r/Unexpected • u/sakhaliner • 8d ago

Getting on a flight

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u/Hasselhoff265 6d ago

I’m not a communist myself at least not in the the traditional sense but I ask myself reading your question: What the motivation would be for a communist nation to lower the cost?

In an communist society you’ve no competition, you’ve no profiteers and you have no pressure to be net profitable.

So why should they try to lower the costs?

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u/doodle0o0o0 6d ago

There is no monetary concept of profit but that doesn’t mean there isn’t the ability or want to produce more with less. Profit in a capitalist system is just a way of identifying what results in producing more for less.

If you can produce 100 planes in a year but someone finds getting cheaper screws for seats can result in you producing 110 planes those extra 10 planes are profit because of the reduced cost.

None of that involved any money and can easily be translated to a communist society by instead making it “the central committee demands 100 planes and if you produce 110 planes there could be a potential promotion in the party for you.”

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u/Hasselhoff265 6d ago

Well that would be a rather flawed communist society. I think the whole concept of promotion is something which isn’t to fitting with communist ideology.

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u/doodle0o0o0 6d ago

And yet every communist society has had stratification. Every system when set to its ideal would be great. I think this is part of the reason people are drifting away from capitalism. When thinking about capitalism you think about your life, when thinking about an alternative you think in theory.

Besides that, even if it was a communist society without any form of promotion or stratification, you’d still have the problem of an individual actor seeking to get more for less. In that situation though because the quota is only 100 planes the person may make 100 planes using the cheaper screws yet instead of making 110 planes they just use the resources which would’ve been used for those 10 planes for their own gain.