X-Message-Number: 28379
From: 
Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2006 11:05:32 EDT
Subject: Re: Economics

David Stodolsky  <>wrote:


Odd, I was  under the impression that religious communism as practiced  
by the  early Mormons was highly successful. Similarly, the state  
planning  system of the USSR generated annual growth rates of 12-14 %  
during  industrialization of the Soviet Union - achieving in a single   
generation what took capitalist economies much longer. Leading   
sociologists attribute the collapse of the USSR to the lack of    
democracy, not economic problems, in the first  instance.



I have spent years working in Utah, and picked up a lot of Mormon history  in 
the process. Yes, there was a period of communal ownership. The old  

courthouse at Brigham City has a relief on the tower showing a beehive, symbol  
of 
that era. But by all accounts it did not work and they soon abandoned  it.  
Anyway, Utah and the Mormons today are ardently capitalist.
 
As for the USSR, didn't it achieve that growth spurt by nationalizing the  

entire harvest of the Ukraine, leaving thirty-two million Ukrainians to starve
that winter? A miraculous achievement, simply miraculous. 
 
And:
 
Leading sociologists attribute the collapse of the USSR to the lack  of   
democracy, not economic problems, in the first  instance.
 
--- What do leading economists say?
 
Alan Mole


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