Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
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the staff can roast the cows over their own farts, it's efficient!
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[X]Plan Red Meat for Masherov
And yeah, the "don't eat big animal meat" train has sailed- nay, it was never in port. Remember, most of this country is less than fifty years out of being unsure if you'll have enough BREAD to eat being the status quo. You will have zero luck trying to convince them that going vegetarian with maybe a little chicken is worth it to save then environment. And most of our allies not named Germany are in a similar boat. We just need to take the L there, and try to reduce emissions elsewhere with and nuclearization and electrification of the grid and transport system.
At (EDIT: very) optimistic estimate, we could have nuclear + hydro generate a larger portion than fossil fuels of our newly installed power during the 10th plan (1975-1979)
Oh god the superfund sites! GHG emissions are somewhat out of our wheelhouse with the large population of other countries, but the places so contaminated by heavy metals that nothing will grow are absolutely our problem. The infurating thing is that both Malenkov and Voznesensky had bureaucracy options come up for ecological regulations... and we, the geniuses we are, kept putting them off only to crash both their poltical careers without taking it, and now we won't get another chance until the seventies at least! This is possibly our second biggest unforced error (after getting Mal fired in the first place) of the quest's post-war era!
And yeah, the "don't eat big animal meat" train has sailed- nay, it was never in port. Remember, most of this country is less than fifty years out of being unsure if you'll have enough BREAD to eat being the status quo. You will have zero luck trying to convince them that going vegetarian with maybe a little chicken is worth it to save then environment. And most of our allies not named Germany are in a similar boat. We just need to take the L there, and try to reduce emissions elsewhere with and nuclearization and electrification of the grid and transport system.
At (EDIT: very) optimistic estimate, we could have nuclear + hydro generate a larger portion than fossil fuels of our newly installed power during the 10th plan (1975-1979)
Well, burning methane generated from decaying biological manner to reduce its GHG potential is a thing, as is doing that burning in a turbine for power. Problem is, while the Cow Gulags superficially resemble a bioreactor (lots of methane generation in an enclosed space), the need to keep a healthy oxygen level in there too means the methane is probably too dilute to reliably burn. That's a no-go.
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Sounds interesting. It reminds me of Mouli's old quest when you were the EPA, which was a really interesting concept.
- Location
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Anyways, rough hydropower math:
Amur and Turkestan will produce a total of 450 power, 140 non-ferrous, and potential for one 150+ steel mill. We'll probably need the mill and 140 ferrous is high, but at I estimate 100 of that will go to satisfying domestic demand in one plan and hence represent further "generation" in terms of us not having to consume power we'd other wise need for building conventional smelting enterprises. At ~1.4 electricity per unit non-ferrous that saves about 140 power, with perhaps another ~40 if we need that steel mill. So in total ~630 total power burden removed from our shoulders.
Amortized over a 5 year plan, that's 63 power per half-annum. For four infra dice locked in ... not excellent, but given it's clean power and comes with stabilization measures and the aluminum piles, not bad!
Amur and Turkestan will produce a total of 450 power, 140 non-ferrous, and potential for one 150+ steel mill. We'll probably need the mill and 140 ferrous is high, but at I estimate 100 of that will go to satisfying domestic demand in one plan and hence represent further "generation" in terms of us not having to consume power we'd other wise need for building conventional smelting enterprises. At ~1.4 electricity per unit non-ferrous that saves about 140 power, with perhaps another ~40 if we need that steel mill. So in total ~630 total power burden removed from our shoulders.
Amortized over a 5 year plan, that's 63 power per half-annum. For four infra dice locked in ... not excellent, but given it's clean power and comes with stabilization measures and the aluminum piles, not bad!
Not everyone. Mikoyan and Malenkov were relatively respectful of their predecessors. It was Voz and new guy Klimenko who disliked their predecessor's handling due to either ego (Voz) or horror at cronyism + centralization.
Woah, I see Red Meat for Masherov slowly climbed up to just two votes behind. Let me lay out my thoughts as to why it's a deeply suboptimal plan, in my opinion.
To sum the difference between the plans up, it goes very, very hard on the managers. Not only it cuts the funding towards the enterprises starting now, it also applies the policies for profitability retroactively, explicitly as a political attack - meaning that even if the enterprise is profitable now, if it was unprofitable at some point in the past quarterly report and is someone who Klim thinks will oppose him, it gets shut down. That is obviously not exactly good for economy, even if it thins out internal opposition. Also, these two measures compound - since cutting the funding makes Klim the enemy of the managers, he will obviously shut down more enterprises.
