>^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: My thought would be that Soviet consumer goods were more "adequate"
>than those of just about every country in the world except the U.S. ,
>Britain, France ( somewhat), and a couple others.
Ah, Charles, that's touching confidence. But the world market disagrees. There was noa rae outside weapond, some machine tools, and some speciality items (some oil drilling equipment) where Soviet products could even be sold except to a captive audience like the Comecon. Even in the USSR and the Comecon, if people could get western goods, and afford them, they would.
>The Soviet consumer goods were more "adequate" than those of all the other
>societies in history
Not the releavant comparison. The USSR was not competing with ancient Sumeria.
>and most of the countries of the world during its existence.
But not withits chosen competitor, the advanced capitalist west, which, additionally, exported its techniques to the third world and taught Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, China, etc. to make stuff that will sell on the world market. (At terrible cost, it goes without saying.)
>
>Also, you can't eat machine tools, but it should be noted that the Soviet
>system definitely provided adequate food for its whole population. So, the
>problem was not that the system produced things that couldn't be eaten.
>They did not lack food consumption goods.
Apart from the collectivization famine and after the civil war, this is correct. I shouldn't have used taht expression.
>
>Without being subject to the biggest war and threat of war of all times
>from the imperialist capitalist countries, it is not clear that the Soviet
>production could have rivalled capitalist consumer good production.
>Capitalism was able to prevent a true test of the ability of the Soviet
>socialist and planned system to produce consumer goods, by forcing the
>Soviet Union to be on a war prepartion and war footing for its entire
>existence.
Bo dount capitalist troublemaking posed a serious problem. But there wereintrindsic problems that were universally acknowledged by every Soviet planner and industrialist and that could not be blamed on the west, the CIA, the US, NATO, the fascists, Trotskyist spies and saboteurs, etc.
The history of the Soviet economy does not prove the unplannable thesis of
Hayek for that reason.
>
>
It does not prove the thesis, but it supports the thesis. It is evidence for it.
jks
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