Comments on: Ira Levin and This Perfect Day

By: Michael R. Brown

Michael R. Brown — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:42:01 +0000

It’s worth noting that Levin wrote Rand a very brief fan letter in 1950, reprinted in “The Letters of Ayn Rand.” She replied just as briefly.

By: Lou Gignac

Lou Gignac — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:56:34 +0000

I just read the book about a month ago so this article is perfectly timed. The only way for this command economy to work the way that it did is that the “family members” were drugged through their treatments to keep them docile and compliant. With the exception of the “sick” and “incurables,” all of the people did their duty without any question of the instructions or shirking of the tasks. It was the epitome of blind obediance. There were very few consumer goods available because their was no private ownership. The TV was in the community recreation room, the coveralls were issued from the supply rooms, the bikes were at the bike corral, the food was synthetic “total cakes” with all of the nutrients.
With the limited amount of so-called consumer goods, the elimination of shirking and questioning through drug induced compliance, they may have been able to eliminate the calculation problems normally associated with this type of society. If not, a bunch of people could turn 62 early and be done away with… also normally associated with this type of society.
My greatest fear is that the mad scientists in the current social engineering department read this book and get ideas for the next perfect society. I believe that affirmative action policy may have been spawned by Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron.”

By: Paul Stephens

Paul Stephens — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:26:07 +0000

I was always skeptical of that claim by Hayek and others that a “command economy” couldn’t work because it didn’t have market prices. I actually had the opportunity to ask Hayek about that during office hours when he was a visiting professor at UCLA. His answer didn’t satisfy. All he could point out is that the Soviet Union did use existing market prices (for example, of oil, wheat, or whatever it was exporting) to price its own products on the world market. I didn’t press him, or argue against that (since it’s obviously true), but a command economy (“gangster capitalism”) is precisely what exists in one dominated by corporate monopolies and cartels like our present system. Yes, it is failing, and very costly and inefficient for all participants or “stakeholders,” but that’s not to say it’s going to collapse from within or anything.
I’ve been reading a book of interviews with the Nazi generals after World War II, as well as some other revisionist history. They claimed that Hitler’s main mistake was assuming that the Soviet command economy couldn’t produce quality weapons or other industrial products. It worked very well, particularly when under attack by foreign armies!

By: Ymbel

Ymbel — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:15:11 +0000

I wonder if the makers of ‘The Matrix’ movies drew some inspiration from this novel. And it is true that the “system” of elites do look out for ‘misfits’ within their ranks. I remember a person that was in the army relating his expierence to me about how his acting out and rebelious nature was eventually recruited for promotion into the higher ranks of the system.

By: P.M.Lawrence

P.M.Lawrence — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:51:34 +0000

This is not, alas, the only example of Levin's naïveté about economics that might be cited from This Perfect Day. How does he imagine that the command economy of the Family could produce even the modest prosperity it does, much less endure for more than a hundred years, with no freer economies anywhere in the outside world large enough to prop it up by providing it with prices to imitate? He seems to grasp that the economy of a place like the island of Liberty would be depressed. But everything we know about economics tells us that the economy of even such a place as that would be more prosperous than the economy of the Family.

That would actually be quite easy to set up, complete with less prosperity on the island. On the one hand, it would be easy to provide the island with inadequate resources, either in choosing it that way to begin with or by secretly drawing its surpluses away. On the other hand, command economies with few external threats to meet really only have opportunity costs, and all that population control could easily keep numbers well below diminishing returns; think Korea or Japan in the Hermit Kingdom days. There might also be an element of Palace Economy to it, in which a command sector is subsidised in kind by a larger subsistence sector (that used to happen in the USSR, which was partly carried by people feeding themselves off smallholdings).

By: Dan

Dan — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 01:39:05 +0000

I read this book a long time ago as a paperback. It is one of the few modern novels that has stuck in my mind all these years (Catch 22 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest being the major others). For a while, when I would be treated to some drivel by a boss or somebody who knew what was best for me, my response was “Thank Uni”. It’s probably a good thing for me that they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

By: R.J. Moore II

R.J. Moore II — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:08:53 +0000

I read this book, it was interesting. I really liked how it ended.
It reminded me of Hazlitt’s ‘Time Will Run Back’ from the bottom of the pyramid.

By: Roderick T. Long

Roderick T. Long — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:33:42 +0000

Incidentally, Rand writes about Levin in The Romantic Manifesto, where she expresses admiration for A Kiss before Dying but distaste for Rosemary's Baby. She doesn't discuss his other works.

By: AubreyHerbert

AubreyHerbert — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:57:18 +0000

Got it. Epic read. Couldn’t put it down. Classic.