7 ms·

A sad trod through a common delusion of grandeur I see on the internet these days. If the Chilean control room was really ripped off of Star Trek, that's a litt

A sad trod through a common delusion of grandeur I see on the internet these days. If the Chilean control room was really ripped off of Star Trek, that's a little absurd and hilarious but moreover sad. On the flip side, I'm not sure how much I agree with its premise and conclusion. Sure, it's easy to mock technocommunism historically if you ignore the elephant in the room that is China. While not in the same category as old Soviet and LatAm attempts, all of the quaintly endearing anachronism fades away. What is to be made of China with respect to such a perspective?

eecc 7y ago
Yeah, I guess the same sort of delusion as of the neoliberals imagining to run society as a corporation (which is the other Blade Runner like variant of Cyber, the Cyberpunk.) But I don’t think they really believe their bullshit, I’m sure they’re 100% aware TINA is just rhetorical crap used to push their divestiture of the commons
shrubble 7y ago
China basically promised the people who are now in their 40s and 50s benefits that they will not get. This also happened in former Soviet countries. China has destroyed some of their environment, trading off building up industry for pollution. This also happened in former Soviet countries.
- OldManAndTheCpp 7y ago
  Are China's out-sized promises or environmental destruction more egregious than the same problems in the US or UK? The air pollution currently in China is pretty bad, but air pollution goes away pretty quickly after you turn off the coal plants, and oversized promises to pensioners seems like a pretty easy obligation to amend when you have total control over the state.
  - rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
    Where’s the money gonna come from? We’re talking eventually hundreds of millions of retirees. That’s never happened in human history before. If making good on pension promises was easy, the CCP would have done it by now.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >China basically promised the people who are now in their 40s and 50s benefits that they will not get. So just like the west with stagnant wages and pension systems in free fall, while healthcare, education, housing, student debt, etc rises?
- wazoox 7y ago
  You mean like lifting more than 300 millions people out of dire poverty? Chinese in their 40s and 50s rabidly defend their government, because it delivered. I bemoan lack of democracy, Xinjiang repression, pollution and all the rest; but the fact is that the past 30 years have been a success of unseen proportions for China.
  - shrubble 7y ago
    After the Cultural Revolution and after the Four Pests Campaign, there wasn't any other direction to go than up, for those who were still alive, that is. The Chinese were made poor by the Communist party and only rescued by moving away from the doctrine to something else.
  - novok 7y ago
    And the ones in their 60s remember half their family dying from the famine when they were children, especially the villagers who moved out. When you live in a country where any negative expression will get you killed, arrested, etc. You quickly only hear the positive voices.
- seamyb88 7y ago
  If you're going to (try to) attack Communism as an ideology, try criticising states who actually organise themselves in accordance with Communist ideology. China and (Stalin's) Soviet Union are not examples of such. There are more Billionaires in Beijing than in London. You have criticised a Capitalist country.
claudeganon 7y ago
That China experienced a revanchist revolution in the 1980s and moved to an authoritarian Capitalist model? While I know we’re treading into “No True Scotsman” territory here, I don’t think it’s controversial (not the least among historians) to say from the Deng era on, the Chinese communist project was supplanted and replaced with a State Capitalist mode.
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  While state capitalism is definitely a thing distinct different from free-market capitalism, I do get the sense that the two have some stylistically similar technoutopian overtures, and those overtures carry a lot more impact now when they come from a now top state-capitalist machine.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  How is that Revanchism? Tibet was kind of conquered 30 yeara ago and the claim over Tibet was a preexisting condition. They already were reclaiming all historical territory.
DoctorNick 7y ago
>What's fun about this piece is that it puts into perspective how absurd, unworkable, and thoroughly ripped off of Star Trek the Chilean control room was, which is thoroughly entertaining. Pretty presumptuous, considering how it was never really put into practice before Allende was murdered and Pinochet's brutal regime was installed by the CIA. Reminds me of a quote: “The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century – without exception – has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement – from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador – not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.” – William Blum
