| Wow. I do not recognize your description of factories, economics, or political systems. iPads are made in China, governed by the Communist Party of China. They have migrated from a planned economy to one of "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Is this a communist factory? I think you are confusing a "planned economy" with "communism." But even then, there is nothing in the definition of a planned economy to say that all people in a certain position have the same daily wage. The Soviet union had an incentive system. For example, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09668134908409742 says "encourages the foremost collective farmers by means of adding extra labour-days." You idealize the idea of the piece-rate system, without realizing that that's the system used in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. Read in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_reform_in_the_Soviet_Union... how the Khrushchev era reform movement pushed to move from a quota system to "standardising their wages and reducing their dependence on overtime or bonus payments." From that page, "The piece-rate system led to an enormous level of bureaucracy and contributed to huge inefficiencies in Soviet industry. In addition, factory managers frequently manipulated the personal production quotas given to workers to prevent workers' wages from falling too low." So it seem that your "capitalist factory" is using the same piece-system incentive system as used during the Soviet era, which is about as communist as you can get. I also think you are confusing "capitalist" with "meritocracy." The US during the period of slavery was under laissez-faire capitalism, but quite obviously slaves did not enjoy the same benefits which you attribute to capitalism, and a slave working the same job, with the same abilities as a free man was unlikely to make the same rates. You write "Obviously, the people who are happy with $100 per day are now pissed off, either because they don't want or simply can't work that hard." Or they might put their family life ahead of the company's bottom line and think that 40 hours of week is enough even if some people want to work 80 hour weeks. Finally, you wrote "The only ones benefiting from communism are those who make the laws and control the factories/country." There's nothing unique to communism there. The same holds with capitalism. If only the richest 1% in a capitalist country make the laws and control the factories/country, then it's very likely that they are benefiting the most. The economic system and the form of government are not as strongly coupled as you suggest. |