Remembering Russia

Author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had a wry, wintry view of his fellow humans. Instapundit reminds us of some tart wisdom Vonnegut shared, almost as an aside.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

The Soviet Union, as Russia was formerly known, was a very planned economy, Planned economies reward getting projects built, but not subsequent maintenance. Thus, little maintenance gets done. 

I'm remembering how true Vonnegut's maxim was of Russia when the other DrC and I traveled there, on a river cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow some years ago. Relations between Russians and Americans were, if not cordial, at least civil at the time. 

We were reminded of the "no maintenance" issue again some years later when our Baltic cruise stopped in Kaliningrad. It is an obscure part of Russia wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic coast. 

Throughout Russia we saw scores of once attractive tall apartment buildings that had been allowed to get shabby, dirty, and then were modified in haphazard ways by the tenants. Another example, if one is needed, of how central planning allocates resources much less efficiently than market forces do.