> Of course the Soviets were so busy working on kerosene they had no time to
> see their people were fed. Fortunately, a network of private food producers
> made up for the inefficiencies of the collective farms and fed the people.
>
> However, with free (albeit illegal) enterprise feeding the people -
> apparently two thirds of them - The government could concentrate on Sputnik
> and other important things the Russian people simply couldn't do without.
>
> Oh well!
>
> Harry
Gratuitous Harry! Are they
more well fed now that the communist apparatchiks are mafia like
capitalists? Might the problem have more to do with a poor bread
basket than mis-allocation of funds? In the 1950s when a
farmer friend of mine from Oklahoma went to Russia he said you could eat off
their fields they were so well manicured and that we wasted things simply
because we had plenty. Now that has to do with the
system just the same as the reason we don't have intelligent musical
audiences is because they don't know and thus don't care to choose
intellectually. On the one hand you blame the system and on
the other you blame the individual, ("they don't buy it because they don't want
it.") It could just as easily be switched. I
still believe that the three ways, Aristocracy, Democracy and Communism
have failed. There has to be a fourth that will work for the
whole world without destroying local cultures and encourage prosperity world
wide. Economics thus far has just failed at the
job. Perhaps you could write the new book on the fourth way if you
could synthesize the whole and come up with a new answer which anyone could
steal once you published it.
Cheers,
Ray
