View: https://youtu.be/kX0B2pT8Zh4?si=B17I0mrrBllQMYTt
View: https://youtu.be/sekk5wUU8is?si=s5wpqjuoURhDgF_Z
Did Mao Zedong Raise Chinese Life Expectancy?
Communists, and tankies in particular, love to repeat the claim that China’s life expectancy l drastically improved under Mao.
substack.com
Classic “Anti-Communist Talking Points” Still Hold Up
Communist Twitter user @stealyoredbull uses shoddy research to run damage control for Communist crimes
substack.com
When Labor Has a Voice in Corporate Governance
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.
-Wages in worker cooperatives were found to be 14% lower than in capitalist enterprises
-High-ability members are more likely to leave worker cooperatives
-Worker satisfaction for cooperatives with significant employee ownership is lower than for those with modest employee ownership
-Cross-industry evidence suggests that cooperatives are no more productive than conventional firms
There is evidence of workers decoupling from cooperative principles in worker-owned organizations
Worker cooperatives are not a good solution to unemployment
https://zero.sci-hub.st/3719/6969e99e355e136a3a6704b577f62eba/miller2011.pdf, https://ftp.iza.org/dp7854.pdf
Despite their egalitarian nature, several gender inequalities persist in worker cooperatives
When expanding their operations overseas, worker cooperatives fail to implement core cooperative practices in their foreign operations
The findings... challenge the popular argument that a growing cooperative sector is the answer to the problem of unemployment…
Against Vaush
Addressing: “1986 study finds socialist countries having higher quality of life”
LibertyEnjoyer '21
1. The countries they consider “capitalist” are extremely misleading. The so called capitalist countries they included were Somalia which was run by a Marxist Leninist, Zaire which was run by an anti capitalist, Mali which was run by a Marxist, Burkina Faso which was run by a socialist, Tanzania which was run by a socialist, and so many other countries as well in which the study erroneously considered capitalist.
2. The study uses infant mortality rates and the major problem with infant mortality statistics is that studies use different data definitions. For instance, According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing less than 500 grams is not considered a living child. In the U.S., very low birth weight babies are considered live births which on paper, artificially leads to a higher infant mortality rate in the US. More recently, studies find that in Cuba, “physicians are given health outcome targets to meet or face penalties. This provides incentives to manipulate data... Cuban doctors were re-categorizing neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths in order for doctors to meet government targets for infant mortality.” In the case of America, this is not how infant mortality is measured which artificially shows how Cuba has a lower infant mortality, when it really doesn’t. Also, a study found that in Cuba, “Physicians often perform abortions without clear consent of the mother” which would also artificially decrease the likelihood of an infant mortality—falsely.
3. The study also uses calorie and protein consumption to measure health outcomes in socialist countries. Again, these are flawed. Explanation is here.
Reddit post Addressing the 1986 study
Doc of above
Capitalist countries were known to be happier than socialist ones
Discord channel text Addressing the 1986 study
Doc of above txt
PraxBen debunks the 1986 study, and then again
Two UBERSOY videos briefly address the 1986 study
USSR (Note that this subsection is not a full representation of the implementation of socialism in other countries but rather just specific socialist policies or close to socialist policies that have been implemented historically)
WhiteHouseGov '18
In the USSR, the collectivization of agriculture occurred with the First Five-Year Plan, 1928–32. Horses were important for doing the farm work, but their numbers fell by 47 percent, in part because nobody had much incentive to care for them when they became collective property. In the Central Asian parts of the USSR, the number of cattle fell more than 75 percent, and the number of sheep more than 90 percent. According to official Soviet data for about 1970, the entire suite of socialist policies—“excessive centralization of the planning, control, and management of agriculture, inappropriate price policies, and defective incentive systems for farm managers and workers and for enterprises that supply inputs to agriculture”—was reducing Soviet agricultural productivity about 50 percent.
Swan '20
Despite the Soviet Union in 1986 having a population 14% larger than the United States, they had 73% more hospitals than the US (23,100 vs 6229), 69% more beds for patients, 48% more physicians and 99% more midwives. However, the average life expectancy was 64 and 73 for males and females in the Soviet Union compared to 71 and 78 for males and females in the United States. It may be telling that despite far fewer staff and hospitals, the United States outspent the Soviets by more than $184 billion in 1979 ($645 billion in today’s money) and the US government paid less than half this amount compared to the 92% share the Soviet Union planners contributed. Capitalism enabled the United States to mobilise and efficiently allocate its resources, as well as, create far more efficient hospitals than its rival and was able to show a clear health benefit to its population as a result.
Nintil '16
Poverty: A sociological study carried out by Soviet economists finds that 23% of the population was poor.
Housing: 60% of the respondents in the Soviet sample thought that their space was rather inadequate or grossly inadequate. Basic equipment like sanitation or water supply improved throughout the decades, but didn't fully reach everyone by 1975, especially in smaller towns.
Christiansen '17
In 1976 only two thirds of Soviet families had a refrigerator—the USA hit two thirds in the early 1930s. Soviet families had to wait years to get one, and when they finally got a postcard giving notice they could buy one, they had a fixed one hour slot during which they could pick it up. They lost their chance if they did not arrive in time.
