How many doctors does a barrel of oil buy?

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Friedrich Hayek

Recently it has been reported in the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro have struck a deal to exchange oil for doctors.

Is it really that simple? Is that all there is to it? Two presidents get together and exchange goods and the world is a better place? Is it really that easy to run a centrally controlled economy?

There is an interesting essay by Leonard Read entitled I, Pencil. In it Read goes into the immense complexity involved in producing the lowly and deceptively simple pencil. He discusses some of the literally hundreds of industries that have to come together in order to have the right goods and the right place at the right time to produce what is needed when it is needed.

I'm curious. How did Chavez and Castro determine that X amount of oil is worth Y amount of doctors? How did they determine that? What all did they take into consideration to arrive at the specific values they arrived at?

Did they consider how many mines are needed to obtain the raw materials to make the refined products such as steel other assorted materials used to make oil refineries? Did they consider how many machine shops are needed to produce all the machined goods that go into building all the facilities that produce oil? Or, how many machine shops are needed to produce the machines in the machine shops that produce the machined goods that build the facilities that produce oil?

How many trucks and trains are needed to transport the oil? How many factories are needed to produce the trucks and trains? How many machine shops to produce the machined goods that build the factories? How many machine shops to produce the machines for the machine shops that produced the machined goods for the factories?

How many trucks should be transporting oil vs. transporting cattle, produce, television sets, paper, machined goods from the machine shops and all the other assorted goods that need trucking in an economy? How does Chavez determine the allocation of trucks to goods that need trucking?

How did he determine the need for doctors? What kind of doctors does he need? How many general practitioners, surgeons, pediatricians and assorted other doctors that I couldn't even begin to name? How'd he determine this?

How does he determine what the doctors need? How many facilities? How many construction workers does he need for the facilities? How many raw materials? How many factories to produce the I-beams, sheet rock, sinks and faucets, tile flooring, door knobs, computers and everything else that make a medical facility? How many factories are needed to make the tools used to build medical facilities. How many factories to build the tools that build the tools?

How many trucks does he need to transport various medical supplies? How does the quantity of trucks trucking medical supplies impact the quantity of trucks available to truck oil? If he has trucks delivering medical supplies can he still deliver the oil? Can he still deliver the machined goods he needs to build refineries to even have oil to deliver?

How does Chavez determine how to allocate the time and production of machine shops to produce machined goods for oil vs. machined goods for trucks and trains vs machined goods for medical facilities?

He must know all these things. After all, he knows that X amount of oil is worth Y amount of doctors. How did he determine this?

Or, is it he has no idea and doesn't care? Maybe it just plays well in the media; the benevolent superhero buying doctors for the poor.

Some more questions.

Why is it that Chavez and Castro get to barter with one another on the socialists' international free-market but their people can't? Why is it their plans subordinate the plans of individuals?

The doctors that Castro is selling (or renting?), how are they chosen? Do they have any say in the matter? Or are they just another good like oil, cars and sheep, to be bartered on the socialists' international free-market?

Evidently the 'free' education the doctors received in Cuba wasn't so free after all. The people? Cogs in the wheel.

Also, one wonders, why doesn't Chavez hire doctors from the free market? I mean the real free market where individuals are free to bargain their own prices?

Oh wait, I know, because then he'd have to offer individuals valuable incentives to attract them to Venezuela.

Here we see the clear advantages that collective bargaining has over the free market. Or at least the clear advantages it has for ruling dictators.

One final question. Why doesn't the media ask any of these questions?