All Russian citizens were issued shares of all the state-owned means of production. What ensued was a mass sell-off of these shares for absurdly low prices (think: bottles of vodka).

Did a median person who didn't sell get a significantly better outcome (e.g. at least 10× more vodka)?

One big problem was that after years without market economy, there were no traditional mechanisms to protect shareholders even against obvious theft. (I have observed what happened in Czechoslovakia, but I assume the situation was similar in most post-communist countries.) So for example the management of the previously state-owned company started their own private company, moved all assets from the old company to the new one, and then let the old one collapse. The shareholders then remained empty-handed.

Why not? Also how ridiculous do you think I think it is?

Depends on the license.

Is being able to copy a system necessary for that system to be deterministic? 

Maybe unrelated, but I am thinking of infinite series as an example. Imagine a "system" that comprises of the sum of inverse powers of 2. This "system" has infinite terms, and is "deterministic" in that the value of of each term of the series is well-defined and that the infinite sum is equal to 1. It would be impossible to "copy" this system as it involves enumerating an infinite number of terms, but the behavior of this system could be argued to be "deterministic".

Fundamental particles are a thing.

if each of those parts is also a deterministic constituent of even smaller parts, and so on… then this infinite regress of local determinism gives rise to indeterminism. and not just in practice, but in principle even in a Newtonian “billiard-balls” universe

Why? And why is that important when we have good reason to believe the regress is not infinite?