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Yes, but another way to look at it, does China's micromanagement of the domestic flow of information result in more or less prosperity for their people? To misq

Yes, but another way to look at it, does China's micromanagement of the domestic flow of information result in more or less prosperity for their people? To misquote Hayek: communism is ultimately like telling every car where they should go rather than just putting up street-signs. * Please add to the debate rather than down-voting. Also Hayek wasn't musing about future autonomous cars, its a metaphor about how deciding what everyone in society should do/think doesn't scale.

bloak 7y ago
China's economy isn't by any stretch of the imagination "communist", but telling every car where to go is perhaps the right solution for the future, with computer science making it feasible and overpopulation making it desirable. However, I'm not sure that's in any way relevant to freedom of thought and freedom of information.
- geofft 7y ago
  And Google already does it: take a look at the stories of small towns wishing Google would stop routing people through a certain surface road and not knowing how to make that request. People trust their navigation apps because in general those apps have earned their trust. In general I am skeptical of "Communism is bad because the government will X" arguments where private industry is capable of doing X in as thorough a way for the average citizen's practical liberty and especially where private industry is already trying X.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    Yes communism is bad because of other reasons, and because it failed every single time it was tried. Btw. China is not a communist state for a long time.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Just run by a party that happens to identify themselves as the Communist Party China (CPC). Also the kids that still have to take Marxist and Mao theory in high school and university wish the country would admit to no longer being communist also.
      - StreamBright 7y ago
        Yeah but naming can be safely ignored. Examples: North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Ya, but just don't say China isn't communist in a Chinese public forum, you might offend a 同志.
pjc50 7y ago
> communism is ultimately like telling every car where they should go rather than just putting up street-signs. Ironically, in the capitalist future, each car will decide where to go through a computer system controlled by a single company instead.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Central control is efficient, if you can get the right signals to the controller, and do it fast enough to have a tight feedback loop. Humans alone can do none of this at scale, but modern computing can do the "feedback" part easily. It's now the "signals" and "controller" parts that need to be figured out.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Central control is efficient? Despite every government that tried to control the economy utterly failed? You will need to provide some solid source to claim this kind of things. The problem lies with the concept, not with how fast the loop happens.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Evidence is in mathematics. Central control is always more efficient, because control overhead is constant everywhere but the central node, where it grows linearly, whereas in fully distributed system overhead grows exponentially at each node. That's why anywhere you have more than a dozen of humans or even computer systems talking together, a hierarchy develops. Note that even companies fiercely competing on the market are internally run top down. And "vertical integration", so hot a topic in business nowadays, is essentially a code word for "centrally planned economy". Distributed systems have many interesting properties, like resilience / fault-tolerance and flexibility. But efficiency is not one of those properties, as evidenced by ridiculous amount of waste generated by the process of competition. Note that I'm not arguing the soviets were right and the world should be run from Moscow. I do however believe that spectacular failure modes of centrally planned economies were caused mostly by slow, incomplete and unreliable feedback loops, and not because the idea is inherently bad (it works for businesses pretty well). Moreover, I hate this clueless criticizing I frequently see that "centralized = bad", "distributed = good". Truth is, "distributed = wasteful", "centralized = efficient", but sometimes it's worth to be inefficient to get the benefits distribution brings.
onion2k 7y ago
does China's micromanagement of the domestic flow of information result in more or less prosperity for their people? The assumption you're making is that the Chinese government, or any government actually, optimizes for the prosperity of the people. Governments optimize for the prosperity of some people. In China that appears to be the ruling elite. In America it's the wealthy. Here in the UK it's the establishment (which is the existing upper class and the newly wealthy). I don't think any government genuinely has the interests of all the people at heart, but I am massively pessimistic and cynical so maybe it's me.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  The Chinese government knows that peace and quiet comes partly from improving the economic well-being of the general population. The vast majority of the Chinese population has seen dramatic improvements during the last 40 years.
- OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
  I agree, that's the central question: is a government for promoting the prosperity of it's people or perpetuating itself. Would be nice if they could do both but there are so many examples of governments choosing themselves over the greater good.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I think most governments do want to improve the life of the people, but it simply gets lost in the power struggle. You can't gain power without agreement from the king-makers and that agreement comes with strings attached. You also have to deal with the opposition and at least in American politics, they seem to be quite unreasonable at times. (Regardless which party is the opposition.)
  - ksec 7y ago
    This. And one reason why I don't think he is pessimistic at all, just the truth. Although the reason for that truth may not be what he thought it was. I wish more people watch the Documentary, Yes Minster, it perfectly describe modern days politics with sense of humour, and many of it are still true even if it was done some 40 years ago.

