There were lots of things that were very bad about the eastern bloc. Freedom and rights, for a big example. As you say, people could not decide where they would live. I'm not comparing democracy to totalitarianism's merits on the moral front.
I was just comparing the average GDR house, to a modern one. It's not that different, and most people lived in an apartment then as they do now. Both are similar in quality & abundance to housing in West Germany, UK, etc.
Contrast this to manufactured goods. Eastern bloc residents couldn't get a car, and if they did it sucked. They couldn't get enough razors, toilet paper, car tyres. All the things that were abundant and cheap in the west, and are abundant and cheap in those countries now.
We can argue about the small/marginal differences in quality or abundance of housing under different systems. We can't argue about the massive quality & abundance differences for industrial goods.
This is why I'm quite leery of ideological "theory." From Marx to Rand, it all seems too grand to me. At the end of the day, these were economic policies and their successes and failures varied.
I'm not sure about GDR, but in Lithuania Soviet housing is piss-poor. Apartments are tiny and dark, planning is crappy, heat insulation is shitty (at least renovation can somewhat fix it).. And nobody did anything for decades - just kept building same standard apartments. And even if they were shitty, they weren't building nowhere near enough of them.
On top of that, a lot of people, even families with young kids, got "dorm" apartments with shared kitchens/bathrooms/etc.
So yes, housing quality between USSR and modern housing is quite big.
I was just comparing the average GDR house, to a modern one. It's not that different, and most people lived in an apartment then as they do now. Both are similar in quality & abundance to housing in West Germany, UK, etc.
Contrast this to manufactured goods. Eastern bloc residents couldn't get a car, and if they did it sucked. They couldn't get enough razors, toilet paper, car tyres. All the things that were abundant and cheap in the west, and are abundant and cheap in those countries now.
We can argue about the small/marginal differences in quality or abundance of housing under different systems. We can't argue about the massive quality & abundance differences for industrial goods.
This is why I'm quite leery of ideological "theory." From Marx to Rand, it all seems too grand to me. At the end of the day, these were economic policies and their successes and failures varied.