In the same period, the USA had nearly 100m passenger cars. The USSR? Five million. People typically had to wait four to six years, and often as long as ten, to get one.
There was 30x as much typhoid, 20x as much measles, and cancer detection rates were half as good as in the United States.
Life expectancy actually fell in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s.
The USSR had the highest physician-patient ratio in the world, triple the UK rate, but many medical school graduates could not perform basic tasks like reading an electrocardiogram.
15% of the population lived in areas with pollution 10x normal levels.
By the US poverty measure, well over half of the Soviet population were poor.
Around a quarter could not afford a winter hat or coat, which cost an entire month’s wages on average (the equivalent of £1700 in UK terms).
The Moscow Times '20
Only 28% of Russians want the USSR back.
Gray '90
Only 60% of milk produced in the USSR was actually consumed by people, compared with 90% in the US.
Nintil '16
“So in the end, I think we can conclude that the Soviet economy was technically efficient in the trivial sense that soviet enterprises were working in the PPFs, given their level of technological development. This was in turn caused by slow and slowing technological progress. Allocative efficiency was low, as Nove[ ]says, due to the planning process itself, and TFP growth was lower than in the West, and decreasing. Finally, the growth model pursued by the Soviets, accumulating capital to generate more capital, proved to be a recipe for a quick takeoff, but also for stagnation and decline. To be sure, it didn't by itself cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it did contribute to the factors that led to it.”
Lychakov '20
This paper uses official manufacturing censuses of 1907 and 1908 (Before the USSR) to show that, in the early 20th century, Russian manufacturing was not economically underdeveloped. The productivity gap between Great Britain and Russia was not that significant. While the British productivity lead was evident in textiles, paper, clay, stone, and mining, Russia was ahead in the alcohol, tobacco, rubber, and petrochemical industries. Although Russia was behind in the metals industry, the gap with Britain was not large. When compared to France, Russia’s productivity was on a par with them. However this all stopped when Russia embraced more socalist ideals in the USSR. For example, research that examined a technology called steelmaking, which appeared in the 1950s, allowed for the production of cheaper and higher quality steel. By 1980, the US had multiplied their fraction of steelmaking by 5 and Italy by 12.5, while the Soviet Union just increased by a factor of 2.75. From 1980 to 1987, the US dominated with an increase of 2.9 followed by Italy with 1.8, and finally the Soviet Union with just 1.45.
Red is the USSR
Dark Blue is the America
Yellow is Japan
Light Blue is Finland
Light Green is Western Europe
Dark Green is Spain
RUSCORP '14
As you can see in the chart below, Russia was actually pretty industrialized before the Soviet Revolution. This is contrary to the communist idea that Russia was a backwater agrarian country and that socialism industrialized the nation. So this means that Russia was already quite developed, and then socialism came along, and stagnated the growth:
Kelly '10
The Soviet Union had extensive environmental laws and regulations to protect the public interest. Yet the environment suffered terribly under state socialism because of the tragedy of the commons. The state not only poisoned its air and waters, but also its people. Soviet lakes, streams, and seas were a regular dumping ground for chemical waste. Thomas J. DiLorenzo describes one case: A typical example of the environmental damage caused by the Soviet economic system is the exploitation of the Black Sea. To comply with five-year plans for housing and building construction, gravel, sand, and trees around the beaches were used for decades as construction materials. Because there is no private property, no value is attached to the gravel along the seashore. Since, in effect, it is free, the contractors haul it away. This practice caused massive beach erosion which reduced the Black Sea coast by 50 percent between 1920 and 1960. Eventually, hotels, hospitals, and of all things, a military sanitarium collapsed into the sea as the shore line gave way. frequent landslides—as many as 300 per year—have been reported.
White '20
With the transition to a centrally planned economy at the end of the 1920s, goods shortages became endemic in the Soviet economy.... A worker from the Urals wrote that to get bread in his town you had to stand in line from 1 or 2 o’clock at night, sometimes earlier, and wait for almost 12 hours.... Bread was not the only thing in short supply. The situation was no better with other basic foodstuffs like meat, milk, butter, and vegetables, not to mention necessities like salt, soap, kerosene, and matches. Fish disappeared too, even from regions with substantial fishing industries.... Clothing, shoes, and all kinds of consumer goods were in even shorter supply than basic foodstuffs, oten being completely unobtainable.
NBER '13
We started this paper with a question: “Was Stalin necessary for Russia’s economic development?” In short, our answer is a definitive “no.” A Tsarist economy, even in our conservative version assuming that it would not experience any decline in frictions, would have achieved a rather similar structure of the economy and levels of production as Stalin’s economy by 1940.
ZaslavskaiŁa '90
Collective farms in the Soviet Union were extremely inefficient.
Anarchy is Property '21
Quoting Leon Trotksy on the effects of war communism, a period of complete socialism from 1918 to 1921 (called “planned chaos” by source):
"The collapse of the productive forces surpassed anything of the kind that history had ever seen. The country, and the government with it, were at the very edge of the abyss."
