Since "planning" models are inadequate and feedback from consumer value scales is unavailable, socialist "planning" must be directed, not toward consumer satisfaction, but toward ends chosen by the planners, based on their subjective judgments. The ends of human action in the "planned" economy are thus divorced not only from market requirements, but also from objective moral standards. Long-range plans therefore tend to be undermined quickly by the vicissitudes of political conditions. If planners are to retain power in this unstable climate, they must allocate resources to short-term projects with immediate, visible positive results. Ironically, socialist governments, despite their great size and power, fail to satisfy a key function of government identified early in this section—viz., providing a stable, predictable environment where long-range investments can bear fruit (pp. 5.2:2-5).

The emphasis on immediate results causes highly durable factors—i. e., land and long-term capital goods—to be undervalued by planners. Hence fewer resources are allocated to the capital structure, especially the most durable capital goods; eventually, that structure becomes depleted, and productivity declines. (Regarding capital investment and labor productivity, see pp. 4.8:17-8.) For the same reason, planners tend to squander land resources or risk catastrophic damage to them in order to realize their short-term goals expeditiously. In Eastern Europe, the long-range effects of such policies remain visible in strip mining, pollution, and especially the Chernobyl disaster—all posing levels of environmental destruction (including high costs in human health and mortality) dwarfing any damage occasioned by Western economies.