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One thing I don't see mentioned here is how miserable a centrally-planned economy is for the people living in it. My parents lived during the heyday of the Sovi
by Asooka 9y ago
One thing I don't see mentioned here is how miserable a centrally-planned economy is for the people living in it. My parents lived during the heyday of the Soviet Union and it was pretty awful.
As an example, let's say you want to go and buy shoes. You go to the shoe store and you buy a pair in your number. You don't actually get to choose, the shoes you can buy have already been made for you, you just have to pay for them the planned price you're expected to pay for the pair of shoes. It's also planned when these will wear out and you'll need to go buy a new pair. In fact, all the pairs of shoes you'll need to buy for the next five years have been planned.
You want something else than brown shoes? Fuck you (except if you're high enough the totem pole that you get a choice between brown and black).
You want high-quality leather shoes? Fuck you.
You want to start your own shoe factory? Fuck you, the state owns all the factories.
You want to make your own shoes with leather? Fuck you, all the leather usage is planned centrally by the state using statistics.
You want to raise your own cow on your own land to have your own leather? Fuck you, fuck you and fuck you - you don't get to own land, or have cows. The state owns all the land and all the cows. In fact, the state has already planned all the usage of the leather it will get from killing cows that are yet to even be born.
And shoes are just one good among many. If the state determines only 10% of the population gets to ride a bicycle, it will produce exactly that amount of bicycles. Central planning never speculatively overproduces, or even innovates, because that hinges on thinking you can sway the market this way or that. You think "hey, I bet people will really want to buy wine-red shirts, instead of white striped shirts", so you try it out and you capture part of the market. Central planning can't account for people coming up with ideas in the middle of a 5-year planning cycle.
Central planning is also a form of totalitarianism. Every single totalitarian system in history has always pivoted (if it didn't start as) to a form of serfdom, with all benefits going to the people on top. It doesn't matter if it's a king, or "The Party", C-level management always looks out for themselves first. A state with total power is a really shitty place to live in for most subjects.
That said, you could probably have some sort of rationally chosen economy just for the state's own needs, i.e. the state takes care of the roads, so it needs this much asphalt, so taking a survey of the available factories, it should order from this and that factory for maximum quality at minimum price. Something like an alternative to public bids.
But a fully centrally planned economy only works with robotic workers that never ever consume or buy anything unplanned. You want to know why corruption was so pervasive? Because people want something more than only being allowed to buy thin brown leather shoes, blue jeans and white striped shirts. Centrally planned economy is something like India's caste system on steroids.
If you still think central planning is a good idea, please talk to some people who lived in the USSR, they're about 50-60 years old today and can still tell you good stories. Some of them speak good English. Then think really hard how you'll make sure your proposed central planning system won't devolve to that level of corruption.
- thehardsphere 9y agoI don't understand why this comment is downvoted. These are features of central planning of the entire economy that are not going to go away just because the planners have better computers that can do fancier math with strong artificial intelligence. The article even explicitly discusses some of these problems, which is why it's TL;DR is merely "maybe" and not "LET'S DO IT!" Those of you who are enamored with the idea that it's all going to play out differently just because you can give everybody smartphones should at least acknowledge that you're advocating for a system that has devolved to unpleasant tyranny every time that it has been tried, and at least attempt to explain how the technology you're love is going to make those problems go away.
- Asooka 9y agoI think my coarser language might have prompted the downvotes, but I didn't see another way to get the point across. It's really hard to explain how it works to people who haven't lived it themselves. A lot of people are also entirely too optimistic about politicians doing what's good for the people without any checks and balances in place, and I don't mean just people here or there, this seems universal. Also, in fact, lots of people liked central planning. Yes, you didn't have a choice, but you had a completely guaranteed life. As long as you remained loyal to The Party and as long as enough raw resources were being mined, theoretically the entire supply chain was planned and guaranteed. You just had to do your part. UBI is talked a lot about these days and central planning is UBI on steroids. Sort of a Uniform Total Income scheme. Some people really like that idea - they just want a stable secure life. I'm sure you can think up of many more examples where people want their life to be guaranteed and are willing to give up choice for security, and they really are happy in that environment. It almost kind of worked out in practice, if you didn't mind queuing up at 5am at the general store to be one of the first in, so you could grab one bag of milk (one allowed per family per day, bring your daily coupon if you want it), because we didn't actually manage to produce enough milk for everyone to have a bag of milk. Even though we actually have enough land and cows to do so. Because some higher ups are skimming part of the milk, because they want more than one bag per day. Sorry, I'm starting to go bitter again. Even though I've seen the tail end of what central planning causes, I'm still up for UBI, actually. Social programs are needed for a healthy society, it's just that anything taken to extremes usually ends up badly. Mostly because you can't take it to the extreme without the use of total power. This can be the central argument against many such extremes: "If your idea requires or results in a person or group of people wielding total power over the rest of the population, then it will inevitably end up in a form of serfdom/slavery". Years after communism ended a colleague of my mother's travelled to Spain (IIRC) wanting to see how oppressed the people in a capitalist country are. Before he left, he still believed in the central ideas of communism and central planning. After he came back he pretty much said "Fuck central planning, we didn't lose because the dirty capitalists fought us, we lost because our shit doesn't fucking work".