Debunking Myths about Communism

Bourgeois economist Brad DeLong is often interesting to read and presents well nuanced opinions atop a mountain of well selected reads I often pass on to appropriate friends.  But, especially in his older writings, he has very little nuance when denouncing Communism!  Sometimes calling himself a Rosa Luxemburg socialist, he often pulls up the most slanted and distorted "facts" and interpretations originating from the most infamously slanted and inaccurate Cold Warring sources to denounce socialist history in Russia following Kerensky, aka the USSR, and also Cuba, and China.  In one passage I remember, he denounced economic progress in Cuba since the Cuban revolution on the basis of TV's per Capita.  A more nuanced observer might relate quality of life to the relative absence of TV's I was thinking at the time.

So I've often and still have a deeply felt need to write a suitable defense of Central Planning and other alleged economical errors of really existing (or existed) Communist Regimes.  I've read and thought a lot about things like the alleged Calculation Problem and consider it mostly one of the highest piles of bunk I've ever seen.  I'm very very tired of the practice of some friends of mine of continually tossing bits of Hayekian agitprop at me, as if I hadn't already heard it ten million times before and am still trying to find enough time to find the outermost thread on which to start pulling a ball of yarn which is mostly hot air.

But meanwhile, just as I was once again thinking of doing this, I discovered a treasure trove of Communist Myth Debunking right here.

And here's a video from the Gravel Institute, showing how and why USA, the richest country in the history of the world, has worse outcomes on every social metric than many other countries.  Including shorter lifespans than in Cuba.  It's incomplete, however, in not mentioning the high cost of maintaining our full-spectrum-dominance empire, aka Defense, which does no good for most US citizens.