Will the problems never end, vol.2

[Tony Griffiths]

There is enough for everyone's need but not for their greed?

Ah! rather like the old communist idea, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". The trouble is, it never works, as several ex-residents of once European-communist-controlled countries have told me. What happens is that you do as little as possible and grab as much of the almost non-existent resources as you can. The reason? Anyone rising above the herd risks "denouncement" by the party's jealous and subsequent time in the Gulag. One chap, a super-clever electrical engineer, was told on his first day at work, "Avoid comrades X, Y and Z. Never correct what those big-heads say, even if it means that what they do - and it has happened - burns the place down."Naturally, he was disinclined to believe this, having had the Marxist rubbish pushed daily in school lessons, but decided to be cautious just in case. Sure enough, one of his fellow new-starters was soon in trouble with comrade Z and disappeared to goodness knows where. Seeing how things really were, my friend kept his head down and started a clandestine business fixing television sets to pick up West German TV - it was a given, of course, that the TV's were tuned to only the government's channel. He lived in a block of flats where, from new, the lifts had never worked, and had to lug them up and down by hand. Because there we no shops selling electrical components, a colleague used to take him suitcases of scrap electrical bits and pieces on his frequent business trips to the country. When the first arrived our enterprising young friend said, "Where on heart did you get this?" Told that it was the rubbish dumped by an electrical supplies shop in Manchester, he point-blank refused to believe it. Fortunately, five years after starting this capitalist effort the regime collapsed - and he's now head of that country's largest electrical company. I could go on with stories from the others but won't - they are basically all the same.