1. Trevor Jackson
Dr. Robert Culp
ECON2106
2/16/12
Hazlitt – Time Will Run Back 1
Wonworld is strictly socialist with an absolutely centralized government. This
government creates Five-Year Plans and schedules every aspect of life accordingly. In the
attempt to create a classless society, what we find is that there are essentially four castes to the
society: Proletariat (75%), Deputies (10%), Protectors (1%), and Correction Camp Workers
(14%). To symbolize a person’s respective class, they are assigned a particular uniform and
color, license number, and rationing supply. While these classes are given a fixed income, the
purchasing power of their respective incomes is dramatically different. To eliminate the capitalist
concept of private property an absolute intolerance is exercised by the government and is
expected to be upheld by the population for fear of being sent to a correction camp. As a society
dominated by production and output, these castes have emerged likely due to the scarcity of
higher quality goods and preferential treatment which allocates who gets them. From birth, the
class of each member of the population is governed by the state. Marriage is forbidden and
families are assigned living quarters with one or more other families. To enforce these principles,
everyone is expected to read the newspaper propaganda daily, attend annual May Day
celebrations, spy on others to ensure their loyalty, and subject themselves to police monitoring at
all times.

2. The differences between our capitalist society and the socialist society in the story are
overwhelming. Most notably is the concept of private propery: in Wonworld not even your body
is your own property. It’s hard to even say that a person’s soul is theirs as they are conditioned
from birth to submit themselves for the greater good through an unconditional submission to the
concepts of work dominating life and output determining well-being. People are given goals and
then rewarded on their execution of those goals. If you are a farmer and do not produce enough
output to satisfy your own needs after achieving the governments quota, you simply starve as
punishment. Everyone is expected to selflessly work hard for the well-being of the masses and
the moment one refuses they are sent to a correction camp for being selfishly capitalist by caring
about their self at all.
In economics, we understand that people are innately motivated by incentives. As
a capitalist society we seek to use this to our advantage by making the profits of these incentives
greater so that the wealth we accumulate from our labor is spent on others, thus increasing their
wealth. We are constantly creating better ways of achieving our goals and maximizing the profits
of our labor. In this society, the government mandates what will be produced, when it will be
produced, how it will be produced, and who receives the fruit of the labor. In this system the
only incentive that one can find is fear. One works for fear of being sent to a correction camp,
one subjects themselves to the ways of their class for fear of being sent to a correction camp, one
starves for fear of being sent to a correction camp, one reads the newspaper for fear of being sent
to a correction camp, and one lives for fear of being sent to a correction camp. The only thing
that unifies the entire society is simply fear. Without fear, the masses gain consciousness against
their conditions and demand a better way of live. As a consequence of this, the society is never
truly better off. The only thing that changes is the methods for ensuring that nothing changes.

3. Wonworld is essentially what the world would be like if the Soviets had won
World War II and managed to purge the world of capitalism while keeping the essence of
socialism intact and universal. The most prominent example of this from the story is the dating
sytem the world now uses. A.M. becomes the marker for the calendar years- 1 A.M. being the
year of Karl Marx’s birth. Governed by fear, propaganda, and insecurity-even at the pinnacle of
power- this society was the essence of paranoia and effectively spread itself through the use of an
iron fist.