# It's May Day: Let Us Praise Socialism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 1, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532 "2012-05-01T17:28:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/122 "2012-05-04T20:42:21Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Well yeah, because tariffs have worked so well historically that only conservatives would have a problem with imposing them. 😛 > > -XT Indeed. > [@](#): > > [Unemployment was at 7.8% in 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed, but it jumped to 16.3% in 1931, 24.9% in 1932, and 25.1% in 1933](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act#Economic_effects). But no doubt, this time it will work like a charm. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/123 "2012-05-04T20:43:03Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > How are you going to manage any large-scale industrial manufacturing in a distributist society? I’m not going to manage it at all. In a distributist society there would be no one to do any managing. Both capitalism and socialism are based on the assumption that there must be a ruling elite at the top that manages economic activity. They disagree only in the nature of that elite and the form of that economic management. Capitalism gives us a CEO at Wal-Mart deciding how much millions of employees will earn and what a global supply chain will produce. Socialism gives us a government department deciding when everyone in the country will retire. Both systems can only be imposed from the top down, so those raised within the system tend to assume that economics is necessarily the study of powerful institutions; moreover the system itself can only be imposed at the national level, so capitalists and socialists are necessarily always talking about what decisions national governments should make. Distributism, on the other hand, occurs from the bottom up. It begins with individuals making personal decisions, not with a national government deciding what system everyone will live under. Hence distributism need not provide a recipe for managing all economic activity. Right now some people are distributists to certain degrees. A few live entirely ‘off the grid’ and refuse to take part in any corporate or big government economic activity. A larger number participate in family and local economics when they can, and deal with government and corporations when they have to. While I’d hope that the number will grow, I do not delude myself into believing that 99% of the population agrees with me. (Unlike some groups.) If we ever reached a critical mass where distributism is widespread enough to leave its stamp on our entire society, then we could consider ways to manufacture things without centralized power, degrading rote labor, and environmental destruction. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/124 "2012-05-04T20:49:58Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > Both capitalism and socialism are based on the assumption that there must be a ruling elite at the top that manages economic activity. They disagree only in the nature of that elite and the form of that economic management. Capitalism gives us a CEO at Wal-Mart deciding how much millions of employees will earn and what a global supply chain will produce . No, it doesn’t. That’s is one of the most absurd claims about capitalism I’ve seen in awhile. Walmart is not “the market”. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/125 "2012-05-04T20:54:04Z")
[QUOTE=ITR champion] Both capitalism and socialism are based on the assumption that there must be a ruling elite at the top that manages economic activity. [/QUOTE] Good grief. :smack: Capitalism isn’t a managed system, and doesn’t rely on some ruling elite to manage and guide it. Do you know what The Market is??? -XT ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/126 "2012-05-05T00:21:47Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Not what we’re doing. If we value his labor output more highly per unit, then we actually better his lot in life, even leaving him leisure time. If we subsidize him, we actually better his lot in life. But if we make him overproduce until his sector gluts and he loses his livelihood, we beggar him. Before I respond to this, just to clarify, who are you referring to with “we”? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/127 "2012-05-05T00:47:51Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > Not sure why you decided to drop into asshole mode here. Not sure why you decided to drop into scofflaw mode, here. Personal insults are prohibited outside The BBQ Pit. Do not do this again. = = = **foolsguinea** , your comment did nothing to promote the discussion, as well. Knock it off. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/128 "2012-05-05T01:04:16Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > [This article from Japan Times](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110705i1.html) gives the benefit for a single mother of two as somewhere between Y158,300 and Y193,900 per month (variance based on cost of living adjustments) as of 2011. According to [this chart](http://www.stat.go.jp/data/nenkan/pdf/yhyou19.pdf) (warning, PDF, Japanese and English) that’s around a third or a little more of the income of the average household over the period between 2005 and 2010 (Y471,727, from table 19-1) and not terribly far from the average one-person household monthly income for earners under 30 (Y253,952/mo, from table 19-8) > > So it’s not extravagant, but it’s not terribly shabby. As I interpret the data, it’d be the equivalent of giving that same mother with two kids somewhere between $16,800 and $20,600 per year in benefits (based on the 2009 median US household income of $50,221), and leaving aside the fact that health benefits are included under the Japanese system. > > Now, as per my first cite, Japan is having increasing growth in people who just sit and take their welfare, but that’s being blamed largely on the recession