Question about ethics of Cold War policy.

[SnowFire]

Oh, and maybe you didn't know that the USSR was ahead of us in biotech.

Apperantly you've never heard of one T.D. Lysenko. Head of the Soviet biology department in the 30's through the early 60's, he ruthlessly cheated at science and fired all who ever achieved anything other than him. Reported only his own made-up successes, etc. Dismissed gene theory as a gigantic hoax. Made it so that all you could talk about was how your theory corresponded to Marx, Engels, & Lenin.

It's a miracle that the Soviets managed to remotely catch up after being stuck in the 1920's for 30 years.

[Imran Siddiqui]

under socialism, labor saving devices reduce the amount of work we have to do, not the amount of workers needed.

If you reduce the number of hours worked, how do those workers make any money? If you have worker owned businesses you STILL have markets and money. That wouldn't change.

I simply cannot fathom a productive economic system not involving any form of markets. Barter just simply doesn't work that well. And giving all production to the 'government' and having that government pass it out equally to everyone, would probably increase the number of working hours (to send everyone what the rich get today) AND is a recipe ripe for corruption (you think our system has corruption, wait until the government is responsible for everything ).

[DuncanK]

Imran,

What kind of corruption could you see that could possibly compare to the corruption we see now with all the corporate scandals, and I'm not talking about just the people who have gotten busted. That's just the smoke. You know that corruption is ramant in our society. I think it would be minor with communism. You couldn't get away with stealing a lot, because everyone would see that you have more than everyone else and you would be busted

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SnowFire
Oh, and maybe you didn't know that the USSR was ahead of us in biotech.

Apperantly you've never heard of one T.D. Lysenko.

I've heard of him. He was a joke. This merely shos the superiority of the system, because after this yahoo was gone, it took very little time for the USSR to come from behind and surpass the US in many areas of science.

[Az]

interesting thread.

It's a shame that I joined so late.