On the Price of the "Free Gifts" of Nature

Abstract

In connection with the development of cost-accounting relationships among individual enterprises within the national economic turnover of all the values and the requirements of socialist competition among the working people of our country, of late, more and more frequently, the need arises for appraising, in the costs of production of competing collectives, such natural wealth as land, water, minerals, etc. Nature has distributed them far from evenly among the various regions; and this strongly distorts the results of the competition even in terms of the most important indices, such as the labor productivity and profitability of the activities of the various collectives and enterprises. This also lowers the effectiveness of bonus funds which, not utilized where they are most needed, are wasted without results.