Recently, I read about, in Soviet Russia, there was a black market for burnt-out lightbulbs.
Evidently bulbs were relatively unattainable, so people would take their burnt bulbs to the workplace, swap them for working bulbs. Bulbs that burnt out in a State building (which didn't extend to state housing, naturally) would get replaced immediately.
I thought the light-bulb thing was bad, but 4 flavors of ice-cream? That's some really loathesome oppression.