Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, declining population made the station uneconomic to maintain.
1/ In Bitcoin is Hope @Breedlove22 writes:
โEntropy is uncertainty, randomness, and disorder; it naturally pours forth from reality, and destroys the works of man over timeโ
His words reminded me of a vivid example of entropy's destructive power I encountered in Russia.๐
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, declining population made the station uneconomic to maintain.
Forces of nature had gradually eroded its concrete carcass and peppered its crevasses with weeds.
Visitors had transformed it with graffiti, iconoclasm, and litter.
Formidable resources went into its construction, yet its abandonment shows that it ultimately failed to deliver on its promise.
Normally, the high sunk costs of construction make this rare: buildings can usually be profitably repurposed when economic conditions change.
But in Kirovskโs case the upheaval was too great.
Socialist states lack the market signals needed to determine where and how to invest.
As a result, capital ends up being diverted to the wrong places and must eventually be reallocated.
The country has many problems, but life for most is much better than it was under socialism.
Old buildings hint at the painful economic adjustment that was needed to progress.
Rather than manifesting itself in the form of abandoned buildings, malinvestment mainly operates in subtler ways.
Warped incentives encourage us to take on high-paying yet spiritually unfulfilling jobs.
Inflation keeps us running to stay in the same place.
This high level of interventionism distorts the price signals that, in a free market, would align our financial incentives to the social benefit we generate
But for too many of us, the value we generate for others through our jobs is unclear.
We carry on doing them because distorted financial signals tell us we should.
