This is anecdotal, but even within the same village, switching to capitalism has been known to radically increase production. I'd recommend this fascinating st

This is anecdotal, but even within the same village, switching to capitalism has been known to radically increase production. I'd recommend this fascinating story from NPR's Planet Money: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secret-document-that-transformed-china http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secr... Background: a group of farmers in a small Chinese village secretly agreed to start keeping their surplus crops for themselves. ============= Before the contract, the farmers would drag themselves out into the field only when the village whistle blew, marking the start of the work day. After the contract, the families went out before dawn. "We all secretly competed," says Yen Jingchang. "Everyone wanted to produce more than the next person." It was the same land, the same tools and the same people. Yet just by changing the economic rules — by saying, you get to keep some of what you grow — everything changed. At the end of the season, they had an enormous harvest: more, Yen Hongchang says, than in the previous five years combined.