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Subject:
Economic Effectiveness of Soviet Labour Camp System
Roman
4/16/2005 1:23:41 PM
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| Ostensibly, one of the reasons the Soviet Union made such an extensive use of labour camps (instead of other forms of execution) was that they used convicted labour for various development projects. I am wondering, though, is this really economically effective to do? Consider:
1) You have to have guards to guard the camp and prisoners during work, while supplying both the guards and the prisoners in remote corners of the country.
2) Convicted labourers are unlikely to be particularly skilled at the job you assign them.
3) The convicted labourers cannot be trusted with much technology above the level of a spade and a shovel.
Thus you are supporting a huge population working with primitive tools that requires close supervision from project planners to do the job right and needs extensive guarding not to escape. This does not seem terribly economical to me - though I suppose it worked for the Soviets because they had a shortage of advanced machinery anyway.
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