Posted on 08/17/2002 4:23:47 AM PDT by Jasonconley
How is that related to anything I said? Did I advocate that system or even defended it? I responded to the statement, which I believe to be false, that a socialist system is incapable of innovation.
You were clear!!! We're on the same page....I wasn't disagreeing.
Russia is loaded with resources! Oil, gold, other mineral riches, timber, farmland, etc. China has Siberia in their crosshairs because it's so resource-rich.
The problem is that communism is inherently incapable of (pun coming up) capitalizing on them. Communisim is an engine that delivers negative horsepower. For every ten HP going in, one or two come out.
When Russia gets going, and builds a strong middle class, it will kick ass in the world economy. I can easily see Russia being the Japan of the 21st century. Japan came up from the ash heap of war and in less than one generation became a manufacturing powerhouse. When they started, "Made in Japan" was universally interpreted as "Crap". In less than a quarter century, it became synonymous with "Quality".
And Japan did that without the natural resources that Russia is blessed with.
Right now they're poised for success, if they'll reach for the brass ring. They are loaded with well educated people, they have enough of a manufacturing infrastructure to get started, they have the natural resources to feed the factories, and their people, for all their education, have been working for peanuts. Surgeons make something like ten or twenty bucks a week. How they get by is beyond me.
In short, you have there a human infrastructure that can do world class work, without demanding world class pay. (For now, at least. Once they stake their claim, their income will naturally rise, just as it has in Japan.)
And, you have a world that is rapidly getting fed up with "Made in China" crap.
The only thing the Russians need to do is get themselves a Deming (or simply apply his principles) and get a handle on quality control. Russia and Ukraine have been in the camera design and manufacture business since the '30s. Most of their designs are excellent. The problem all along has been quality control. Simply stated, it was nonexistent. The fact that the people doing the work were basically slaves with no incentive to do decent work didn't help any.
Anyway, I take issue with your statement that there's "nothing left" for them to work with. Freed of communism, they world is their oyster.
Adam Smith's doctrines are not obsolete.
Regards, Ivan
That is actually a good thing. Because more often than not, when government sets a plan, it is setting itself up for failure. "Economic planning" is a myth - it supposes that a government can take into account the needs and wants of individuals better than those individuals can. False.
The USSR was reasonably good at producing military goods. That is because the government was deciding wants for itself, rather than trying to figure out how many Bulgarian sneakers that its people would want.
The problem with the innovative nature of an individual is precisely that is NOT always forward-looking.
Who cares. If an economy is supposed to be able to provide to the wants and needs of an individual, it is best left to an individual to decide what those wants and needs are, not to an overmighty state to figure it out on the fly.
No, it plays to human fairness, equity.
Wrong. It is not fair to punish excellence, and socialism does precisely that, by automatically taking from those who succeed and excel, thus punishing them, and giving to those who do not. No economic system that quashes the individual spirit, takes away what they have rightfully earned through their labours, destroys the concept of excellence is equitable. "Equality" in the socialist mind is an excuse for theft. And all socialism is theft.
If you give a lecture on comparative production systems, you may want to be at least accurate.
Pick on someone your own size, Tovarishch.
Ivan
It is capable of innovation, but at a dramatically restricted rate when compared to a free culture.
However, hand-in-hand with that concept is the fact that a socialist system is incapable of inspiration. "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" is not the kind of joke that grows legs in a culture where inspiration is part of the process.
TQ The Soviet State, ever since the 1930s or so, had a 5- or 7-year plan for the nation. We change administrations every 4 years, and each does not have a plan.
MI: That is actually a good thing. I never made a value judgement. My response was to refute the statement of someoen else that socialism is not forward= looking.
The USSR was reasonably good at producing military goods. That is because... It depends what one means by "good:" it was effective (which was my point in the previous post) but still not efficient. All this military advancement was attained by literally robbing other sectors of the economy.
TQThe problem with the innovative nature of an individual is precisely that is NOT always forward-looking. Again a refutation of someone else's point.
MI: Who cares. The one who made that point originally and I respondingto him. No one ever said that you should.
TQ: No, it plays to human fairness, equity. MI: Wrong. It is not fair to punish excellence, and socialism does precisely that.. I never said that socialism was fair. As for "wrong" --- well, I guess it may be a cultural trait to be so forward, but our cultural traits do not help our statements to be factually correct or logically valid.
Read up on the efficiency-equity dilemma --- starting with a previous post of mine, if you so wish.
