Your good-sounding idea failed gloriously in a large scale in East Germany (just that the money was used to pay back part of the debt). The problem is that most

Your good-sounding idea failed gloriously in a large scale in East Germany (just that the money was used to pay back part of the debt). The problem is that most sales processes can be rigged (ours definitely was), if only by making up such a complex procedure that only those in the know are able to fill out the forms in the short time allocated by the same people. I guess that every "simple" idea on how to approach decollectivization was tried in one of the former socialist or communist countries (there were a whole bunch to try theories on, after all). That the author probably chose the one they could most easily pick apart.