Source states - “Chastened by that experience, Lenin enacted the New Economic Policy, which was a reintroduction of money and markets. No Soviet leader ever tried to abolish the market again.”
The USSR struggled with economic calculation -
Watkins '86-'00
“Examples of how inefficient the Soviet economy was are well known. The Soviet Union mined eight times as much iron ore as did the United States. That ore yielded only three times as much pig iron, and the pig iron only twice as much steel. Finally, from that steel it was able to produce machines worth roughly the same as those produced in the United States.”
“The use of raw materials and energy in the production of each final product was, respectively, 1.6 and 2.1 times greater than in the United States. The average construction time for an industrial plant in the U.S.S.R. was more than ten years, in the United States less than two years. In manufacturing per unit, the U.S.S.R. in 1980 used 1.8 times more steel than the United States, 2.3 times more cement, 7.6 times more [mineral] fertilizer, and 1.5 times more timber. The U.S.S.R. produced 16 times as many grain harvesters, but harvested less grain and became dependent on grain imports.”
“Ideas for ambitious, large-scale projects, without consideration of their costs, occurred to Soviet leaders with regularity. [...] Many of the projects in which significant resources were invested turned out to be either ineffective or pointless.”
A lot of useless projects with no benefit were counted in GDP, making the number higher than it really should be.
“There were cases that appeared in newspapers of such things as sunglasses that were so dark that one could not even see the full sun through them. Another case was of rubberized rain-coats that were improperly vulcanized so that when they were folded up the rubberized fabric stuck together so strongly they could not be unfolded. Another was of women's high heel shoes in which the hells were stapled to the wrong part of the part the foot rests upon. All of these useless products were stored in warehouses indefinitely but they nevertheless were counted as fulfilling some of the production quotas of the enterprises that produced them. They also were included in the official GDP of the Soviet Union.”
“Even worse is the case that Gaidar reported. The Soviet Union had numerous plants built in the 1940s and 1950s for producing poison gases. After an international agreement was reached banning poison gases those plants were converted to other uses including the production of food products. There were also plants for producing DDT that were also converted.”
“Research in the 1980s revealed that tens of millions of people became victims of pesticide poisoning through contaminated food products produced in those plants. This catastrophe affected the nation's health and influenced the demographic situation for decades.”
In the warehouses of Moscow, fruits and vegetables were mismanaged.
Trehub '88
The USSR lied about its, uh, “0%” homeless rate.
“In fact, there are homeless people in the USSR. They can be found in abandoned houses, cellars, coal bins, and garbage dumps, around railway stations, or in special detention centers run by the uniformed police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Here they are held for a month while their identities are checked and attempts are made to find them a job and a place to live. These attempts are seldom successful.”
The USSR butchered the Aral Sea
Of course, 6-7 million died of starvation.
Life under Stalin
Harsh work laws
Standard of Living Declines post-Industrialization
Slower growth
More slow growth
Decent or better growth under Tsarist Russia.
Was Stalin Necessary?
Life Expectancy and Mortality Data in Communist Russia and the Soviet Bloc
US growth in GDP outpaced USSR
Addressing: "Well the USSR had the second highest growth to Japan"
Soviet Shoes - Econlib
I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane’s Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes. Commenter Bill asked me for the passage. Here it is: My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed that the...
www.econlib.org
Those Soviet food shortages . . . 'No main course, but would jello help?'
''Dear customers,'' began the tinny, amplified voice in the Moscow grocery, ''there is a limit of two packs of butter per person.'' With that, peop
The Soviet Union: GDP growth
[Part of the Soviet Union series] Some data on soviet GDP growth. First, the chart many supporters of the USSR like. It supposedly shows that the soviet economy worked relatively well, and that ind…
artir.wordpress.com
The Soviet Union series
The posts I’ve written about Soviet economic history, collected in one place. Best enjoyed if you listen to the Soviet anthem -best anthem ever- at the same time. I haven’t written a pr…
artir.wordpress.com
Most of the USSR’s so-called success came from privatization
Vander Elst '18
90 percent of all Soviet technology was of Western origin.
Dr. Sutton examined 75 major technological processes in such crucial and diverse sectors as mining, oil, chemicals, machine building, aircraft, communications, agricultural equipment, etc. and estimated the percentage that originated in Russia. The startling results were: between 1917 and 1930, 0 percent; between 1930 and 1945, only 10 percent; and between 1945 and 1965, a mere 11 percent.
The technological breastfeeding of Soviet Communism by Western capitalism continued even during the period of the Cold War. From 1959 to 1963, for example, the Soviet Union bought at least 50 complete chemical plants for chemicals not previously produced in the Soviet Union, and Soviet imports increased ten-fold between 1946 and 1966—from 692 million roubles to 7,122 million. In addition to all this, two-thirds of the Soviet merchant fleet had been constructed in the West by 1967.
