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Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers. Most of it went ro
by thriftwy 5y ago
Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers.
Most of it went rotting. I remember a village school with a large yard full of half-disassembled tractors and combines. Apparently the students were supposed to learn to use all the stuff and then give the field no rest. In reality it would just rot.
I don't think you should label all that people incompetent. They were mostly very practical in solving their immediate problem while having no freedom to rethink it. The system sucked and people were just trapped in it.
- brimble 5y agoI didn't take incompetent as an insult, but in its straightforward, descriptive sense: the people were not competent at the jobs they were assigned to (and, presumably, weren't given sufficient help in becoming competent)
- thriftwy 5y agoI have to disagree. The tractor-builders were very competent in building 100,000 new tractors each year when operating on vastly insufficient resources with apathetic workforce; and making sure these tractors could leave the factory gates on their own. In short, they did fulfill their plan. Would they be happier producing 10,000 tractors that would actually last, instead? Maybe. Would they be able to do that right away? No, but with some practice it could be done. Could they produce better tractors with the constraints that they had? I don't think so. You will undoubtedly see the same pattern all over the corporate world.