As our political “leaders” contemplate how best to shackle us with various socialist programs (government health care, bailouts, cap and trade, etc., etc.) it’s good to reflect on just how abysmally horrible socialism is as an economic system.

Thankfully, we have the old Soviet-block nations to remind us. Sure, for an entire generation of Americans born in the 1990s, the Soviet Union is now nothing more than a name in history books. But, it wasn’t so long ago, as recently as the 1980s, in fact, that most Americans feared that eventually some drunk commissar would slip after a night of too much vodka and push a button that would start WWIII.

Apart from the constant low-level worry about MAD (that’s “mutually assured destruction” for the youngsters), there was always present the depressing fact that half of humanity lived a slave’s dreary existence in a totalitarian “worker’s paradise” where basics like milk, bread, and butter could only be had at the end of a long queue, if one were lucky.

Why the shortages? The lack of a free market system prevented the adequate distribution of goods because there was no ability to measure supply and demand. Those fun-loving planners down at the Kremlin office of GOSPLAN could come up with all the grandiose sounding five-year plans they wanted, but it was all just shooting in the dark, resulting in overproduction of some things no one needed, and underproduction of the things everyone needed. That, and it resulted in some truly stupid and damaging projects like the effort to turn the region around the Aral Sea into the Soviet Union’s main cotton growing region through a massive irrigation system. The end result: sure there was cotton, but at the expense of draining nearly the entire Aral Sea and turning the region into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. At least the beleaguered victims of the Soviet socialist republics could fall back on sarcasm and humor. And, thanks to the German magazine Der Spiegel, we have some of their jokes recorded for posterity.

For instance:

Did East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year.

Or this one:

What would happen if the desert became communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage.

Or:

Why does West Germany have a higher standard of living than we do? Because communists can't get work permits there.

If only that last one were still true today....

The big question, given the current administration in the White House, is whether or not Americans will soon find themselves humoring each other with jokes similar to those once prevalent in East Germany. If so, perhaps they can look wistfully upon this classic for cold comfort, if not inspiration:

Two Berliner children spoke to each other over the wall. The little girl in the West says, while eating a banana, "Look - I have a banana." The boy in the East doesn't want to be inferior to her in anything and says, full of pride: "We have socialism." The girl counters: "So, we'll have socialism soon too." The boy, triumphant: "See, then you won't have any bananas anymore either!"

Get more East German jokes about communism/socialism at Wikipedia.

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