rather than on people being satisfied to be basement-dwellers on the dole. I also note that the total people on welfare is rising fast in this recession but hasn’t yet hit the all-time peak, even if the number of households is rising alarmingly (which is supposedly being blamed on the explosion of single parenthood since the 1980s, but no cite on that). The article is also unclear as to how much job-seeking is required for the unemployed but able-to-work. Sorry, didn’t see this until just now. I hate to sound snarky, but that’s what I thought you’d do. Fish for something that is remotely related to what you claimed, but doesn’t even come close to supporting the claim. Unless it’s your claim that single, Japanese mothers with two children are a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan, but maybe I missed all this entrepreneurship. But we should really get back to the original point, which was that a generous welfare state will feed entrepreneurship. That’s a bit hard to prove, since “entrepreneurship” isn’t that easy to measure, but you could certainly try and measure something along those lines and see how it is correlated with the amount of wealfare a country provides. Maybe someone has done such a study, but I doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/129 "2012-05-05T01:30:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > But we should really get back to the original point, which was that a generous welfare state will feed entrepreneurship. That’s a bit hard to prove, since “entrepreneurship” isn’t that easy to measure, but you could certainly try and measure something along those lines and see how it is correlated with the amount of wealfare a country provides. > > Maybe someone has done such a study, but I doubt it. [The New York Times noted something similar](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/business/smallbusiness/23venture.html?pagewanted=all) "The most recent Index of Entrepreneurial Activity by the Kauffman Foundation showed a slight uptick of new businesses in 2008 — a full recessionary year — over 2007. " “Accidental or by design, entrepreneurship is on the rise again this year[2009]. [LegalZoom.com](http://LegalZoom.com), the online legal document service, says the number of new businesses it helped to form was up 10 percent in the first half of the year, compared with the period a year earlier.” Lots of studies have found correlations between unemployment and entrepreneurship in the US. You’d think Greece and Spain would be a hotbed of innovation. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/130 "2012-05-05T03:47:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Sorry, didn’t see this until just now. I hate to sound snarky, but that’s what I thought you’d do. Fish for something that is remotely related to what you claimed, but doesn’t even come close to supporting the claim. It was supporting my claim about Japan having a particularly good welfare system. As for the rest
 > [@](#): > > Maybe someone has done such a study, but I doubt it. As far as I can tell it has not been done. > [@emacknight](#): > > Lots of studies have found correlations between unemployment and entrepreneurship in the US. You’d think Greece and Spain would be a hotbed of innovation. I expect that would remain true regardless of our social safety net. Culturally, we as a nation are inclined to want to feel like we’re pulling our weight. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/131 "2012-05-05T04:47:16Z")
> [@Algher](#): > > In this model you want to give $12,500 to every household in exchange for increasing the taxes on everyone above median (which will hit the middle class harder, given the lower percent of disposable income that they have). To do this, you will raise the taxes on the upper middle class by 10% or more, and roll into an almost 20% tax increase on the top income earners. I said “mean,” not “median.” You have demonstrated that you are not innumerate, yet you seem to imagine words that aren’t there when people try to explain things to you. Basing it on the median redistributes relatively little of the economy. Basing it on the mean is actually basing it on the GDP, or rather one’s fraction of it as an equal partner in citizenship. Call it participatory capitalism. ---
**Author:** ![Algher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Algher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algher)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/132 "2012-05-05T05:17:14Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I said “mean,” not “median.” > > You have demonstrated that you are not innumerate, yet you seem to imagine words that aren’t there when people try to explain things to you. > > Basing it on the median redistributes relatively little of the economy. Basing it on the mean is actually basing it on the GDP, or rather one’s fraction of it as an equal partner in citizenship. Call it participatory capitalism. Deleted. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/133 "2012-05-05T06:10:52Z")
Sorry, I’ve been kind of mean to Algher, but I say “mean” because I mean mean, not median and not mode. There is a sort of underlying principle and logic to it (albeit not explained in detail in the post Algher responded to) and it irked me to see him just change it to “median.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/134 "2012-05-05T22:49:27Z")
