Of land with constructed railroads. Colleen Dunlavy isn't stupid. It's a proportionate thing, and the American government intervened in railroad construction proportionately more than the Prussians did. Jesus H. Christ.
Why Communism Failed
- Thread starter CELTICEMPIRE
- Start date
aelf
Ashen One
Now I don't even know what you're talking about.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
How so? If there is X amount of property to be had, and one person owns, say, X/100, then there is only 99*(X/100) for everyone else. Given that 99*(X/100)<100*(X/100), it seems self-evident that what Cheezy said is correct.
Umm. No?
I don't think you have a concept of how immensely more difficult it would have been to keep track of anything at all by that method. The USSR was never so awash in spare wealth and resources that they could afford to toss aside an accounting system that is quite easy to use for one that has a complexity that staggers the imagination. It doesn't work like a market because far too many of the decisions were made outside of trade. I suppose you could call it a sliding scale rather than discrete points. But if you placed it on a sliding scale, it would be extremely far from anything recognized in the mixed economies as a market. Not to mention what the Austrian purists would say.
Probably not deterministic. But people who see themselves as prosperous and safe tend to look inward and focus largely on keeping what they have against competitors rather than being more outward focused on creating new and better. Pretty much all of the developed world's politics shows that.
They, uh, weren't. While elements of the army agitated for subsidies starting in the mid-1830s, the government frequently declined to provide them. Generally, the most the king's offices would consent to was the formation of joint stock companies - more indirect encouragement than anything else. If there's anything that Dunlavy's 1994 study indicated, it was that German railroad construction even in the early days, of the 1830s and 1840s, was almost wholly done for economic reasons, linking raw materials fields with production facilities and markets.
The army's case was not improved by the fact that it did not speak with one voice. As late as 1836, a famous pamphlet was published noting that a standard regiment could cover more ground in a day of marching (twenty miles) than it could by rail (sixteen). While the technical case got better as the years went on and railroad technology continued to develop, the General Staff remained the chief advocate of government interference in rail construction - and before the 1860s, the General Staff was a relatively small and inconsequential organization.
Sort of. Some railways were nationalized after the formation of the Reich, but not particularly many of them. Nationalization didn't really pick up until after the end of World War I. The Nazis were the ones that really nationalized most of Germany's railways, and the current monolithic Deutsche Bahn is a descendant of their efforts.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It's not a case of choice, it's a case of necessity. If the USSR was a non-market economy, then they wouldn't have had a form of money in the first place, because money (as opposed to glorified tokens) is by definition something that exists in and circulates through a market. If it was just a set of tokens, then they would have ended up using material balance planning anyway, because it would have been the only option available to them. (Von Mises, for all his faults, was quite aware of this, and made his critique of the "socialist commonwealth" on the assumption that this is how it would work.)Umm. No?
How are decisions made "inside of trade"? You think the farmer doesn't plant a single onion until he has an order waiting for him? Planning exists in every large enterprise, and necessarily so. As long as the actual system of distribution is one of commercial exchange, as was the case in the Soviet (albeit, again, submerged in the internal workings of the state), then it's a market.
"Mixed economies"? You mean like, um, the Soviet Union, were 30% of the agricultural sector was private? Or Poland, where it was 79% private?
So it's a case of subjective evaluation of well-being, rather than of material well-being as such? Wouldn't that suggest that conservatism is perfectly palatable, provided that it's not understood as a threat to people's well-being, and that liberalism is entirely prone to generate socialism, if it's not understood to be sufficient in advancing people's material interests? This all seems to hinge on the presumption that conservative is always worse for people and is known to be people, and that liberalism is correspondingly better and is known to be better, which I can't say is entirely self-evident on either count.
That doesn't make sense. You are saying they used money, therefore they had markets. Money is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of markets. One simply does not lead to the other.
With trade, the Invisible Hand, people (firms) plan based on the expectation of sales. They do not do anything except in the expectations of sales. experience tells them what to expect in the future. Often they are wrong. On being wrong, they adjust expectations for the next time period. Adjustments based on current information are a constant. They do not plan once, and then stick to it with no regard to the outcomes. They do not demand unrealistic outcomes.
