08-14-2019, 05:25 PM
(08-14-2019, 10:57 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: If the state had decided to buy up the surplus production... Suffering under the lack of something is worse than the opposite.
That was the effective failure of the Soviet Union -- people produced a huge amount of stuff so shoddy that nobody could want it, and government entities got stuck with merchandise obsolete or worthless.
The market imposes a discipline of people caring about the customer's desires, and that is a good thing. Central planning can at best imitate successes losing relevance in market economies. Example: East germany was producing large quantities of electronics 20 years behind the West in technology.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.