WHY IT DOESN'T WORK | 2006-07-26
Notice the last article was explaining that state socialism didn't WORK but this article is titled "Why IT Doesn't Work." You see, it used to be assumed not only that economic dicatorship was more efficient, but that ALL dictatorship was more efficient. So I will now explain why economic dictatorship is not more efficient, but later I will go into other forms.
OK. Below I explained to Budarick that there is nothing political than a nondemocratic state. The image most people have is of the idealist at the top giving clear commands and the millions of people under him carrying them out. Now let's look at how this actually works in an economic dictatorship.
When the Communist took over and tried to command the economy, it was actually a comedy of errors.
A COMEDY of errors.
For example, how do you tell your bureaucracy how to produce glass? Each bureaucrat you put in charge of a glass factory must be judged by his productivity. So you have to SPECIFY what he must produce with a quota. You will think that what happened next is a joke. No adult could be inthe middle of a charade like this. But it HAPPENED!
The government specified a quote for glass production. They ordered each glass producer bureaucrat to produce a specified number of square feet of glass. If he did not produce the specified number of square feet of glass, he was fired and/or disappeared. So they produced endless square feet of glass. But the glass was so thin that it fell apart as soon as it left the factory.
So they tried TONS of glass. They got slabs of glass so thick they were useless. But they got lots of TONS.
How does a planner say, "Good God, man, be REASONABLE!" We want GLASS! You know, glass?"
Thigns were rough and something had to be done, so Lenin declared War Communism. War Communism was a return to the market system for as long as the Russian Civil War continued.
After the Civil War, the Soviets took a deep breath and went back to trying to explain to a bureaucracy what GLASS was.
Let us flash back to market economics. In a market economy the consumer will tell you right quick whatglass is. If your glass is too thick or too thin, your business collapses. But this is consumer signal. Under state socialism, there are no such signals. So you, the planner, must explain what glass is.
I told Budarick that when democracy ends, real politics begins. Let's go down to the bureaucrat in charge of a glass factory. He gets a long, detailed quota about exactly how many square feet AND tons of glass he must produce. Then he must deal with the bureaucrat in charge of making automobile windshields or builders of the outside of houses that must USE his glass. This guy has a quota, too. This is where the politics comes in.
Our glass maker sits down with his glass users over a lot of vodka. They work out how he can produce the largest amount of quota glass so that the manufaturer or builder can use it. It will be LOUSY glass, but it will be usable for meeting the other guy's quota. The glass will be hard to see through but it will satisfy the category "glass" for the purposes of the quota the front of a car-maker or house-bulder has to meet.
You may think that the guy in charge ofhte next step holds all the cards. But under state socialism, they ALL need glass to meet THEIR quotas. So they have to work it out so they et the glass, though the quality may leave a bit to be desired.
That is POLITICS.
So the front-end car maker or the outside of the house builder works out a formula by which the glass-maker can meet HIS quota, in exchange for some favors. Now these guys need to work out a means by which THEIR front-ends and outsides can give them the maximum quota and be ACCEPTABLE to the nest step up the line, hte car-makers and house-builders.
At each stage the end product gets shoddier and shoddier. By the end, every single Soviet product was a mess. Every single car was a clunker. But the Soviet consumer had to buy them. In fact, these clunkers were in such short supply that a Soviet consumer had to wait YEARS to get his clunker. Not one single Soviet product was ever saleable abroad.
All theoretical crap aside, no bureaucrat can actually explain what GLASS is. Any consumer KNOWS wht glass is. No 1950s intelletual understood this. The CIA did not understand this. Any professor who tried to explain this was FIRED.
Common sense tells us that the market is a mass of waste and inefficiency. Common sense tells us that if someone just takes charge from the center and makes us PRODUCE, the system will be a dream of efficiency.
As I keep saying, the only problem is that it doesn't WORK.
And, as the Soviet Union proved at incredible human cost, that is a FATAL problem.