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I read a fascinating thing somewhere about how Communist Russia had a school of thought that was exactly that - that you could see the economy as an equation to
by analognoise 8y ago
I read a fascinating thing somewhere about how Communist Russia had a school of thought that was exactly that - that you could see the economy as an equation to be solved, and they tried their hardest to solve it.
There were a number of issues, including getting good data on production (why tell the truth if you'll be killed or demoted for not meeting your production quota?) and that there wasn't a mechanism that allowed sufficient granularity into the types of items produced which led to all kinds of weird excesses (they mentioned pipes, specifically: that you could get a ton of some standard sizes, but others that would have to be recalibrated for and so would slow down production were simply not made, but the numbers only showed "growth in industrial pipe" - that kind of thing.
The idea was that the system was too complex to really turn into a system of equations, so the free market one out.
The article then theorized that a place like China, without any privacy scruples and with a semi-centrally planned economy, might actually be able to get enough data to create and solve that equation.
I wish I could find the article for you, it had some really interesting historical references and links to economic thought in that kind of planned system I think you'd find fascinating. Maybe some other HN'er knows what I'm talking about!
- schoen 8y agoYou might want to start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem I think I might have seen a version of the article you're referring to, but I don't remember when or where.
- ianleeclark 8y agoI'm not familiar with that specific article, but the idea you're brushing up against is that of the planned economy. There was recently a book released (that I've yet to read) that concerns the modern viability of a planned economy and looks to megacorporations to prove the viability. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38914131-the-people-s-republic-of-walmart https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38914131-the-people-s-re...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 49531 8y agoAnother fascinating read on the subject is Towards a New Socialism: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/ http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/ It's a really interested look at planned economies taking into account the updates in computer technology. It's also worth noting that while the Soviet Union wasn't perfect, for most of its history, income inequality was about 10-1 (extremely low), and inflation was virtually unheard of.
- analognoise 8y agoIf everyone has no income, that would make inequality exactly zero, I guess. You also can't inflate zero... What I'm saying is that I think you're leaving out some key aspects of this analysis.
- pas 7y agoThe problem is that there was an unofficial currency, party membership reputation, and the whole state and society played that zero sum game. This took a toll on ... things (income, wealth, health, education, etc.).
- pas 7y agohttps://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty... maybe?