[dankohn1]

I remember hearing a story about diamond polishing methods in use right after the collapse of the Soviet Union where the resulting diamonds had a lower value than their inputs. I've used the metaphor in programming and management of dealing with value-subtracting workers.

[jordanb]

This was a criticism of the late-stage soviet economy: Taking perfectly good trees and turning them into useless plywood. Perfectly good wool gets turned into sweaters so awful even Soviet citizens won't wear them, etc.

Francis Spufford's Red Plenty gets into that, and on the rapidly diminishing returns on capital investment in general in the soviet economy in the 1970s-80s.