Shmelev '85
The vast majority of domestic Soviet food consumption didn't come from the collectivized farms but from the tiny amount of private plots they left alone:
Anarchy is Property '21
“The USSR’s shining star, its military and space program, operated like a market in that the state could pick and choose between different designs very similarly to under capitalism, and it was somewhat unique among Soviet industries in this way.”
Dalrymple '64
The USSR’s agricultural development was helped greatly by the use of tractors, which expanded from 1,000 to over 200,000 in number in the USSR in only 10 years. Almost all of these tractors came from the US, or were copies of US designs. In other words, 99.5% of the USSR’s tractors were sourced from the West.
De Pauw '69
In 1966 in the USSR, the private sector produced 64% of potatoes, 43% of vegetables, 40% of meat, 39% of milk, and 66% of eggs. In contrast, the private sector made up just over 3% of the USSR’s total sown land.
Smith '76
According to Soviet statistics, one fourth of the value of agricultural production in 1973 was produced on the private plots peasants were allowed (2% of the whole arable land).
Country-Data '89
In the 1980s, 3% of the land was in private plots which produced more than a quarter of the total agricultural output.
Ellman '88
Private plots produced somewhere around 1600% and 1100% as much as common ownership plots in 1973 and 1980. Soviet figures claimed that the Soviets produced 20–25% as much as the U.S. per farmer in the 1980s.
Debunking: “The USSR had higher nutrition and calorie consumption than the US (CIA)”
Nintil '16
This is an extremely misleading statement for 2 reasons below:
The average Soviet needed more calories than the US:
Many millions (several times more than in America) in the Soviet Union were still employed at heavy physical labour, the climate is more vere, people walk more, expend a lot of energy standing in lines, riding in overcrowded public transportation with transfers and long waits; and the American population is older. Therefore, the caloric content of food in the USSR should be higher when adjusting for these factors (which the CIA study failed to do). But, as we see, it is a little less: When controlling for these confounding variables, “The summary indicator of the total value of food consumption in the USSR is a bit less than half (49 percent) of the US.
The food quality in the USSR was worse as compared with the US
Practically, all American food is enriched with vitamins, while in the USSR in 1974, only 15 percent of bread and bakery products were enriched. The average quality of American meat is twice as good as the Soviet Union. In America, the share quality fish is also found to be higher as well. The quality of American potatoes was 2.2 times better than the Soviet Union.
Conclusion
This study’s estimate was adjusted for quality and quantity. “Food consumption in the USSR was lower than in the US in quality, and in many cases, in quantity. Overall, it was lower than in the US, except for alcoholic beverages.”
Socialism Failures (Note that this subsection is not a full representation of the implementation of socialism in other countries but rather just specific socalist policies or close to socliast policies that have been implemented historically)
Venezuela
Carlos Hidalgo '19
The 2018 edition of the EFW ranks Venezuela as the least free economy among the 162 countries studied
John '19
Prior to self-proclaimed socialist Hugo Chavez taking power in 1999, Venezuela was the richest country in South America. As of 2019, nearly 5 million people (roughly 15% of Venezuela's total population) have fled the country, 44% are unemployed, and inflation has reached 10,000,000%.
Paul '19
“Before 1973, the Venezuelan government did not own any companies and Venezuela grew 6.5 percent year-on-year. In contrast, between 1974 and 1998 Venezuela experimented with many socalist policies and brought GDP growth to 1.9 percent year-on-year.
In contrast, consider another South American country, Chile, which abandoned its flirtation with socialism back in 1973. At that time, Chilean income was about 36 percent of Venezuela’s. Operating under more economic freedom and privatization, Chilean incomes have increased by 228 percent, while Venezuelan incomes have declined by 21 percent. Capitalism has left Chileans 51 percent richer than their Venezuelan counterparts”
Miltimore '20
Chavez nationalized many industries including: steel, agriculture, banking, telecomms, electricity, tourism, and oil. From 2001 to 2017, the Venezuelan state went from owning 74 public enterprises to 526, four times more than Brazil and ten times more than Argentina. These were the results:
Steel: In November 2019, Venezuela’s steel output reached an all-time low- a thousand tons, down from 479,000 tons in March 2007.
Agriculture: Venezuela’s food production fell 75% in two decades while the country’s population increased by 33%. The economic crisis in Venezuela is so severe that 75 percent of the country’s population has lost an average of 19 pounds in weight
Banking: Venezuela in recent years has suffered an annual inflation rate of 10,398 percent
Telecomms: Venezuela ranks among the worst five countries for both mobile and broadband connection speeds. The state run telecoms were short $1.8 million to meet its investment target.
Electricity: Blackouts were reported to have hit 22 of 23 states. Venezuela has suffered from recurring electrical blackouts that have left millions without power or internet access for weeks at a time
Tourism and Travel: Tourism has declined by about 34% since 1999
Oil: Venezuela’s oil production is reaching the level the country had in 1929. Venezuela’s oil production fell by 24 percent between 2005 and 2016.
WhiteHouseGov '18
“Going from the U.S. economic freedom level to Venezuela’s would reduce GDP by about two-thirds after 20 years.” Another study, by Easton and Walker (1997), found effects that are smaller although still economically significant. They estimate the elasticity of the steady state level of GDP per worker with respect to economic freedom level of 0.61, so that going to Venezuela’s EFW would reduce real GDP per worker by about 40 percent in the long run.
