Our
Trip to Soviet Russia: A Cornucopia of Disaster. By April 18, 2019
Bernie Sanders and AOC want to do away
with it for good. Most people – including Donald Trump, the Republicans and the
Democrats – just ignore it. And almost nobody likes it. Except us.
Capitalism is a non-system. It is what
happens when people are allowed to make win-win deals with each other… while
respecting the fundamental codes of civilization – private property, language,
money, and cooperative exchanges.
Wall Street, sinking funds, options,
IPOs and the whole paraphernalia of modern “capitalism” are simply riffs on the
same theme.
But almost everyone wants to get wealth,
power, and status without the risk or trouble of working for it. So, they team
up with the feds, who offer EZ money, in the form of subsidies, jobs,
contracts, tariff protection, “stimulus,” regulation, low-interest loans, fake
money, free medical care, and much more. The feds do only one kind of deal –
win-lose… backed by guns and ammo. Socialism is just one variety of those
win-lose deals.
The roads were pitiful and there were
almost no private cars on them. People traveled by train, bus, or plane. And
when they arrived in a town, they stayed at the government-run hotel – usually
a huge, ugly, run-down place near the train station.
If you wanted a decent place to stay,
your best bet was to stand in front of the hotel and wait for someone to come
up to you. “Want room?” a burly man would ask, looking around nervously as if
he were offering to sell heroin.
“Yes,” “How much?”
For a few dollars, we were offered a
room in the man’s house. We dined with the family. We shared a small,
rudimentary bathroom. We slept in a bed that had probably served its owner the
night before. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the hotel.
There were restaurants only in the main
cities. You can imagine what the food tasted like. And there were stores where
you could buy food. But it was not easy. There were no aisles in which the
bounty was displayed and from which you could pick out the things you wanted.
Instead, you presented yourself at the
counter and asked the rude or indifferent clerk for what you wanted. “A can of
beans,” for example. No brands. No options. And usually no beans.
There were almost no choices available.
Often, even the necessities had to be bought on the black market.
The average person lived in rude poverty
in an overcrowded, under-heated apartment that had been assigned to him by the
government. Usually, he had to share the apartment with another family.
And the authorities tried to match up families
that were as incompatible as possible, so they wouldn’t get along and wouldn’t
conspire against the feds.
And there was no way out – except by
joining the Communist Party, denouncing your neighbors and rising through the
ranks. Private, independent wealth was outlawed.
You could not start your own company.
You could not change jobs without permission. You couldn’t buy a car, or a TV,
or a telephone, without a long delay and, as always, official approval.
Every deal was win-lose, and every one
set the economy back further. The real, street value of its output declined,
and people became poorer and poorer.
We went back to Russia 16 or 17 years
later. By then, even the elite had given up; the Soviet experiment was over…
and we saw what it had wrought. As grim as life had been in the 1970s, it was
even grimmer in the early 1990s.
By then, that is, after 70 years of
win-lose deals, there was nothing left but the flotsam and jetsam of a wrecked
economy floating on the surface. Buildings crumbled (the Soviets had economized
by using too little cement and too much waters). Weeds grew up in the parks.
Sidewalks cracked. Pipes burst.
But in the early 1990s, markets were
making a comeback in Russia. People unloaded their Soviet relics and got back
to work.
In one of the markets in Moscow, for
example, there were thousands of sellers – each with his own patch of ground
and a few pathetic items. It was like a giant flea market, where the most
popular merchandise had been pilfered from the military.
You could buy a rifle, or a helmet… or a
pair of shoes. One man stood all day in front of a single pair of boots… which
he offered for just $1. Which just goes to show what a wreck the Soviet
socialist system made when it finally crashed.
The boots were well made, very solid,
and heavy. They must have been worth at least $100 in the West. But there, the
poor man felt lucky to sell them for a single dollar – and to stand in the cold
all day to get it. (As it turned out, the boots fit us perfectly; we still wear
them.)
All of the win-lose experiments of the
20th century ended the same way. The more socialist they were, the faster they
went broke.
Like the U.S., they interfere heavily in
the economy. They spread out generous “welfare” nets to catch the unlucky and
the imprudent. But they wisely regard the socialist part of their economies as
a cost center, not a profit center.
So, they tend to limit their “socialist”
boondoggles to no more than their capitalist industries can afford.
The Economist magazine described the
Scandinavian countries as “stout free-traders who resist the temptation to
intervene even to protect iconic companies.”
The Foundation for Economic Education
adds: Perhaps this is why Denmark, Norway, and Sweden rank among the most
globalized countries in the entire world. These countries all also rank in the
top 10 easiest countries to do business in.
In other words, socialism is always a
drag on an economy. Successful “socialist” economies limit it to what they can
afford.
America has plenty of “socialist”
programs, too. Bailouts of banks and big businesses, ownership of the mortgage
industry, almost total control of medical industry, heavy regulation of many
other industries, and a financial system corrupted by fake money and fake
interest rates.
Taken together, these meddles and
bezzles may make the U.S. more “socialist” than Norway, Denmark, or Sweden…
…and may cause Americans to weep first.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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