It always amazes me when somebody points at borded up houses in places like Baltimore, abandoned suburban malls when new ones are being built right next to them, dilapidated buses stuck in the traffic, trash blowing through the streets, bankrupt companies like Enron, people saving pennies on the taxes that pay for transportation, education, or health care but spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy the same services *privately* as the signs of the efficiency of the market system. Efficiency in what? Extortion of the surplus value? Forced labor camps were very effcient in that sense.
Of course what passes for signs of 'efficiency' in the US, almost invariable becomes signs of 'inefficiency' elsewhere. It is like pictures of Rusian "babushkas" (old, fat poorly dressed women) in the US media to demonstrate the poor quality of Soviet life to the audiences of the country that has perhaps the largest population of fat-disfigured human monsters in the world. So over there, a defunct tractor factory is a sign of inefficiency of central planning, but the Enron collapse here is the sign that "market works." Dilapidated housing projects there are a sign of central planning ineffciency, but border up houses in Baltimore are a sign of "progress" brough about by market forces.
Wojtek