Good google doc on socialism and Venezuela
The economic consequences of Hugo Chavez: A synthetic control analysis
Debunking: “Sanctions Destroyed Venezuela, not Socialism”
Mises ‘19
Socialism destroyed Venezuela, not sanctions. The “analysis in Brookings’s report does not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the sanctions were responsible for the worsening of the socioeconomic crisis. At this moment, there is not sufficient publicly available data to rigorously estimate a causal effect. The Brookings report therefore concludes that most of the deterioration of socioeconomic indicators occurred prior to the sanctions of August 2017. In fact, a large part of the suffering and devastation in Venezuela has been inflicted by those in power since 1999 and not as much by the sanctions imposed in 2017.”
Gómez '19
Despite infant mortality starting to rise in 2013-2014, initial increases in economic sanctions were not implemented until 2015, despite having passed in 2014. And the initial economic sanctions from 2008 and 2015 were only on individuals and a couple travel agencies. The serious economic sanctions which would’ve affected the wider economy at all were only implemented in 2017, despite oil production starting a steep decline in 2016.
Impact of the 2017 sanctions on Venezuela (Brookings Institute PDF)
Venezuela: Overview of US Sanctions (Congressional Research Service)
Socialism, Not Sanctions, Is to Blame for Venezuela's Misery | Kristian Niemietz (Foundation For Economic Education)
No, US Sanctions Are Not Killing Venezuela. Maduro Is (Forbes)
Venezuela: US sanctions hurt, but the economic crisis is home grown (The Conversation)
US Sanctions on Venezuela (list)
Sanctions Only Began in 2015
Economic Sanctions Started in Late 2018, Or August 2017
Socialism, Not Sanctions
Debunking: “Venezuela High Reliance on Oil Harmed them, not Socialism”
Mises '17
Venezuela did heavily rely on oil which can definitely contribute to their economic collapse. But the reason for this can also be attributed to the price controls, currency controls, uncontrolled monetary creation, and overall the nationalization of their oil industry. The main question here is if it is the socalist policies or the heavy reliance of oil that caused the Venezualuan economy to collapse. If it was the heavy reliance on oil, those economies more dependent on oil, such as Angola or Kuwait (who are #1 and #2 in oil exports as a percentage of GDP), would suffer the harshest declines in economic performance. However, the data does not support this thesis. If we compare Venezuela’s economic growth with that of other oil-exporting countries, we can see the serious divergences that this article points out:
Cuba (Note that this subsection is not a full representation of the implementation of socialism in other countries but rather just specific socalist policies or close to socliast policies that have been implemented historically)
WhiteHouseGov '18
In Cuba, the disincentives inherent in the socialist policies sharply reduced agricultural production. As O’Connor (1968, 206–7), explains, “Because wage rates bore little or no relationship to labor productivity and [state farm] income, there were few incentives for workers to engage wholeheartedly in a collective effort.” Research has analyzed the change in agricultural production in Cuba spanning the agrarian reform period of 1959–63, when about 70 percent of farmland was nationalized. Production of livestock fell between 14 percent (fish) and 84 percent (pork). Among the major crops, production fell between 5 percent (rice) and 75 percent (malanga). The biggest crop, sugar, fell 35 percent.
The CEA also notes that, while Cuba had similar gross national income to Puerto Rico before the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s, by 2000 Cuban gross national income had fallen almost two-thirds relative to Puerto Rico.
Herrera '19
Almost 70% of Cubans do not have a permanent water supply: 32% have water between four and 5 days, 28% have it fewer than 3 days and 8.1% do not have any drinking water service, six out of ten citizens have suffered up to ten power cuts in recent months while 18.8% have suffered more than ten
Sweeney '94
In 1994, Cuba’s gross social product (equivalent to gross domestic product) plunged nearly 60 percent, including 1994’s projected contraction of 5 percent. Power blackouts occured daily in Havana and other major cities. Over two-thirds of the island's industrial facilities were shut down almost permanently due to a lack of raw materials. Gasoline was very scarce, and automotive transportation was at a virtual standstill. Animal power was used for heavy agricultural activities, and most Cubans got about on bicycles or on foot. Over half of Cuba's work force was unemployed, although unemployment officially remained a crime punishable by imprisonment.
Since July 1993, when the Castro regime authorized the use of U.S. dollars, Cuba's own currency became worthless. Although the official exchange rate between the peso and the U.S. dollar was one-to-one in 1994, the black market rate in August 1994 was 130 pesos to the dollar. No one would work for pesos, since the minimum wage was equivalent to about three dollars a month. Productivity dropped 45 percent since 1990, according to Cuban economists, and many state employees no longer bothered to go to work. Instead, they joined the fast-swelling ranks of self-employed or black market workers whose economic activities were marked by the struggle to survive from one day to the next without earning too much income lest they be charged with illegal enrichment and jailed.