Now, you might think "Well, fuck the managers, they are practically capitalists, the bastards deserve it", but while this is an understandable position, I think trying to hold to it now to such an extent has a lot of anti-synergy with both our past actions and those being chosen within the plan. It's all rooted in the fact that managers are not some alien parasites that appear out of nowhere and that MNKh needs to fight - for all intents and purposes, the managers ARE the MNKh, so if we pick this hard of a fight with them, we are picking a fight with the entire ministry we're supposed to lead. This has problems on several levels.
As sort of zeroth level, this is, as the plan name implies, very much Masherovite politics. Klim, who is an Abramovite, is just not as well positioned to pull it off, even without considering whether it is beneficial to do so. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but if we wanted to take this approach, we really would be better off picking someone like Mitskevich or Nosilovsky.
Next, you might remember that back when were picking our approach to dealing with the corruption, we picked the slow, comprehensive course. Here's an excerpt from the description of that option:
Then, let's consider what actions Klimenko and thus we will be forced to take if we don't have any allies in the ministry. As he doesn't have much of an independent powerbase he could bring to bear, he will have to shift his effort to the party bodies and wield them against Smelyakov and the ministry from the outside. This, of course, won't be free and would of course be taken as a proof that the ministry as it currently is is too much to handle, and thus parts of it need to be cut off and parceled out to others - which is Masherov's position, so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that following Masherovite politics would lead to it. And here is where it comes in conflict with the plan goals - as was previously mentioned, resolving the problems with agriculture is mainly a question of political capital. But fighting the managers like this would also cost a lot of political capital, so we might very well not have enough for both goals - especially when you remember that "resolving agriculture" and "working against the ministry" are goals that are at cross-purposes! The party bodies we need to fight the ministry are under control of Masherov's faction, as he wants to use them to fight the ministry himself, but Masherovites are also the people who oppose our chosen agriculture policy of supporting the small producers and instead support agricultural SOEs. If we go with the Red Meat for Masherov, we might very well end up in a situation where we need their support to proceed with the investigations, but now have to water down reforms that help small farmers or perhaps even outright lose control of agricultural SOEs.
Instead, I think it's much better to be consistent with both our choice of a character and the choice of anti-corruption investigation. We play divide and conquer with the managers - Smelyakov might be able to organize HI ones against us and we choose to go against agricultural ones, but the rest will see Klimenko as a much more certain choice if he's not out to get their heads. We keep our problems within the house, slowly and comprehensively conduct the anti-corruption investigation with the support of the allied managers and use the political capital gained from it to push for our chosen course in agriculture. It would be much easier to justify our support for small producers in the SupSov if one of the managers goes "Okay, I don't give a fuck about agriculture, but the new leadership does, and I know a guy who knows a guy who has proof that one or the other agricultural SOE grossly misappropriated their subsidy funds, I'll get that proof and endear myself to the boss", and we then show that proof to the delegates.
Afterwards, closer to the end of the plan, once our position within the ministry has solidified and we have cleared it out of much organized opposition, we could look into other structural reforms that actually address the problems of manager overreach without useless purges or breaking the ministry apart.
Edit: Also, WoG from Discord on the possible courses of action.
I left out "be a centrist", but it's boring and this is not the character for it anyway.
To sum the difference between the plans up, it goes very, very hard on the managers. Not only it cuts the funding towards the enterprises starting now, it also applies the policies for profitability retroactively, explicitly as a political attack - meaning that even if the enterprise is profitable now, if it was unprofitable at some point in the past quarterly report and is someone who Klim thinks will oppose him, it gets shut down. That is obviously not exactly good for economy, even if it thins out internal opposition. Also, these two measures compound - since cutting the funding makes Klim the enemy of the managers, he will obviously shut down more enterprises.
Now, you might think "Well, fuck the managers, they are practically capitalists, the bastards deserve it", but while this is an understandable position, I think trying to hold to it now to such an extent has a lot of anti-synergy with both our past actions and those being chosen within the plan. It's all rooted in the fact that managers are not some alien parasites that appear out of nowhere and that MNKh needs to fight - for all intents and purposes, the managers ARE the MNKh, so if we pick this hard of a fight with them, we are picking a fight with the entire ministry we're supposed to lead. This has problems on several levels.
As sort of zeroth level, this is, as the plan name implies, very much Masherovite politics. Klim, who is an Abramovite, is just not as well positioned to pull it off, even without considering whether it is beneficial to do so. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but if we wanted to take this approach, we really would be better off picking someone like Mitskevich or Nosilovsky.
Next, you might remember that back when were picking our approach to dealing with the corruption, we picked the slow, comprehensive course. Here's an excerpt from the description of that option:
As you can see, it was made with the idea that we can wield parts of the ministry against other parts. Obviously, if we instead make an enemy of everyone in it, they will present a united front that will make a slow investigation into the entire institution enormously more complicated, because everyone will cover for everyone else. Moreover, the problem is compounded by the fact that this united front will have a general - in the last post, Smelyakov was rightfully called the largest internal threat, and if we make it obvious there's no compromise to be made with us, the managers and the ministry will have no choice but to unite behind him and invest all their political capital into his attempt to unseat Klimenko. And the thing is, Smelyakov has some chance of doing so even without united support - with it, it actually becomes a very distinct possibility, which would obviously be bad for a bunch of reasons. Even if that doesn't come to pass, he would still very much make a fight of it, making a complete mess both out of the ministry and our attempt to clear it.
