>
> Well, you can always stop rewarding people for various deeds. But how
> exactly does that change people's motivations? I suppose you might say that
> it must have that effect - that people would stop seeking personal gain if
> commodity exchange were abolished. We can test that assumption, though.
> Commodity exchange was abolished (at least as the dominant form of economic
> activity) in the Soviet Union. Here's a description of aspects of economic
> life in the Soviet Union, from a history of Soviet economic planning. So my
> question is: Why did such forms of motivation persist in the absence of
> commodity exchange?
>
> [The Life and Times of Soviet Socialism, Alex F. Dowlah & John E. Elliott,
> pp.163-64)]:
>
> [In the Brezhnev era,] [s]ome of the most common forms of illicit
>> activities were... SNIP
>>
>>
> SA
>
But, surely, you are only suggesting that abolishing commodity exchange and replacing it with top-down, undemocratic, and unrealizable bureaucratic "plans" based on crappy data and unreasonable hopes and expectations on top of undemocratic and largely unregulated workplaces is the only way to go?
It strikes me that the Soviet Union represents a pretty lousy case to appeal to as a straightforward "test" of this sort of thing.
-A