The least reasonable part of the novel so far is that competition in the economic market does not exist in the book. This doesn’t hold any water in all actuality, and is all fantasy. Today I’m going to dive into the details as to why this doesn’t work.
The first major point I need to bring up is product quality; in a world where the government owns everything and there isn’t any competition, there is no pressure to develop new products for the consumer to use. A good example of where this is essential is in the video game market, particularly a decade or two ago before Playstation and Nintendo separated into their own nieces (Xbox doesn’t count). Back in the early days of video games, the only reason the game companies were pushing for better graphics and hardware and advancements in the technology was because they were competing, not just with each other but with other forms of entertainment. If all product output was controlled by Big Government, then there would be little to no need for advancement in each individual field. There wouldn’t be any companies trying to outperform each other. The reason consoles kept getting more and more powerful is because each one was a leg above the other. Playstation made the PS2 the most innovative system, not because they felt like it, but because they wanted to drive as many people to their company to buy their product instead of the competition’s to make more money.
There is not even competition to see which employee does the best work. The book assumes that everyone does there best work, but in no socialist or communist world is that a reasonable expectation. (I think that) Human nature is to be efficient and/or lazy. There needs to be either positive or negative reinforcement causing us to want to do something. The reason one goes to work every day is because he has a need that he needs to fulfill. He will do quality work, or else he will be fired and won’t be able to fulfill his need anymore. Basically, in our caveman brains, do good work = money = good, do bad work = no money = bad. In a socialist world, it doesn’t matter how good your work is, so: do bad work = money = good. Because only a select few are going to give it their all in this society, the majority of people will not do good because there is no punishment for doing poor work, and if everybody does poor work, nothing will be done properly, and soon every government function cripples and dies. I can almost guarantee you that if everyone in the population was suddenly whisked away to a socialist “utopia†as described in the book, it would crumble within the year.
In conclusion, there is no such thing as a socialist utopia where the people are equal and happy simultaneously. Look at every communist nation in history: none of them had functional economies, happy people, or lasted very long.