bloak 7y ago

China's economy isn't by any stretch of the imagination "communist", but telling every car where to go is perhaps the right solution for the future, with computer science making it feasible and overpopulation making it desirable. However, I'm not sure that's in any way relevant to freedom of thought and freedom of information.

geofft 7y ago
And Google already does it: take a look at the stories of small towns wishing Google would stop routing people through a certain surface road and not knowing how to make that request. People trust their navigation apps because in general those apps have earned their trust. In general I am skeptical of "Communism is bad because the government will X" arguments where private industry is capable of doing X in as thorough a way for the average citizen's practical liberty and especially where private industry is already trying X.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Yes communism is bad because of other reasons, and because it failed every single time it was tried. Btw. China is not a communist state for a long time.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Just run by a party that happens to identify themselves as the Communist Party China (CPC). Also the kids that still have to take Marxist and Mao theory in high school and university wish the country would admit to no longer being communist also.
    - StreamBright 7y ago
      Yeah but naming can be safely ignored. Examples: North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Ya, but just don't say China isn't communist in a Chinese public forum, you might offend a 同志.

pjc50 7y ago

> communism is ultimately like telling every car where they should go rather than just putting up street-signs. Ironically, in the capitalist future, each car will decide where to go through a computer system controlled by a single company instead.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Central control is efficient, if you can get the right signals to the controller, and do it fast enough to have a tight feedback loop. Humans alone can do none of this at scale, but modern computing can do the "feedback" part easily. It's now the "signals" and "controller" parts that need to be figured out.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Central control is efficient? Despite every government that tried to control the economy utterly failed? You will need to provide some solid source to claim this kind of things. The problem lies with the concept, not with how fast the loop happens.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Evidence is in mathematics. Central control is always more efficient, because control overhead is constant everywhere but the central node, where it grows linearly, whereas in fully distributed system overhead grows exponentially at each node. That's why anywhere you have more than a dozen of humans or even computer systems talking together, a hierarchy develops. Note that even companies fiercely competing on the market are internally run top down. And "vertical integration", so hot a topic in business nowadays, is essentially a code word for "centrally planned economy". Distributed systems have many interesting properties, like resilience / fault-tolerance and flexibility. But efficiency is not one of those properties, as evidenced by ridiculous amount of waste generated by the process of competition. Note that I'm not arguing the soviets were right and the world should be run from Moscow. I do however believe that spectacular failure modes of centrally planned economies were caused mostly by slow, incomplete and unreliable feedback loops, and not because the idea is inherently bad (it works for businesses pretty well). Moreover, I hate this clueless criticizing I frequently see that "centralized = bad", "distributed = good". Truth is, "distributed = wasteful", "centralized = efficient", but sometimes it's worth to be inefficient to get the benefits distribution brings.

onion2k 7y ago

does China's micromanagement of the domestic flow of information result in more or less prosperity for their people? The assumption you're making is that the Chinese government, or any government actually, optimizes for the prosperity of the people. Governments optimize for the prosperity of some people. In China that appears to be the ruling elite. In America it's the wealthy. Here in the UK it's the establishment (which is the existing upper class and the newly wealthy). I don't think any government genuinely has the interests of all the people at heart, but I am massively pessimistic and cynical so maybe it's me.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
The Chinese government knows that peace and quiet comes partly from improving the economic well-being of the general population. The vast majority of the Chinese population has seen dramatic improvements during the last 40 years.
OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
I agree, that's the central question: is a government for promoting the prosperity of it's people or perpetuating itself. Would be nice if they could do both but there are so many examples of governments choosing themselves over the greater good.
Mirioron 7y ago
I think most governments do want to improve the life of the people, but it simply gets lost in the power struggle. You can't gain power without agreement from the king-makers and that agreement comes with strings attached. You also have to deal with the opposition and at least in American politics, they seem to be quite unreasonable at times. (Regardless which party is the opposition.)
- ksec 7y ago
  This. And one reason why I don't think he is pessimistic at all, just the truth. Although the reason for that truth may not be what he thought it was. I wish more people watch the Documentary, Yes Minster, it perfectly describe modern days politics with sense of humour, and many of it are still true even if it was done some 40 years ago.