[p2p-research] good summary of anti-transition hypothesis

[Kevin Carson]

On 9/20/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember reading that a car-sharing agreement would result in 80% less
> cars, without any drop in the number of kilometers driven ... and that 50%
> of the food is destroyed in our current arrangement ... I"m sure the list of
> such wasteful practices is pretty endless ..
>
> when I was editor in chief of a magazine, the publisher would print 40,000
> copies, to get high advertising rates based on 'proven production', then
> immediately send the trucks to destroy 30,000, give another 5,000 away and
> send the rest to the shops, where about half were bought ...

There's also the anecdote from one of those '80s books on the USSR
(either Hedrick Smith's or David Shipler's), about the train carrying
steel beams from Moscow to Leningrad meeting the trainload of
identical beams headed from Leningrad to Moscow.  The author meant it
as a humorous illustration of the irrationalities of the Soviet
planned economy, but I imagine you could find fodder for an almost
identical anecdote in the U.S. subsituting semi trucks for trains.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html