"Mixed economies"? You mean like, um, the Soviet Union, were 30% of the agricultural sector was private? Or Poland, where it was 79% private?
That's one small sector of the economy. How was all the industrial sectors?
People don't know that conservatism is worse for them. That's why they are willing to try it. Until eventually things get so bad that a change has to come.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,374
Ah, finally someone got there! And look at the results: most people were not voting for breaking apart the USSR, quite the opposite.
But what he said implied that if I work to create property, I take something away from someone else, that's not true. If I plant some trees, chop them and build a house from it (obscure example, I know, but that's to prevent someone else entering the production chain), I have created a house. Who suffered in the process?
I'm not saying that Cheezy is wrong, but you have to give amadeus some credit here. It feels almost as if you're pitting two simplistic world views against each other here.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
How interesting.
It's an OT thread, not a published, scholarly polemic.
Yeah. As "a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed". Whatever that was supposed to mean. I mean, a "federation of sovereign republics" is sort of contradiction in terms.
EDIT: Also, in Russia the question was coupled with another one: whether voters supported the establishment of a directly elected president of Russia, which was understood as an opportunity to support Yeltsin.
And once Yeltsin decided to "take Russia out of the USSR"... well, USSR without Russia would´ve been a funny entity.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
As I said, we're using "money" in a different sense, and I'm specifically using it to denote circulating money rather than just a set of glorified tokens. Money did in fact circulate in the Soviet Union- it just happened that most of that circulation was through and between state enterprises- which means that a market must have existed for it to circulate through. If it did not, if it was in fact a system of tokens, then it would have been issued as wages and redeemed in purchases, and that would have been the end of it. It would not and could not have formed the basis for economic administration, as it historically did.
But all that happened in the Soviet Union, just less efficiently, so that just tells us is that the Soviet state enterprises were poorly managed, not that they existed outside of a market. Haven't you ever had a crap manager?
That's not the point. I didn't say that the state sector wasn't overwhelming, but that that the Soviet Union was not a "planned economy", because that would preclude the existence of a market for private business to operate in, which did in fact occur.
Why would people turn to socialism if they thought that conservatism offered a solution to their problems?
What about the United States?
You wouldn't have let others get away with that as well.
The American states aren't sovereign...What about the United States?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
They aren't? I thought that US states were formally defined as sovereign entities that compose the United States, rather than being divisions within a single federal sovereign, as in Canada, and that they delegate certain powers and responsibilities attributed to sovereign states to the United States through the Constitution. Am I off the mark here?
Did you create the matter out of which the trees are composed? No, you only contributed your labour, by which you formed the naturally-occurring matter into a particular form. So even if you claim a certain ownership over that labour as embodied in the form, you still have to acknowledge that this depends on the exclusive possession of the matter, which, as I suggested, necessarily excludes everyone else from possessing it. If that exclusive possession isn't established with the mutual consent of all who may have otherwise used it, then it takes on the character of usurpation. (And, for the record, that's right out of market anarchism 101.
)Wouldn't that make them a Confederation?
Edit: I think the important aspect here is that sovereignty is one of the powers delegated by the states to the federation. States can't entertain official diplomatic relations, for example, a key aspect of sovereignty.
Edit: I think the important aspect here is that sovereignty is one of the powers delegated by the states to the federation. States can't entertain official diplomatic relations, for example, a key aspect of sovereignty.
To me, "sovereignty" implies there is no higher authority.What about the United States?
Dictionary agrees:
sovereign, adjective:
5. belonging to or characteristic of a sovereign or sovereignty; royal.
6. having supreme rank, power, or authority.
7. supreme; preeminent; indisputable: a sovereign right.
8. greatest in degree; utmost or extreme.
9. being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc.
If there is a federal government, you can´t have sovereign states. At best you can have states with limited sovereignty.
Similar threads
