In regards to gaining the currency for western machinery imports the SU was highly dependent on oil. Hence, mono-culture.
I remain unconvinced. There was a significant difference between the Soviet Union and real mono-culture economies like Saudi Arabia and the various plantation economies established by Western colonialism.
I find your argument here extremely suspect. We are shifting away from a focus on heavy industry, with the increasing focus on promoting the emerging light manufacturing and service industry, half a decade before the noted crash. We have already solved many of the economic problems underpinning the economic stagnation of the 70s. Our political system is far more reformist than the Breznev era. Doing better doesn't mean we are just doomed to approach the same fate faster.
This does of course not mean we are immune to planning ourselves into economic troubles. But I think our situation in quest has diverged quite a lot from the real life Soviet Union, to the point where consulting OTL history in an attempt to avoid problems is increasingly useless.
What do you think those light industries and services are consuming? The reason why heavy industry is what the Soviets started with is because heavy industry is foundational to the rest of the economy. Especially steel production, since steel is used in such a vast array of products from buildings, to rails, to cars, to electronics, to nail clippers, to furniture.
The OTL Soviet Union over-invested in heavy industry and we have a more balanced economy. But we also have a bigger economy so our heavy industry won't be that far behind the OTL levels, and may even be ahead of OTL's levels of output. Certainly, I expect in a decade our output will be higher, even in heavy industry.
And being more reformist doesn't magically put more high-grade iron ore in the ground or make deeper mines more expensive to work.
Hopefully the calmer cold war will mean we can import iron ore from the west or maybe we can bring Morocco into our orbit. But even if we can import foreign iron ore, we'll need to build new smelters on the coast or build a huge infrastructure and spend enormous effort transporting imported iron ore to our current smelting centers in order to avoid a rust belt problem. In other words, either our steel industry will shrink (and we'll need to import steel from places like China) or we'll maintain it by investing considerable resources, but either way, exhausting the iron ore reserves of the Western Soviet Union will hurt.
There's no way to avoid that, it's the simple nature of infinite growth meeting limited resources.
Keep in mind, just because modern western economies don't produce much steel domestically doesn't mean they've somehow found a magic way to avoid consuming steel in the tens of millions of tonnes every year, it is just mostly imported from China and Japan these days.
The OTL Soviet Union had large scale grain imports from the west during the 1960s, even during better years. About 3,2 million tons of grain according to the figures I found. By comparison, we are currently struggling with the question of what to do with all of the cheap, overabundant grain. You can't have a grain-related deficit in the trade balance if you export grain in large quantities.
Got any references? All I can find (such as
this or "How will reform of the Soviet farm economy affect U.S. agriculture?" by Alan Barkema) say that grain imports only started in the 70s.
2) The OTL soviet union would introduce profitability as a criteria in the 1965 soviet economic reform. While I can't find the exact reform that lead to the introduction of quasi-competition in the quest, I will just note it's been implemented for over a decade. We have reformed the soviet economy to the point our auto-industry is outcompeting british manufacturing, which would lead me to the conclusion that soviet manufacturing is roughly on par with its western counterpart. We are, to my knowledge, also not constantly importing western machinery. This is extremely far removed from the OTL Soviet Union, which had constant struggles in keeping up with technological innovation.
3) The OTL CEMA was far more autarkic during the 60s, due to western sanctions and the resulting need to obtain hard currency, while the in-quest soviet union has much more normal and regular economic transactions with the western block.
And? None of that conflicts with my point. The OTL Soviet Union had ample reason to feel optimistic about its future in 1964. The quest Soviet Union has more reasons to feel optimistic. But the the difference is better by degrees, not by type. We are still running an industrial civilization with finite resources it can access in a cold war and with central planning.
The problems awaiting us are things we can ameliorate, but being cocky about them is like saying we had nothing to fear about Nazi Germany. We should fear them, and we can kick ass.
Also, on this point specifically:
We are, to my knowledge, also not constantly importing western machinery.
We have been told that we are importing quite alot of Western machinery, that's how the Americans are paying for Soviet paint.
If the cold war chills enough to start impacting US-Soviet trade, it will impact our economic efficiency.
funny how the USA, the wealthiest country in the world, has relatively bad infra nowadays.
Most of the stuff that is really bad is due to monopoly capitalism.
There's also an issue with road maintenance being loaded onto local governments that can't afford them because the roads were built with Federal grants, but all the maintenance falls on the local governments. And apparently, roads cost more to maintain than they do to build. And since much of the US road infrastructure was built in a big burst, alot of heavy duty maintenance on old road is coming due all at once.
The US really has no excuse for its infrastructure issues, they were all problems the political class chose for the country to have.
Regards,
fasquardon
