askhistorians

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Was there an equivalent to "start-ups" in socialist countries? How would an employee/factory director who had an idea for new product or method for producing go about it? Did they submit applications to State planners or ministries and State funded it?	1373
Many of the pioneers in the field of Computing were women. How did the field of Computer Science get so heavily male dominated? Also, why did the proportion of women graduates in CS decline in the US starting from 1980?	1321
How did "tax havens" emerge? Was it created consciously by the Government of that country/territory? Which region, if any, was the world's first tax haven?	1236
In the US, onions are the only commodity that can not be traded as a futures contract due to 1958 Onion Futures Act. Why was this restriction not repealed along with other deregulation measures of 80s and 90s? Why was onion seen as different from other commodities?	1215
Ba'ath Parties in both Iraq and Syria described themselves as Socialist. What exactly did the word "Socialism" mean for Baathists?	1046
Marx and Engels had written that in communist societies the categories of capitalism (prices, wages, money etc) would dissapear and replaced by accounting based on labor time. Was there any discussion or attempt in countries of Eastern bloc and USSR to move towards such a system post 50s?	951
Trotskyist author Ted Grant claimed that British Army with support by MI5 planned a coup in 1970 if Labor Party (dominated by left-wing internal groups ) came to power. Is this true?	894
I have seen many people blaming Newt Gingrich and GOP led Congress in 90s for the rise of modern political partisanship and "extreme" polarisation in US. Is this true? To what extent did they actually break with past norms?	871
How did the economy in urban areas of Anarchist Spain function? Did Capitalist mechanisms (price system, credit, piece wages etc) prevail or did they succeed in abolishing it?	634
According to a report by OECD, New Zealand had the third highest GDP per capita in 1950 after the US and Switzerland but had become one of the poorest amongst developed countries by 1980. What caused this relative decline?	607

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