Then, let's consider what actions Klimenko and thus we will be forced to take if we don't have any allies in the ministry. As he doesn't have much of an independent powerbase he could bring to bear, he will have to shift his effort to the party bodies and wield them against Smelyakov and the ministry from the outside. This, of course, won't be free and would of course be taken as a proof that the ministry as it currently is is too much to handle, and thus parts of it need to be cut off and parceled out to others - which is Masherov's position, so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that following Masherovite politics would lead to it. And here is where it comes in conflict with the plan goals - as was previously mentioned, resolving the problems with agriculture is mainly a question of political capital. But fighting the managers like this would also cost a lot of political capital, so we might very well not have enough for both goals - especially when you remember that "resolving agriculture" and "working against the ministry" are goals that are at cross-purposes! The party bodies we need to fight the ministry are under control of Masherov's faction, as he wants to use them to fight the ministry himself, but Masherovites are also the people who oppose our chosen agriculture policy of supporting the small producers and instead support agricultural SOEs. If we go with the Red Meat for Masherov, we might very well end up in a situation where we need their support to proceed with the investigations, but now have to water down reforms that help small farmers or perhaps even outright lose control of agricultural SOEs.
Instead, I think it's much better to be consistent with both our choice of a character and the choice of anti-corruption investigation. We play divide and conquer with the managers - Smelyakov might be able to organize HI ones against us and we choose to go against agricultural ones, but the rest will see Klimenko as a much more certain choice if he's not out to get their heads. We keep our problems within the house, slowly and comprehensively conduct the anti-corruption investigation with the support of the allied managers and use the political capital gained from it to push for our chosen course in agriculture. It would be much easier to justify our support for small producers in the SupSov if one of the managers goes "Okay, I don't give a fuck about agriculture, but the new leadership does, and I know a guy who knows a guy who has proof that one or the other agricultural SOE grossly misappropriated their subsidy funds, I'll get that proof and endear myself to the boss", and we then show that proof to the delegates.
Afterwards, closer to the end of the plan, once our position within the ministry has solidified and we have cleared it out of much organized opposition, we could look into other structural reforms that actually address the problems of manager overreach without useless purges or breaking the ministry apart.
Edit: Also, WoG from Discord on the possible courses of action.
I left out "be a centrist", but it's boring and this is not the character for it anyway.
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Heck, that sort of stuff even synergizes well with composting, which we'll need to do at industrial scales to deal with the soil exhaustion caused by chemical fertilizers in a couple decades.
Eh, not even close.
Remember, we're coming from a base where meat is a luxury food eaten on feast days only by most of the population. Getting to the point of Western Europe at the time - where meat and eggs might each be available once a week for most of the population - is a huge rise in meat production and not excessive. Getting to the point where meat is available once a day is a stage beyond that. And getting to the point modern China is at, where meat is eaten in all three meals in a day and where most of the meal is meat is a stage beyond that.
The key to environmentally responsible production is mainly to avoid the worst excesses. People who eat meat once a week aren't a problem, and I would be surprised if we've even gotten close to Western European diets yet, let alone to the point where average people eat meat a whole two times a week, which in the 1960s is pretty almost exclusively an American level of wealth. (Though poor sheep farming communities like the Falkland Islands at this time or Mongolia are exceptions.)
We have some ways to go before we'll reach present day levels of meat over-production. Particularly as alot of the intensification we'd be likely to be doing would be with less polluting meats like chicken.
So going crazy and going "increasing meat production now is accepting modern dysfunction into Soviet society" is not only very doomerist and actually making actually problematic levels of production likely to be reached, it is also likely to hold us back in the same way that our resistance to paved rural roads has held us back.
We can produce more meat now AND resist excessive production as inefficient and bad for the health of the working people later, because we aren't at the point of excess yet.
Regards,
fasquardon
[X] Plan Worker-Peasant Alliance
Terminator57
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Personally, what makes me prefer the Meat plan is the concern about the economic and social consequences of choosing []15+15% GNP for your plan. Indeed, slowing down the economy and full employment seems to risk.
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Both leading plans invest the same amount of resources into economic growth, the only difference is what share goes to centrally directed investment (us into whatever we want) vs. manager-directed (into enterprise expansions). It's all still the same amount going into spending of some form.
