Read the following report on the phenomenon of the Soviet system:

“The perpetual shortage of spare parts and the dismal repair service in every Soviet industry
can also be traced to the bizarre [production] incentives …. Indeed, factories suffer such a
severe shortage of spare parts that workers often ‘undress’ finished goods to acquire the
needed parts before delivery. Repairs are a nightmare. In a typical instance, a state farm in
Minsk sent its trucks to be repaired by the Slutsky Auto Repair Shop. The repair shop insisted
on full payment before the farmers could inspect the trucks. Little wonder that they wanted
their money first, because even poorly fixed trucks would have been an improvement over the
truth: not only had the trucks not been fixed at all, but they had been stripped bare of parts
they started out with. The farm’s driver had to haul them back to the farm where two weeks
were spent replacing the parts and fixing the stripped trucks. Too late, the farmers learned that
sizeable (sic) bribes must be paid to repair people to ensure the intended outcome. Members of
the repair shop staff have turned their employer into their own private gold mine.

The Soviet press cites numerous instances of simple repairs that cannot be done because of an
acute shortage of a tiny part. One woman was told she could not have her sewing machine fixed
because a fastening screw was missing from the machine, a part that for years has been almost
impossible to find. The unavailability of parts afflicts items as diverse as washing machines,
refrigerators, irons, hair dryers, mixers, calculators, saws, and drills, reducing them to junk
without the needed replacement parts.” (p. 13-14)

Consider the following questions:

How would you explain this phenomenon? Why doesn’t anyone produce spare parts? What are
the impacts of a shortage of spare parts on the system as a whole? What loopholes the firms/
people found to deal with the problem? How might you change the incentives to produce more
desirable outcomes?

the key missing motive as market economy advocates might initially point out is the critical lack
of competitive inspiration towards production. the lassitude accompanying the communist state
has been so often pegged for failure in the most basic of supply economics as well as in the
realm of innovation.
and as this example sets forth, the innovative character of the populace emerges in response to
critical shortage. they are then able to make-shift with parts cannibalized from other entities.

as industry is so highly interdependent, a missing piece in one mechanism could send out
drastic shock waves to debilitate many other sectors. so a missing piece of machinery in an
auto factory, leads to a shortage of transport, leading to other shortages of goods and so on.

i would explain this phenomenon separately from the market capitalist critique of lack of
incentive for profit motive. it seems that the larger issue is a systemic failing on the part of
state management to provide oversight towards adequate supplies on every side of the system.
with or without a monetary reward system, the tangible purported ideological reward system,
as it masquerades itself, should be enough to spur the glory of efficiency for efficiency’s sake,
adequate parts for all systems, and no deleterious supply failures which make chaotic the
various chains of industrial output. and so, as this effect continued, heedless of the idealism of
suggesting that ideological uniformity would guarantee efficient systems management, it seems
that other explanations might arise.
it could be that industrialization’s progress was too daunting for the human spirit or intelligence.
that the new skills of system forecasts and resource management must be honed over time.
that human beings need better algorithms to predict sources depletion, supply, and inventory
calculation.

or there could be a political explanation as well. that the state is operating on such a skeleton
budget due to international economic issues, that managers are left in the cold, without
wherewithall, and that the situation by its nature snowballs, and it is difficult to unravel the
cumulative effect of missing parts. the escalating crisis of goods and means to produce
them, has translated into a huge systematic societal problem with the accompanying coping
mechanisms.

whether the effect is through ignorance, malice, greed, or lack of foresight, the humans have
found loopholes to counter this problem.

but substitution and destroying other machines, they harvest necessary parts, which may or
may not be adequate, or the desired part.
to counteract the effects of these shortages, it would be necessary to place incentives on
management to integrate inventory and stock supplies. the management might in turn offer
some small reward to the lower level workers. indeed a centralized stock warehouse could run
inventory controls and monitor closely needed parts.

the effect of a central warehouse versus regional supply depots might be weighed as well, with
transit time being particular to remediation or the shortage circumstances.