The Beauty of Socialism—Part I I’ve always believed that, at its core, socialism is a great idea. I mean, on paper it seems perfect: everyone works, everyone eats. Seems pretty fair to me. Putting the promise to practice, though, gets a little tricky. As I’m sure you know China is a socialist country with a population of about 1.3 billion people. I can tell you from personal experience, that’s a whole lotta people. And they usually all get on the bus at the same time. The problem with being one of that last bastions of true communism (let’s give it up for Cuba!) and having over a billion inhabitants, is that it gets really, really hard to find jobs for all those people. The result is that many jobs are created that don’t really serve much of a purpose. In the next few articles, I’d like to highlight a few of those. The basic premise behind employment in China is ‘Why hire just one when three will do?’ It runs contrary to our capitalist notions, but when you figure all the people who have to have jobs, you can see why they start doubling up. China is a union-workers dream: they hire lots of people, don’t ask them to work much, and it’s almost impossible to get fired. I went to visit a friend of mine at work, and we sat in the office and talked for about two hours. She didn’t get a lick of work done, and her boss really didn’t care. She said most days she spends her time surfing the internet. Gee, that’s tough. You see, the beauty of socialism is that you don’t have to be efficient! If anything, socialism is anti-efficiency, kind of like American Labor Unions. When you become more efficient, you use less resources to do more work, and that just puts people out of work! Since everyone with hands is promised a job in China, they actually go to great lengths to create meaningless jobs and lower the level of efficiency! The democrats would love this country. Let’s take a look at the workers at the grocery store. First of all, you never have to wait in line to check out, because every check-out aisle is manned (or more accurately, womanned) constantly. Even if there’s no one in the store, there will be attendants at all 18 lines. Second, we have the aisles. On average you will find 3 workers per aisle (I once counted 7). At first glance you may think ‘My! What a helpful place!’ You may think that, but you’d be wrong. You see, they aren’t actually there to help you, and if you ask for help, they won’t be able to give it. I know because I tried once. I had a simple task: I was looking for butter. Rather than wander around for who knows how long, I thought I’d ask one of the many attendants if she could point me in the direction of butter. To make sure I was understood, I brought a Chinese-English dictionary and bookmarked the page with butter on it. A few of the attendants wouldn’t even talk to me, and when I finally found one who would, she looked at the word, shook her head and looked confused. Apparently she had no idea what butter was. Not to be deterred, I continued in my search. I seemed to get the feeling from many of the workers that if it wasn’t on their aisle, they didn’t know where it was. One woman diligently searched through the toothpaste aisle only to conclude there was no butter there. I finally came across a woman who seemed to know what she was doing. After seeing the word butter, she nodded sagely, and called out to a woman on another aisle. She shouted something back, and another woman from across the way chimed in. Taking me by the elbow, the woman guided me to another aisle where another woman proudly presented me with . . . a bottle of soy sauce. Not wanting to disappoint them, I smiled broadly and took the bottle of soy sauce. Then, walking around the corner I rolled my eyes and headed for the check out. As luck would have it, I spotted the butter on my way out. Supermarket workers are also fiercely territorial. I don’t know if they execute you for deserting your post or what, but trying to get a worker to leave their aisle is like trying to get William Shatner to take off his toupee—it just ain’t happening! When I did happen to find a worker who would (she was wearing a purple smock—no doubt denoting her status as a ‘Roving’ worker), she was chastised by another worker when she tried to lead me down the aisle that I needed! The chastiser (is that even a word?) shooed the other away and showed me the way. It was then, on that very aisle, that I learned what their job was. As near as I can tell, their job is to watch you very, very closely, and when they see you reaching to take something off the shelf, they dart in, grab it for you, and put it in your cart. Then, before you even know what’s happening, the other workers on the aisle slip in and rearrange the product to make it look like you hadn’t touched a thing. It’s kind of eerie, actually. When you look around a Chinese supermarket, nothing is out of place—it looks like a supermarket off tv where everything is always neat and tidy and perfect-looking. Speaking of neat and tidy, there is also a clean-up detail in every supermarket. They work their way through the store, mopping as they go. When they reach one end, they start all over again. Your average clean-up crew will consist of 4-5 members. One member will be on mop duty. At least one, sometimes two, will be on cardboard box fanning duty. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: they use cardboard boxes to fan the floor dry. I guess it’s safer than trusting people to notice those yellow caution signs they use in America, and it lets them hire more people. Remember: they key here is not efficiency. Completing our cleaning crew is at least two people who get paid to stand around and watch. The Chinese people love to stand around and watch stuff—they’ll watch anything: people mopping, old men playing mahjong, kids peeing on the side of the street—anything. I blame it on poor television programming. But I digress. Due to the large number of people needing employment, the government has passed laws to help create jobs. That’s not so strange; even our government does that. What’s strange are the kinds of laws they pass. For example, in China if you bring in any equipment that helps increase productivity or modernizes your process, you’re also required by law to create two additional positions and fill them before you can start using that equipment! I can just imagine how a conversation like that would go: Manager 1: Our floors are looking dirty, what’s the problem? Manager 2: Well, the floor cleaner is doing the best she can, but being down on her hands and knees is slowing her down. Manager 1: Why don’t we give her a mop? Manager 2: We’d have to get permission for the requisition of advanced technology equipment, and we’d have to hire two additional workers. Manager 1: If it’ll get those floors cleaner, then do it! Manager 2: But what jobs will we give to the two new workers we’ll have to hire? Manager 1: Let them fan the floor! Manager 2: We already have floor-fanners! We hired them when we gave the check-out clerk an abacus. Manager 1: Well then…um…just tell them to stand around and…uh… Manager 2: Supervise? Manager 1: Yeah! That’s it! Supervise! Tune in next week when we continue our examination of the beauty of socialism. Or, as I like to call it: Affirmative Action on Crack!