[X]Plan Even Keel
[X]Plan Red Meat for Masherov
[X]Plan Socialism with Boring Characteristics
I want those policies to apply Retroactively to clean out the rot from Voz
[X]Plan Red Meat for Masherov
[X]Plan Socialism with Boring Characteristics
I want those policies to apply Retroactively to clean out the rot from Voz
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I am not sure I get your meaning. If you have a problem with slowing down the economy at all, well, it's kind of necessary. Either we slow down the economy on our terms or we crash into it at full speed with even worse consequences. If you think 15+15 plan doesn't slow down the economy enough, both plans so have the same percentage of GNP invested into growth, and I am not sure why you think better funded enterprises would be worse for it than better funded ministry. It might be the opposite, though it's probably shakes out to about the same.
Everything that's really rotten is not going to fix their problems before the next quarterly report anyway - we're applying those policies from 1965 one way or the other, three months is not enough time to turn around if your enterprise is really falling apart. Is it really worth it to go after those enterprises that already did turn profitable by now, but had a bad quarter in 1963 or whatever? Economically speaking, that seems like an unnecessary pruning to me.
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MordredRaal
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[X] Plan Worker-Peasant Alliance
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This argument has convinced me. Implementing the policies retroactively will look like actively picking an ideological fight for little gain. However:
I am still NOT OK with taking a 15+15 plan at the same time as the agriculture target! Doing that will make agri join infrastructure and services in demanding a large amount of dice. Juggling all those three along with keeping LCI well funded for gas, Numbers Go Up, and computer projects when we'll have less than 40 resources per die on average seems like an insane order!
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I would argue otherwise, a 15+15 plan synergizes pretty well with focusing on agriculture and services, both have low dice costs and have received practically no investment compared to heavy and light industry the past 40 years. Its important to remember that the 15 going to reinvestment funds are still going towards expanding, renovating enterprises and founding new ones. And that the money in reinvestment funds is biased towards heavy and light industry since those sectors are so large in our economy.
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Services maybe, but even Agriculture actions are often fifty or sixty resources per die. The 15% the enterprises get goes to a useful purpose, but one with only limited contribution to helping US reach OUR goals. And at least our existing LCI enterprises can expand themselves, but we're still getting urgent and really expensive computer modernization projects every couple years. At least the oil/gas stuff is relatively cheap.
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Klimenko probably isn't going to offer us anywhere near as many computation projects as Voz tbh, if ASU wasn't half done and did not have full employment he probably would have cancelled it, he has different priorities than Voz. And taking a look at our agri projects, most are only 40 RpT, not 50 or 60:
As you can see, all but one of our agri projects costs us 40 dice. And again, I would really like to emphasize that the state owned enteprises are essentially going to receive the same amount of money to reinvest as we will receive ourselves, and that most of that money will go to heavy industry and light industry, prioritizing what projects they think are most profitable since they probably care about that more than us especially considering the new guidelines. With that in mind I am not super worried about HI and LCI receiving less investment on our end compared to previous plans. Especially the former since we will be whacking it this turn and will want to avoid throwing money at Smelyakov, and have chosen a plan that has lower goals for them.
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True Klimenko probably won't come up with further grand plans for computerization, but I think (I REALLY hope) he will keep building new factories and not let computing tech fall behind. That would really suck if we did.
Of the three four 40 RpD actions we have (also []Bringing Land Under Cultivation), one was just a big survey that didn't actually build anything and the other three were considered trap options by most of the thread and even if they aren't one of them is just collectivization II and also doesn't (directly) build anything new and the last two are just expansions to cultivated land without changes to farming technique which will help absolute food yield yes but do almost nothing for profitability. Meanwhile, stuff that actually increases how much profit an individual farmer/worker makes like the 2nd generation herbicides are not cheap. Even the Moolags were 50 RpD and if we get to build more this plan they'll be at least that expensive.
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50 R is frankly still very cheap compared to practically anything in LCI and HI, the cheapest die in the former is 50 with the most expensive projects at 90 (and we had two of those compared to only one 80 Rpd option!), and 60 and 90 with HI. LCI and HI projects are just much more expensive than Agri any way you put it. Just to put things in perspective, last plan 30.73% of our budget went to infra, 20.15% to HI, 1.90% to Rocketry, 25.74% to LCI and only around 10.7% to Services and Agriculture each. Even if we put every single one of our free dice in all the agriculture projects from last turn (which I doubt we will do), if you distribute them somewhat equally among projects you would only get 16.55% of our budget invested in Agriculture (and this is putting 2 dice in herbicides just to increase average costs a bit). Heck, for the sake of your argument, even if you account for projects being 25% more expensive than they are currently, by replacing the costs from 40 to 50, we would only spend 18.6% of our budget assuming two of those 6+4 dice would go to the 80 RpD option. And again, that's by investing literally all of our free dice in agriculture, which I can't imagine we will do.
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