Charles:
Bill Bartlett, you don't have accept this. The claim is very shaky that the history of the Soviet Union, Cuba and other first efforts at centrally planned economies prove "for damn sure" for all times that centralized planning cannot be done. It's ridiculous actually.
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Well this is obviously true. If central planning couldn't be done the USSR would have lasted for a lot less time than 70 years (OK, the 60 years post-NEP). What people mean by this, I think, is that central planning can't support a consumer-type society of the type Westerners are used to.
I don't know how it was in other Eastern Bloc countries, but over here, as far as I can tell, the further you got from the center, the worse the distibution network got. Moscow always had lots of stuff, while my roommate's mother had to take the train in from Yaroslavl (about 5 hours) to buy clothes. (Yaroslavl's a small city, but it's not tiny.) I guess this is because it's easier to just send stuff to s small number of dictribution centers than worrying about getting it through the whole network of administrative regions, all the way down to little villages.
As far as the profit/incentive thing goes, people around here certainly did complain about the "salary ceiling" a lot, and it certainly did contribute to slacking off.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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