From [“Cuba’s future: An Assessment,”](http://www.isreview.org/issues/82/feat-cubasfuture.shtml) by Sam Barber, in _International Socialist Review:_ > [@](#): > > Why is the Cuban economy in such a mess? Many people, especially the spokespersons for the Cuban government, have historically pointed to the criminal economic blockade that the United States that has been conducting against Cuba for fifty years, which has to be rejected absolutely, both on the principle of national self-determination as well as on pragmatic grounds. It just has to go. Period. Unfortunately, this is not about to happen. But it is absolutely inadmissible. The other side of that coin, which is not discussed by the Cuban authorities, is the disastrous bureaucratic economic system that is devoid of any real incentives. The old saying of East European workers—“they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”—completely applies to the Cuban economy. It is also an economy of unbelievable waste. There is plenty of waste under capitalism, as we know, but in the Cuban bureaucratic economy there is a different kind of waste. > > There are some things that the Cuban system does rather well, however. In most things, in my opinion, the system does a lousy job, but some things they do rather well. The question is: how do you explain that? How do you explain both: the few things that the Cuban economy does well, and the many more things that it does so badly? In my book, I try to take a stab at this question. I don’t pretend to have presented a grand theory, but I do make an attempt to explain it. I borrow from Charles Lindblom’s concept of “strong thumbs and no fingers,” which he discusses in his book Politics and Markets. An economy that has only “strong thumbs” is able to do homogeneous, repetitive activities rather effectively. But when it comes to the discrimination and adaptation for which the fingers of the hand are necessary, it is a total failure. Strong thumbs, no fingers. > > Strong thumbs allow that society to line up thousands of children to be vaccinated in a mass vaccination campaign. This is a homogeneous task which is obviously important and which that society can do very effectively. Strong thumbs allow that system, in advance of a hurricane, to prepare and implement a systematic five-step evacuation plan, in sharp contrast with the criminal neglect that we saw in New Orleans in 2005. Those are the sorts of things that it does rather well. > > But when it comes to any kind of innovation, discrimination, or adaptation to local conditions, that thumb’s economy is a disaster. That is why it has done so poorly when it comes to agriculture. Not surprisingly, the Achilles heel of the old East European Communist economies was also agriculture. Cuba is also a disaster when it comes to consumer goods. I finished my manuscript in May 2011 (about six months before the book actually came out), and that summer several reports appeared about a crisis with school uniforms involving a shortage of small sizes. That is a classic problem of an economy without fingers. It cannot get it right when it comes to the discrimination, the variety, and the adaptation required for many consumer goods. > > So, yes, the economic blockade has hurt the Cuban economy, especially during the first years of the revolution. There is no doubt that removing the blockade—a goal to fight for—will considerably improve the Cuban economy. But to just talk about the blockade is highly misleading. (By the way, RaĂșl Castro himself has made fun of the notion that everything is to be blamed on the economic blockade.) Clearly, the nature of the bureaucratic economic system is at least as important as the blockade in creating the mess they are now trying to get out of—not by appealing to workers’ control and workers’ management of the economy, thus motivating the workers to give a damn about what they do, but instead by designing another method to keep a state-dominated economy going. Nitpick: The U.S. has an **embargo** on Cuba, Mr. Barber; we have not imposed a **blockade** since the Missile Crisis. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/135 "2012-05-05T23:15:47Z")
Do (post-)Leninist-Stalinist economies really have more shortages, or just louder feedback when they have shortages? In a _laissez-faire_ economy, the common man has no expectation of access to basic consumer goods; the lack of such is “nobody’s fault.” In a Marxist economy, the lack of such is a failure of the state. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2012, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/136 "2012-05-05T23:36:22Z")
> [@Zeriel](#): > > I expect that would remain true regardless of our social safety net. Culturally, we as a nation are inclined to want to feel like we’re pulling our weight. There are two very important things people here need to realize, and I laugh that they need to be said. The first is that the US is a VERY socialist country, you’re kidding yourself is you think it’s not, or that it’s even the least socialist, or the most capitalist. It takes a special sort of willful ignorance to pretend that Europe is that much more socialist, and that much less capitalist, than the US. The second is that socialism will destroy your economy and impoverish your citizens just as easily as the worst capitalist system you can imagine in your silly little liberal fantasies. Again it’s a willful ignorance that looks at history and only sees the crash of 2008, and then chooses to blame it all on the evils of capitalism. There is no reason Argentina couldn’t be at the top of every metric we have about developed countries, but instead they’ve fell trap to military coups and horrible socialist policies. And in spite of having already been through it before, they are about to do it again. Capitalism isn’t sending the peso down the drain. But all of that is secondary to the main point **Zeriel** touched on, that of culture. My experience having grown up in socialism, and now living in the US is that there is indeed a slightly different cultural attitude towards capitalism. And for want of a better expression capitalism is very good at taking advantage. It’s really what it’s best at, like **BrainGlutton** said it’s all fingers. Capitalists live in a world where they seek out every advantage they can, and it’s this characteristic that I believe causes the US to suck so bad at all things socialist, when presented with a social safety net they use it. Take even the most simple policy, such as one that says you can’t turn off someone’s power/gas in the winter. It’s the kind of thing that just makes sense to normal, caring, compassionate