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Kei capitalism ana tne c,ast under the central control of socialism, the two Germanys provided the world with an unintended experiment — testing which economic system is best for the environment.
Although Western leaders expected challenges, no one was prepared for the environmental devastation they found in East Germany. The “People’s Paradise” was a world of smoke-filled skies, abysmally polluted streams, dangerous drinking water, wnole villages contaminated with toxic wastes, and filthy, backward institutions, including unsanitary, ill-equipped hospitals.
While West Germany was producing Mercedes, BMWs, and AUDIs, East Germany was turning out noisy, oil-spewing, Trabants. These ugly, cumbersome cars had such toxic exhaust that when Car and Driver Magazine brought one into the U.S. for testing, EPA would not allow it to be driven on public streets.
These and other striking differences in results under the two systems were thus exposed. How could two countries, side by side, with virtually the same resources, same people, and same climate, produce such different results?
In West Germany, capitalism provided incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in the socialist East, obsolescence and inefficiency ruled. Socialism held East Germany and other countries behind the iron curtain in a technological time warp, making production of necessities the overriding priority and environmental quality a distant afterthought.
This outcome directly contradicts the predictions of socialist thinkers and those who see only evil in a system of open markets, profit and loss, and private property. But it is precisely these features of capitalism that protect and improve the environment.
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