This Communist propaganda poster is worth many more than a thousand words (HT: Chris Fisher):
Incentives vs. preaching
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Worker bees of the world unite!
How come it doesn't show the bees living nine to a cell?
Damn communists and their golden rule!
Because they aren't finished building yet, Albatross! What you don't see in the poster is the "instant aging" to which the lower cells are already subject.
My bet is they'll never finish the hive anyway. The soviets paid bonuses based on the number of square feet under construction. There was no incentive to finish construction and when there was, you wouldn't want to move into that construction. Central planning at its best.
Come on Methinks, we all know the Soviets finished building lots of stuff–take this fine nuclear power plant for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Three words: "Catch and overtake"
That's funny. I'd already adopted something of a motto: People Are Not Bees.
Now we understand exactly what sort of folks disagree with me.
"Build like you would for yourself…"
"or we'll kill you"
Reminds me of the pre-Gorbachev Russian movie Vokzal dlya Dvoikh. Nonna Mordukova gets to play a part that articulates a pretty good case for free markets and private property. I have no idea what it took to get it past the censors, but I suppose it may have been a pre-Gorbachev experiment with Glasnost. Watch it and you'll see why that poster reminded me. The movie must have been subversive for its time and place. (There are also scenes from a nice, friendly Siberian gulag, shot on site.)