Reminds me of the story of the Soviet nail factory. They had been following their quota in the plan, which required a certain weight of nails to be produced every day. They met this by producing only the largest nails they could, thus meeting the weight requirement in the fastest way possible. When enough complaints reached the planning bureau, they changed the requirement, so instead of weight it was number. At that point the factory switched to producing the smallest nails they could, thus meeting the new requirement in the fastest way possible. Throughout all of this, there was a continued shortage of nails in the sizes usually used in actual construction because the factory never produced them.
If you go to a planned economy, you have to plan it to the smallest details, or the humans involved will fulfill the requirements in the most efficient manner.
“If you go to a planned economy, you have to plan it to the smallest details, or the humans involved will fulfill the requirements in the most efficient manner.”
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Dead on the money! Even in a non-government manufacturing operation I have wanted to pull out my hair as useless “managers” tried to make decisions based on daily reports that actually conveyed very little information but seemed to report every detail. You could not explain to them that what they regarded as a constant unit of measure on the reports could in fact vary by orders of magnitude in reality. In one case where a warehouse crew was asked to produce twenty “movements” in one shift a movement could involve anywhere from ten minutes work to eight or more hours of work. When you try to judge performance solely on paper reports without having any understanding of what the numbers really mean the sorriest people will find a way to look great on paper while those who are really trying to get the job done will look bad on paper.
Over thirty years ago the district manager of the company for which I worked as a tech rep actually put out a memo threatening to fire people based on a figure on a computer generated report which actually meant nothing, in fact it meant LESS than nothing if that is possible. When I raised hell about it he sent out another memo to all hands telling us to not take everything so seriously! First he threatens to fire people based on a useless figure and then he tells us not to take his threats seriously!
When government dingbats are in charge of everything this sort of insanity will increase a thousandfold causing everything to grind to a halt.