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Socialism is a bit of an over-loaded word. Most people use it to speak about market economies in western Europe with heavily funded public health, wellness, an
by koalaman 9y ago
Socialism is a bit of an over-loaded word. Most people use it to speak about market economies in western Europe with heavily funded public health, wellness, and education programs which intend to promote democratic constitutional goals such as equal opportunity for citizens.
Planned economies such as the USSR clearly impinge on human liberty, tend to be undemocratic, and are usually very inefficient, and I think almost everybody would agree with you that they aren't a good alternative to the current U.S political and economic system.
- etplayer 9y ago>Planned economies such as the USSR clearly impinge on human liberty, tend to be undemocratic, and are usually very inefficient I disagree that they impinge on human freedom, at least I don't think they do compared to capitalist economy. I see no reason why they should be undemocratic. And you'll find nobody in favour of a 5 year plan as the USSR had; there have been massive advances in economic planning methods, as elaborated by Cockshott et al. I love the irony of saying it is "inefficient" especially when we compare it to how currently under capitalism firms compete by doing the same research, repeating the same mistakes, often extremely inefficiently, in the name of profit. This is one of the most inefficient things I have heard of. The USSR planning model isn't a good alternative. But I think that some economic planning model, whatever it may be, should not be ruled out, especially as it can feature as part of lower-stage Communism.
- tpallarino 9y agoIt's hard to determine how much of something to produce in a planned economy. It's inefficient because the market is incredibly good at figuring this out through the price mechanism.