We're All Soviets And Maybe Worse

 

History, say the experts, may not repeat but it does rhyme. Yes, and Nial Ferguson sees more than a little similarity between the US and late Soviet Russia. He writes about it in his Free Press column, We're All Soviets Now, and Helen Andrews at The American Conservative sums it up. Viz. "Gerontocratic leadership; bloated government; lack of trust in institutions; high death rates; and 'a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.'"

Quite, but Helen doesn't think Nial goes far enough, here's a longish excerpt:

In the case of the economy, for example, is the most Soviet thing about America really that our projected federal deficits exceed 5 percent of GDP, as Ferguson notes? Ferguson bemoans that the “insertion of the central government into the investment decision-making process” represented by “the Biden administration’s ‘industrial policy.’”

Surely that’s small potatoes compared to the fact that one sixth of the American economy is devoted to health care, a sector where, as a recent piece by TAC’s own Jude Russo hilariously details, the numbers are all fake. The amount of money sloshing around insurers and hospitals is absolutely massive, yet the prices involved bear no relation to utility or even reality. In exchange for devoting such a big chunk of our economy to medicine, what do we get in exchange? The occasional miracle, and a lot of overtreated octogenarians and routine care at inflated costs.

Higher education is another incubus sitting atop the American economy. It employs 4 million people and is responsible for $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, yet a layman struggles to see where any value is being created at all, much less value proportionate to the expense. As with health care, higher ed produces a small number of genuine miracles—groundbreaking research or brilliant scholarship—dwarfed by a vast army of functionaries whose net value to society is, frankly, negative. Everyone can tell that the system is rotten, yet schools still have the power to squeeze middle-class parents for every penny they’re worth.

Beyond “eds and meds,” what other growth industries are politicians betting their states’ and cities’ future prosperity on? Legalized weed and gambling. That is New York’s plan for making up its post-pandemic revenue shortfall. Many states are banking on sports betting as a source of fresh taxes. Even if these vice industries created as much revenue as their advocates promised—and early evidence suggests that they do not—they would still be pernicious, destroying more value than they create. 

The essence of a late Soviet economy is not that the state plays a big role. It is that the average citizen looks around and thinks, This can’t possibly continue forever. The whole system is fake and insane. That is why Ferguson is wrong to look for evidence for his thesis in budget projections rather than the industries like health care and higher ed, which are neither capitalist nor socialist but mutant combinations of the worst of each.  

This can’t possibly continue forever. The whole system is fake and insane. Right on, to the tune of 1TN$ every 100 days. Like no kidding, our debt mounts up by a trillion, yes, a trillion dollars every quarter. It is, indeed, fake and insane. But driven insane by what?

Helen doesn't say, but I'll throw one out there. By Satan. Here again history rhymes. The Bolsheviks attacked the icons of Christ and his saints, gouging the holy images with their nails like enraged beasts. Their descendants go one further, defacing the image of God in all of us by creating blasphemous parodies of men and women in the name of freedom.

You will note, dear readers, that their rage when confronted is approximately equivalent to that of the Red Terror of yesteryear. History most certainly rhymes and smart people are reading Dostoevsky's Devils.

Your Old Country Pal,

LSP