individuals (ie socialists). But what happens in a capitalist society is that very quickly people realize they can get free utilities for 8 months of the year. And if you’ve got free utilities, you can charge your friends $1 to do their laundry, etc. Capitalists look to take advantage of a system. Even right now, in the wake of the housing crisis people are happily taking every advantage they can. Short selling instead of renting out a place. Strategic foreclosures. Refinancing a mortgage that they originally took to take advantage of the last socialist intervention. Socialism came out in most of Europe as a result of WWII, when society needed to work together to rebuild, ie when thumbs were needed more than fingers. Germany had heavy government involvement to get VW going and rebuild their economy. Ditto for Japan, heavy government involvement in the markets to kick start capitalism. But when done wrong, it causes just as much pain as capitalism, as witnessed by Japan’s lost decade. The people that praise socialism the most are all too often the ones that understand it the least. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/137 "2012-05-06T01:02:14Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > There are two very important things people here need to realize, and I laugh that they need to be said. The first is that the US is a VERY socialist country, you’re kidding yourself is you think it’s not, or that it’s even the least socialist, or the most capitalist. It takes a special sort of willful ignorance to pretend that Europe is that much more socialist, and that much less capitalist, than the US. You’re kidding yourself if you think a welfare state makes a country socialist. Social democracy is a different animal from socialism. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/138 "2012-05-06T10:11:19Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > they’ve fell trap to military coups Which? Guatemala in 1954? Ecuador in 1960? Dominican Republic in 1963? Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Grenada, Venezuela and most recently Honduras? > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You’re kidding yourself if you think a welfare state makes a country socialist. I think he thinks a government makes a country socialist. > [@emacknight](#): > > The people that praise socialism the most are all too often the ones that understand it the least. > [@emacknight](#): > > Socialism came out in most of Europe as a result of WWII [Right](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association). ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/139 "2012-05-06T14:47:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You’re kidding yourself if you think a welfare state makes a country socialist. Social democracy is a different animal from socialism. What ever terms you like to use, the US has plenty of it. Unless at this point in the thread you’d like to nitpick the fact that the OP doesn’t know the difference. > [@gamerunknown](#): > > Which? Guatemala in 1954? Ecuador in 1960? Dominican Republic in 1963? Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Grenada, Venezuela and most recently Honduras? I was talking about Argentina, do try to follow along. Point being, it didn’t take capitalism to destroy their country. > [@gamerunknown](#): > > I think he thinks a government makes a country socialist. Do you know of a socialist (or social democracy) country without a government? > [@gamerunknown](#): > > [Right](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workingmen%27s_Association). National Health Service Act of 1946 The French system started in 1945 As just two examples. Again to help you along, the US didn’t have or need a post war rebuild. The country was full of intact factories and workers for them. Resulting in two very different cultural perspectives on social democracy. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/140 "2012-05-06T15:04:23Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > As just two examples. [?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States) > [@emacknight](#): > > the US didn’t have or need a post war rebuild Why the [income tax bracket](http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977623449) then? ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532/141 "2012-05-06T15:12:35Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Do (post-)Leninist-Stalinist economies really have more shortages, or just louder feedback when they have shortages? By feedback do you mean more deaths? In the traditional central planning system the government becomes the monopoly supplier and has to predict future needs. Get that wrong and an entire nation starves. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > In a _laissez-faire_ economy, the common man has no expectation of access to basic consumer goods; the lack of such is “nobody’s fault.” It’s certainly someone’s fault, but it’s also someone’s opportunity for profit. The common man has no expectation for FREE consumer goods. In theory, there can never really be shortages because scarcity means the price goes up. There will always be speculators hoping for a failure of one crop so the price of his crop goes up. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > In a Marxist economy, the lack of such is a failure of the state. Again, consider the consequences when the state represents the means of production (such as Cuba). The state controls all the land and decides what vegetables to grow, in what method, and how many. Ultimately the problem is more about having a monopoly which would result in the same eventual failures. If there is just one company producing all the country’s potatoes they will eventually screw up meaning people starve. If you have 5 companies each will overproduce meaning waste (which is ultimately inefficient) but when 1 fails the rest pick up the slack at a profit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-may-day-let-us-praise-socialism/620532.md?page=8)