“This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says.
Seems that they want to repeat the USSR of 70s, just capitalist and without the revolution and industrialization and mass repressions preceding stages, and rather right-wing.
Maybe they want that to avoid the same fate due to avoiding state capitalism and overregulation combined with politics inside the bureaucratic machine. If they are moderately smart.
Or maybe they just want to repeat the same track with modern technologies. Then it’ll suck.
And that’s also what Trump crowd promises their voter base.
The issue is how they are going to achieve that. The Soviet way was very inefficient, led to many unprofitable plants in the system and budget holes being closed with selling fossil resources to “capitalist” countries. And eventually tanked the USSR.
Succeeding in creating such industries in the first place and making them work is more likely with Soviet approaches. But making that a stable, efficient system is just impossible with Soviet approaches.
So they have to spend enormous funds at creating humongous processes and plants and logistics, and then prevent those owning said processes and plants and logistics from creating a bureaucratic-political deadlock which USSR was usually in. Any change would reduce some party’s power and increase another’s, so most ministries would oppose any change of status quo, and that is why all Soviet attempts at creating, say, a country-wide computer network to increase production and planning efficiency, or at optimizing military industries, or at standardization were killed.
USSR could have personal computers common enough, and not clones of Western successful designs, except clones were the only thing that wouldn’t cause such a deadlock. Domestic designs meant some ministry losing to some other.
There was a de-facto college ruling the country, with every party in that college having a veto right. Better than today’s Russia, of course.
Same even with fossil fuels export dependency, frankly - big companies today are not so different from USSR in terms of internal structure, yet they are efficient enough. It’s just that such a way of getting value would be, again, less likely to cause deadlocks.
The more intelligent (thus requiring standardization and competition, not just controlling land or oil and gas reserves) always lost to the more basic (sell something abroad, or choose a foreign design and clone it).
It’s a bit similar to how Byzantine empire killed itself, actually. Inviting foreign power to help in internal affairs became normalized. They didn’t even feel, apparently, slow and steady conquest by Turks whose help they’d employ against each other.
Seems that they want to repeat the USSR of 70s, just capitalist and without the revolution and industrialization and mass repressions preceding stages, and rather right-wing.
Maybe they want that to avoid the same fate due to avoiding state capitalism and overregulation combined with politics inside the bureaucratic machine. If they are moderately smart.
Or maybe they just want to repeat the same track with modern technologies. Then it’ll suck.
I’d say inheritable professions are more pre industrial revolution than Soviet.
Yes, I missed that part, meant more the “working all your life on the same plant” thing.
Tat used to be not so uncommon under capitalism as well.
The big, old fashioned manufacturing companies often had livelong employees.
And that’s also what Trump crowd promises their voter base.
The issue is how they are going to achieve that. The Soviet way was very inefficient, led to many unprofitable plants in the system and budget holes being closed with selling fossil resources to “capitalist” countries. And eventually tanked the USSR.
Succeeding in creating such industries in the first place and making them work is more likely with Soviet approaches. But making that a stable, efficient system is just impossible with Soviet approaches.
So they have to spend enormous funds at creating humongous processes and plants and logistics, and then prevent those owning said processes and plants and logistics from creating a bureaucratic-political deadlock which USSR was usually in. Any change would reduce some party’s power and increase another’s, so most ministries would oppose any change of status quo, and that is why all Soviet attempts at creating, say, a country-wide computer network to increase production and planning efficiency, or at optimizing military industries, or at standardization were killed.
USSR could have personal computers common enough, and not clones of Western successful designs, except clones were the only thing that wouldn’t cause such a deadlock. Domestic designs meant some ministry losing to some other.
There was a de-facto college ruling the country, with every party in that college having a veto right. Better than today’s Russia, of course.
Same even with fossil fuels export dependency, frankly - big companies today are not so different from USSR in terms of internal structure, yet they are efficient enough. It’s just that such a way of getting value would be, again, less likely to cause deadlocks.
The more intelligent (thus requiring standardization and competition, not just controlling land or oil and gas reserves) always lost to the more basic (sell something abroad, or choose a foreign design and clone it).
It’s a bit similar to how Byzantine empire killed itself, actually. Inviting foreign power to help in internal affairs became normalized. They didn’t even feel, apparently, slow and steady conquest by Turks whose help they’d employ against each other.