MI: "Equality" in the socialist mind is an excuse for theft. Equality and equity is not the same thing.
MI: And all socialism is theft. Absolutely.
TQ: If you give a lecture on comparative production systems, you may want to be at least accurate. MI: Pick on someone your own size, Tovarishch. Again, this is a part of the conversation the beginning of which you have missed. How does that Russian saying go --- about hearing the bells but not knowing where the sound is coming from? We might just have a case of that here.
Ivan, I have no objection at all to your criticism of socialism and its Soviet version in particular. My point was that we should know it for what it is, without villifying it needlessly.
DJ: It is capable of innovation, but at a dramatically restricted rate when compared to a free culture.
I beg to disagree: no one can introduce changes faster than a dictator.
What socialism in incapable of is sustained inniovation,in terms of which private ownership of productive means wins hands down.
No, socialists like to claim they're playing to fairness and equity while they're stealing your money.
"I beg to disagree: no one can introduce changes faster than a dictator."
"Change" is not synonymous with "innovation". No more than "movement" is synonymous with "progress".
I don't think that Adam Smith's doctrines adequately cope with industries that have very high costs of entry, high ratio of fixed to variable costs, extensive supply chains with relatively few players at various steps, and a high rate of technological obsolescence.
In his time there was no understanding of the stability of linear systems, much less an understanding of the dynamics of non-linear systems. The mathematical tools and information systems necessary to measure, model, and characterize actual economic systems only began to be available mid-20th century.
So you think the "Invisible Hand" has been repealed?
Regards, Ivan
Don Joe: "Change" is not synonymous with "innovation". No more than "movement" is synonymous with "progress".
True, but innovation is a kind of, and entails, change, so I made a point about a broader category.
No need to degrade our discussion to trivialities: I have given already plenty of examples of innovations for you to see that I know the difference.
Perhaps, we have discussed this sufficiently, and can stop at this point.
low-productivity types are doing much better under socialism,
Like these low-productivity types, I guess:
North Korea 'Loses 3 million to Famine.' (1999)
famine deaths peaked at about 50 per 1,000 population in 1996 and 1997
Pure democracy is a dangerous thing, especially if the masses learn that they can vote themselves money. Unfortunately, in our representitive republic, the politicians have learned that passing out money is the way to be re-elected, so the masses vote for politicians who will give them money.
What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor think they are sticking it to the rich when in fact, they are the ones who eventually pay. It always trickles down. Wait until we, the people, find out just how expensive "free" health care is. Socialism sucks.
North Korean, as well as Ukrainian deaths from starvation, were a result of communist dictatorship, not socialism. Counrties like Sweden and Finland are better examples of socialism because they are democratic.
To elaborate: becuause the socialism distributes the existing wealth but is bad in producing new wealth, it is the higher-productivity, innovative types that are worse off than they would have been otherwise. The low-productivity types are actually getting something that the more productive ones produce, and they are relatively better off. Further, as your own examples indicate, the form that capitalism or socialism takes depends also on the cultural heritage. Tsarist Russia had private ownership and publicly traded companies. Libertarians on this board often argue that that is all that is necessary. So why did most of the Russian populous remain uneducated? Another, similar example is that of Latin America. Despite free markets, many of those countries have a long tradition of the paternalistic state (a polite term for socialist tendencies). The same words are often used today, when the social welfare system of Germany is being discussed. In all these cases, there is mentality that "the state will provide." Arguably, capitalism in pure form has not been adopted anywhere except for the XIX century America.
So a poor peasant of Russia in 1917 did not stand a chance of learning to read. This peasant WAS better off by 1920. The starvation has occurred later, as a result of deliberate action by Stalin.
Socialism distributes existing wealth, so initially those which had little are better off. The stagnation begins later, and the whole country is worse of than under private ownership. Yet, in relative terms, year-for-year, the low-productivity types are still better off than their high-productivity counter-parts --- because they are given what has been appropriated from those who create wealth, however slowly.
I am really surprised with the tendency exhibited by some on this thread to villify the already bad system. If I acknowlege the fact that the German economy was revived under Hitler, am I advocating Hitlerism? If I acknowledge, as a counter-example to someone's claim that socialism is incapable of technological innivation, that the Soviets put a man in orbit before we did --- does that make me an advocate of socialism? Of course not. I think it is people who can see only two colors, white and black, with not shades of gray -- it is they who are putting us on.
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