Many Cuban women turned to prostitution in a desperate effort to feed their children and families, since government rationing provided only half of the average family's monthly nutrition needs. In May 1994, Cuba's minimum wage would buy "only a two-pound chicken, or a pound of pork, or four liters of milk in unofficial markets." Many Cuban families survived on one daily meal consisting of rice, beans, soy, and water. For months, Cubans had been deprived even of bath soap. Infectious diseases once thought to be eradicated, such as tuberculosis and malaria, were returning as Cuba's free health care system collapsed. Hospitals lacked even the most basic supplies such as bandages and surgical thread for sutures. There were not enough pencils and ruled paper to supply the country's school system.
Sugar production had dropped from an estimated 8.1 million metric tons in 1989 to barely 4.2 million metric tons in 1993-94.
Before Castro took power in 1959, Cuba ranked third in per capita income in Latin America, behind only Argentina and Venezuela. In 1994, after 35 years of socialism and more than $75 billion in Soviet economic and military aid, Cuba's per capita income was one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, possibly even approaching the levels of such countries as Haiti.
Hawthorne '20
The homelessness rate in Cuba is NOT 0%. The elderly are at particular risk for homelessness. Even among those with housing, it is low quality and riddled with problems.
Good video on Cuba
Good doc on Cuba
Cuban infant mortality and longevity: health care or repression?
[PDF] The Cuban Experiment: Measuring the Role of the 1959 Revolution on Economic Performance using Synthetic Control - Free Download PDF
1 The Cuban Experiment: Measuring the Role of the 1959 Revolution on Economic Performance using Synthetic Control Felipe...
silo.tips
Coleman '21
U.S. economic sanctions with respect to Cuba generally had a minimal overall historical impact on the Cuban economy. Cuba adjusted quickly to U.S. economic sanctions through political and economic alliance with the Soviet bloc countries. Soviet economic assistance, which peaked at nearly $6 billion annually in the 1980s, largely offset any adverse effects of U.S. sanctions and enabled the Cuban economy to grow.
The loss of Soviet economic assistance after 1990 caused a severe downturn in the Cuban economy, bringing to the forefront long standing inefficiencies in the Cuban economy. The loss of Soviet assistance eventually forced Cuba to introduce economic reforms to attract foreign investment, and selective economic liberalization to stimulate domestic production.
The Cuban Government estimates that the cumulative cost of U.S. economic sanctions on the Cuban economy was $67 billion through 1998, including such costs as reduced trade and tourism, higher shipping costs, inability to procure spare parts, frozen bank accounts, foreign debt problems, and emigration of skilled workers. That estimate does not factor in the cumulative value of Soviet bloc economic assistance provided since 1960.
U.S. economic sanctions with respect to Cuba generally had a minimal overall historical impact on the Cuban economy. Cuba adjusted quickly to U.S. economic sanctions through political and economic the alliance with the Soviet bloc countries. Soviet economic assistance, which peaked at nearly $6 billion annually in the 1980s, largely offset any adverse effects of U.S. sanctions and enabled the Cuban economy to grow.
ChicagoBooth '12
Most economists agree that “Cuba’s low per-capita income growth — 1.2 percent per year since 1960 —has more to do with Cuba’s own economic policies than with the U.S. embargo on trade and tourism.”
Sweeney '94
The sanctions did not cause the economic crisis.
From the beginning, many industrialized countries had refused to cooperate with U.S. policy of sanctions towards communist Cuba and have continued to maintain diplomatic and trade relations with the dictatorship. This includes such important U.S. partners as Canada and Mexico.
Maoist China (Note that this subsection is not a full representation of the implementation of socialism in other countries but rather just specific socalist policies or close to socliast policies that have been implemented historically)
WhiteHouseGov '18
Mao’s government implemented the so-called Great Leap Forward for China from 1958 to 1962, including a policy of mass collectivization of agriculture that provided “no wages or cash rewards for effort” on farms. The per capita output of grain fell 21 percent from 1957 to 1962; for aquatic products, the drop was 31 percent; and for cotton, edible oil, and meat, it was about 55 percent. During the Great Chinese Famine from 1959 to 1961, an estimated 45 million people died.
Ravallion '21
China’s poverty in 1980 is attributed to the impact of the Maoist path since 1950.
Cheremukhin '15
Mao's policies resulted in slower growth rates when compared to the post reform policies.
Anarchy is Property - PCM '21
In 1978, 18 farmers in China decided to break the law at the time and secretly agree to own private property; any surplus grown that year would be theirs - not the collective’s. That year’s harvest was bigger than the previous 5 years combined and per capita income increased from 22 yuan to 400 yuan.
CRF '08
“Most Chinese were peasants, poor farmers who worked on land owned by wealthy landlords. Mao confiscated these lands and executed thousands of landlords who resisted. During the 1950s, Mao formed "collective farms," each worked by over 100 families. The income of the families was in theory equal. But since the peasants worked for the collective rather than on their own farms, there was little incentive to work hard. Farm production fell under this system. “
“In the cities, Mao began to put factories and other businesses under state (government) ownership. The state set production goals, wages, and prices. Most city workers became employees of these state-owned enterprises. The state guaranteed workers a job along with benefits like health care for life. Chinese workers called this the "iron rice bowl." But again workers had little incentive to be efficient, productive, or even care about the amount or quality of their work. Consequently, industrial production declined.”
