed black markets and a black currency market. With Western money, you could buy in special stores, but without Western money, you couldn't.