[mrtksn]

The roles are not actually analogous, the soviet one is very predatory, the western one is structured more like a partnership. Bulgaria is part of EU and NATO and does have voting power that they did use all the time. The market is also a true open market, which means if Bulgarian companies have to truly compete and if the deal no longer work for Bulgaria one day, they can leave the partnership and not lose everything overnight.

[thriftwy]

> the soviet one is very predatory

The Soviet one that you have drawn in your head is predatory. In real life, USSR went into Afghanistan alone as far as I know. Bulgaria meanwhile could dedicate efforts towards making PCs.

In the USA-satellite open market situation, Bulgaria gets to send cheap workers to fill positions in the EU as well as offers for its brightest minds, treated as a flyover country. No PCs.

The voting situation WRT Warsaw pact and Comecon was likely the same. Bulgaria can't vote anything useful in either ones.

[mrtksn]

I'm Bulgarian, we don't send cheap workers to EU. We have right to live and work in EU under the same conditions as everyone else in EU and a lot of Bulgarians happens to find employment in some EU countries under better conditions that they can find in Bulgaria and they go work there.

There's no an governmental institution in Bulgaria that collects Bulgarians from the streets and sending them to other countries to work work cheap, like they do with doctors in Cuba or workers in DPRK.

You find a job, get a plane ticket, go there and work, get paid like everyone else. That doesn't make you a cheap Bulgarian labor. They like to call it like that because the talent pool increases and they want to imagine that employers are hiring Bulgarian butchers that can't cut meat or Bulgarian developers that can't code just because its cheap. That's not the case, it's a free market.

[thriftwy]

> happens to find employment in some EU countries under better conditions that they can find in Bulgaria

Which is almost always, as almost all EU countries have better conditions than Bulgaria. So in general you can assume a position with significantly worse social status than you had in Bulgaria, but if that position is in Germany, that is a net social benefit for you. So that's what you often do.

Bulgarian butchers in Germany, obviously, do not have native German to communicate with customers, and their butcher skills may be tailored to a different meat culture, so they are hired because Germany have more butcher positions than Germans want to occupy, and that German butchers will usually take the ones which pay more. Same for Bulgarian software developer in France: They have decent coding skills and English, but their French is no good, so they will be kept in more back-office roles, whereas French developers from France will be more customer-facing and paid somewhat more for this skill. That's pretty basic migration economy 101.

In Comecon, Bulgaria was one of more developed regions, which then got to host more prestigious industries.

[mrtksn]

This is appalling. Maybe you should stop talking about stuff you don't have an idea about. A cheap Bulgarian advice. A net benefit for me and for you if you take it.

[thriftwy]

How old were you in 1991 and how much Soviet predatory behavior did you experience firsthand?

If that was a valid way to reduce a discussion, I'd had it wrapped up five comments ago.