Vote for growth - PERILS OF NEO- SOCIALLISM INTERESTING READ ON WHY SOVIET ECONOMY COLLPAPSED. FOLLOWING ARE KEY TAKE OUTS – WHAT WAS TRUE FOR COMMUNISM IS ALSO TRUE FOR NEO SOCIALISM. THIS IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SOCIAL WELFARE WHICH OTHER ECONOMIES ALSO SUPPORT. Economic modeling cannot be altruistic as this causes economic collapse – read pt 1 People in general are aspirational but incentives drive that aspiration. Take away the incentive and mediocrity sets in – READ PT 2 ECOMOMIC MODEL CAN NOT BE STANDALONE AND HAS TO INCORPORATE GLOBAL REALITIES BECAUSE THEY EXIST – READ PT 3 PEOPLE ARE BORN UNEQUAL SO YOU CANT FORCIBLY MAKE THEM EQUAL – READ PT 4 READ ON – (FOLLOWING TEXT BORROWED FROM realussr) 1. The Soviet Union never received impe¬ri¬al¬ist prof¬its to off¬set the counter-productive cost of mil¬i¬tary pro¬duc¬tion. Through¬out the post-war period, Soviet trade with social¬ist part¬ners has been struc¬tured to ben¬e¬fit the other social¬ist coun¬tries. Their pur¬pose was rea¬son¬able: to build up the economies of the other social¬ist coun¬tries and cre¬ate a thriv¬ing world social¬ist eco¬nomic sys¬tem as an alter¬na¬tive to that of the cap¬i¬tal¬ists. This was most marked in Soviet trade with Cuba and Viet¬nam, but it could be seen as well in trade with East¬ern Europe which received Soviet oil at below-market prices. They appeared unaware of this drain on the Soviet econ¬omy, and didn’t imagine that it would even¬tu¬ally drive them bankrupt. 2. In many ways, the fall of com¬mu¬nism is because it was unten¬able to begin with. Marx was an ide¬al¬ist who believed that all work¬ers would one day rise up against the sys¬tem in rev¬o¬lu¬tion. This never hap¬pened, and so com¬mu¬nism was more or less forced upon peo¬ple instead of cho¬sen by them. As this was the case, and as it was done by the van¬guard party ideal of the Bolshevik’s, it was always doomed to fail as it clashed with the oppos¬ing ide¬olo¬gies of other more pros¬per¬ous nations. In the end, a sys¬tem which relies too heav¬ily on the abil¬i¬ties of the few at the top to lead all oth¬ers is doomed to fail. It sim¬ply can¬not make effi¬cient use of the col¬lec¬tive intel¬li¬gence and abil¬ity of all the peo¬ple of a nation and what they have to offer. All peo¬ple are aspirational. Take away their abil¬ity to fur¬ther them¬selves, and they lose the incen¬tive to do more than the min¬i¬mum. That is the great fail¬ure of com¬mu¬nist thought, and why any such nation or econ¬omy is doomed to ulti¬mate fail¬ure. Cap¬i¬tal¬ism is by no means per¬fect, but it does allow for a greater gen¬eral qual¬ity of life than a planned econ¬omy does despite the dis¬par¬ity between rich and poor. 3. The other prob¬lem is that for com¬mu¬nism to have a chance of work¬ing there would need to be a uni¬fied one world gov¬ern¬ment. This would allow for the end of the expen¬di¬ture of lives and resources on wars that would then be used else-where. Plus, then peo¬ple would not have a choice to get out of com¬mu¬nism. So, they would be forced to make it work and accept the same level of shared mis¬ery that every¬one else had. It would not be a good life, but it would be ade¬quate, much like life was in the com¬mu¬nist block. God would be replaced by the god of the state, and peo¬ple would then be pro¬grammed to believe in the gov¬ern¬ment because there is noth¬ing else to com¬pare it to. Stalin tried to do this, but ulti-mately failed because an out¬side world existed. Also, Marx could have been an ide¬al¬ist, but he also lived in dif¬fer¬ent times: the tech¬nolo¬gies were slower and the economies were less global, so his pre¬dic¬tions of the future were only good to an extent. 4. Com¬mu¬nism was indeed forced upon peo¬ple, not cho¬sen by them—the trick was that peo¬ple at the bot¬tom of the power pyra¬mid (ie the reg¬u¬lar folk) were never given a choice, only direc¬tions. As you note quite fairly, the few at the top failed to direct in a sus¬tain¬able way.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 08:36:39 +0000
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