“The Great Leap Forward… forced the government to reduce the size of the communes, restore family farm plots, and put into place work bonuses and other incentives.”
Other Socialist Failures (Note that this subsection is not a full representation of the implementation of socialism in other countries but rather just specific socalist policies or close to socialist policies that have been implemented historically)
Khmer Rouge - Wikipedia '21
Measuring the economic performance of the Khmer Rouge regime was impossible because statistics were not available, and no monetary transactions or bookkeeping were carried out. The economic life described by foreign diplomats, by Western visitors, and by Cambodian refugees in Thai camps ranged from spartan to dismal. Phnom Penh became a ghost town of only about 10,000 people. There were no shops, post offices, telephones, or telegraph services. Frequent shortages of water and of electricity occurred in all urban areas, and the government prohibited movement across provincial borders, except for that of trucks distributing rice and fuel.
Even after the better harvests of 1976 and 1977 rice distribution was unequal, and the government failed to reach the daily ration of 570 grams per person. The daily ration of rice per person varied by region from 250 to 500 grams. Party leaders, cadres, soldiers, and factory workers ate well, but children, the sick, and the elderly suffered from malnutrition and starvation.
Chile - Dicken '15
Allende’s socialist policies started to cause tension in 1971, where discontentment grew within society. Allende’s economic reforms simultaneously froze prices of basic goods and services, and augmented wages by decree, eventually leading to a scarcity of goods, bringing about hyperinflation (Wenzel, 2010) with inflation increasing from 45.9% to 163.4% between July and December 1972 (Valenzuela, 1978, p. 55). The upper and middle classes felt that the government’s economic policies were seriously affecting them negatively; ‘99% of the upper class felt that it was difficult to buy supplies’ (Valenzuela, 1978, p. 51).
Under Pinochet, Chile’s GDP grew by 8% in both 1977 and 1979, and then by 10% in 1989; the highest growth in the region (Valdes, 1995, p. 266). A market mentality was imposed in all areas of life, through an intense free market approach. The government also instituted polices to deregulate the economy and encourage trade, reducing tariffs drastically to 10%, and thus opening up to foreign capital. Chile’s experiment with neo-liberalism has been cited as a success story (Hecht, 1999, p. 113). Milton Friedman dubbed this the ‘Chilean Miracle’ and although Chile was regularly condemned by the United Nations for its human rights offences, the ‘Chicago Boys’ economic strategy helped the regime gain some legitimacy in the international financial community (Hecht, 1999, p. 112).
The Chilean economy would proceed to collapse due to interventionist economic policy in the 1982 bust, a result of the credit expansion and manipulation of currency exchange rates (not a market failure).
La Rue '20
During Allende’s presidency, demand outstripped supply, the economy shrank, deficit spending snowballed, new investments and foreign exchange became scarce, shortages appeared, and inflation reached an annual rate of more than 600%. By mid-1973, the economy and the government were paralyzed.
Augusto Pinochet, who deposed Allende in the 1973 coup, was indeed a tyrant who tortured and murdered his opponents. His coup was a backlash, an opposite swing of the pendulum, to the election and reign of Allende. Had Allende not come to power, neither would have Pinochet.
Hruzik '19
After fixing the Peso to the Dollar in 1979, Chile imported the monetary policy of the United States. The real appreciation of the Dollar to the currencies of Chile’s major trading partners worsened the competitiveness of Chilean businesses on the world market (Valdés-Prieto, 1994; Magendzo and Titelman, 2008).The real appreciation of the Dollar was also accompanied by a consumption of American savings due to the loose fiscal policy of the Reagan Administration. Increased capital demand in the United States raised interest rates on the American capital market which led to a reversal in capital flows. Capital inflows into theUnited states increased while at the same time capital outflows dried up (Aldcroft and Oliver, 1983; Eichengreen, 2000). The following increase of interest rates in Chile revealed the misallocation of resources within the Chilean economy. Businesses that formerly appeared to be profitable were not able to finance themselves on the credit market and went into bankruptcy. 1982 by itself registered more than 800 bankruptcies in the private sector (Collier and Sater, 2004, p. 370). A second wave of bankruptcies happened in November 1981, when eight financial institutions were rescued by the government (Montiel, 2014, p. 32). The peak of the financial crisis was in January 1983, when the Chilean government bailed outseveral major banks and thereafter owned more than 50% of the banking system (Brock, 2000, p. 76).
The events of the Chilean financial crisis are very much in line with what the Austrian Business Cycle Theory says. Interest rates were depressed by excessive credit mediation and when credit mediation ceased it also ended the damping of the interest rate. Rising interest rates ended the Chilean credit boom and production plans had to be rearranged.
Mitchell '17
Here’s the IMF data on per-capita GDP for Chile and the rest of Latin America. The numbers are only available back to 1980, but everything we see underscores the argument that Chile is a great success. It used to have living standards only slightly higher than the average for Latin America and now the people are more than twice as rich as their peers.
PraxBen '21
Under Allende, Chile reached record high inflation levels as real wages plummeted. The invisible blockade was not responsible.
GDP and wages went up after free market reforms, while unemployment and poverty dropped. Chile’s capitalist reforms were in the long run incredibly successful.
The 1982 crash was due to the abandonment of free floating exchange rates leading to the overvaluation of the Peso and the eventual Chilean bust.
Stephens '10
As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40 percent (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet’s democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. The result is that Chileans have become South America’s richest people. They have the continent’s lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.
No, the invisible blockade of the US against Chile did not crash Allende's economy.
Fixing the Peso to the Dollar was a grave mistake on the part of the Chilean government which helped induce the 1982 crash.
An invisible blockade? (translate to English)
North Korea - Ziv '21
Despite North Korean statistics not being readily available, eyewitness accounts show that quality of life in the country is truly horrific. (see slideshow for yourself)
The above image shows North Korea from space at night. It is significantly less lit up than its capitalist neighbors, except for its mildly lit capital of Pyongyang (which is still unimpressive compared to the South Korean capital of Seoul.)
Homelessness in North Korea
The Distribution of Income in North Korea
Africa - Ayittey '19
Socialism was a miserable fiasco in country after country including Angola (under dos Santos), Benin (under Kerekou), Ethiopia (under Mengistu), Ghana (under Nkrumah), Guinea (under Toure), Mali (under Keita), Mozambique (under Chissano), Tanzania (under Nyerere), and Zambia, among others.
In 1961, workers on Ghana state farms barely produced enough to feed themselves let alone the nation. In Tanzania, Ujamaa destroyed the country’s agriculture. Ethiopia’s misguided villagization program did the same. Zimbabwe socialist experiment ended in disaster, transforming the country which used to be called the breadbasket of the region into a net food importer, with millions facing starvation. Over 4 million fled the country into neighboring countries such as Botswana, South Africa and Mozambique.
See this video.
Burkina Faso - Anarchy is Property '21
Sankara was not a successful socialist. Burkina Faso is tiny and has very little data available on it other than what the Sankaran regime provided. It came out of an inefficient African feudalistic system, was unable to economically calculate, and only lasted for 4 years. The evidence points to the fact that the portrayal of Burkina Faso as a success of socialism is completely inaccurate.
See this to debunk Burkina Faso and a bunch of countries in general
Somalia - See here.
Burma and Sri Lanka - A good video mentioning their socialist regimes
Communism
Communism Inherent Flaws and Critiques of Socialism, Necessary Before It -
Communism’s primary inherent flaw is its reliance on a post-scarcity society. Even in a fully automated world, the critiques of left-anarchy will still apply (not necessarily the critiques of socialism, as society will be stateless.)
A truly post-scarcity society (society with 0 scarcity) is impossible, as the universe is not infinite. The closest one could get is hooking everyone up to a mainframe where they think they live in utopia, but the problem there is that self-ownership and private property rights would still exist.
It also ideologically relies on socialism to achieve it. Critiques of socialism are as follows:
Argumentation Ethics and other proofs of self ownership and private property - It is immoral and wrong to disregard private property. While voluntary “socialism” can of course be established, it cannot be rightfully forced on society.
Tragedy of the commons - without private property rights, no one has an incentive to care for something rather than plunder it. This can be demonstrated empirically. Additionally, without private property rights, people can morally engage in all sorts of risky behavior and they cannot be ethically stopped.
Economic Calculation Problem and the corresponding Knowledge Problem - Without private prices in the means of production, exchange ratios between factors of production cannot arise to tell central planners where to direct resources, resulting in an inability to rationally economically calculate. And without these private prices, it is impossible to measure in real time and compare consumer desires; which ultimately hides this knowledge from the central planner, making their job even more impossible.
Lack of usury and interest - This distortion of division of labor makes large scale economic projects much less attractive and as a result stalls economic growth. This applies to syndicalism as well as socialism.
Power structures, corruption, faulty incentives, and other problems with socialism are also present.
Debunking "Debunking Every Anti Communist Argument Ever"
Here are some more articles critiquing socialism (although they call it communism):
View: https://medium.com/@subhanhussain22/a-critique-of-marx-why-communism-never-works-f690b4cfd11a
The True Case Against Communism — The Distributist Review
The reason for religion, apart from revelation, is in the nature of a man's life; and the reason the Marxian cannot find it is because he must limit a man's life to a man's living.
distributistreview.com
Why Did Communism Fail? 10 Possible Reasons - Learning Mind
Why did communism fail? Here are ten plausible reasons that led to the disbandment of the Soviet Union and the downfall of the communist doctrine in Europe.
Communism Historical Failures
Communism can only occur after socialism has successfully advanced society to a stage of post-scarcity. Given that this has never happened; communism has never been historically implemented and has therefore never had a chance to fail. Every socialist society throughout history has either collapsed or has failed to get anywhere near post-scarcity.
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