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  You're of course correct about the brutal coup and how genuinely dark it is a splotch on history (one of many during the time, to be sure). I may have spoken a little clumsily there, but I think that's what makes this black humor. The sad truth is that neither regime really had a fighting chance against the CIA geopolitical regime.
- NaggingGranpa 7y ago
  You give the CIA too much credit. Much of the armed forces and the civilian populace hated Allende and his policies. Pinochet was an opportunist who jumped on the bandwagon when it was already in motion. The CIA had it easy. In South Vietnam, under more adverse conditions, the CIA failed miserably.
lowdose 7y ago
Have you seen NSA Chief Keith Alexander's "Information Dominance Center" in Fort Belvoir, Virginia that was designed to look like the 'Starship Enterprise' spacecraft from Star Trek? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/the-us-army-star-trek-command-center-2013-9 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/the-us-...
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  Wow, I missed this. How cringe-inducing!
Iv 7y ago
(Disclaimer: I am an enthusiast of discussions around planned economy and wish we talked more about it instead of dismissing it as failed communism) China tried centrally planned economy. It resulted in tens of millions of death in the great famines of the 50s and 60s. Planned economy where a strong state and a market economy coexist, on the other hand, is a model that had success in many places. Not only China, but post-war France or South Korea had state plans but also economic freedoms. My opinion is that there was absolutely no way in the 70s and probably just the glimpse of a chance nowadays to have the processing power and the amount of information to manage all the details of a national economy. The emergent markets take care of all the information that can't be in the supercomputer of the central planning: that Bob's potatoes are tastier than Alice's. That Charles is more serious in his plumbing work than Yoshiko. You absolutely need an emergent system at that level. It is true, however, that on a national scale emergent systems can have bad behaviors. It all hinges on individual, local decisions. A policy can't really emerge. That's where you have a state to step in. South Korea, for instance, decided that it needed a steel industry, because it wanted to make warships. Market forces thought it made no sense to make steelworks so the government forced it. France decided to go nuclear on public funds because it anticipated the Algerian oil would become harder to get for geological and political reasons, but the market thought oil was cheap enough! And China is interesting today. I wish we looked further than its (obvious) authoritarianism and were able to look critically at its economic system. It is an oddity as it proposes a solution to blend communism and capitalism. In capitalism, the idea is that you can get dividends from your investments in a company and that you can buy and sell shares. That's 100% possible in China. In communism, the idea is that the means of production belong to the people. And, in China, the end owner of most big companies and of the biggest holding structures in the country is the state. Now to call it successful communist you have to believe that the Chinese government is representative of the will of the people, which I do not. But I also think that the system they implemented would world equally well if China was a democracy. Really, we need to consider the Chinese economic system separately from its political system. Use capitalism for the local day-to-day individual decisions and state-planned economy for the long-term global strategies. The invisible hand won't handle an energy transition or plan for a 20 year overhaul of the electric grid.
- chr1 7y ago

eecc 7y ago

Yeah, I guess the same sort of delusion as of the neoliberals imagining to run society as a corporation (which is the other Blade Runner like variant of Cyber, the Cyberpunk.) But I don’t think they really believe their bullshit, I’m sure they’re 100% aware TINA is just rhetorical crap used to push their divestiture of the commons

shrubble 7y ago

China basically promised the people who are now in their 40s and 50s benefits that they will not get. This also happened in former Soviet countries. China has destroyed some of their environment, trading off building up industry for pollution. This also happened in former Soviet countries.

OldManAndTheCpp 7y ago
Are China's out-sized promises or environmental destruction more egregious than the same problems in the US or UK? The air pollution currently in China is pretty bad, but air pollution goes away pretty quickly after you turn off the coal plants, and oversized promises to pensioners seems like a pretty easy obligation to amend when you have total control over the state.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  Where’s the money gonna come from? We’re talking eventually hundreds of millions of retirees. That’s never happened in human history before. If making good on pension promises was easy, the CCP would have done it by now.
coldtea 7y ago
>China basically promised the people who are now in their 40s and 50s benefits that they will not get. So just like the west with stagnant wages and pension systems in free fall, while healthcare, education, housing, student debt, etc rises?
wazoox 7y ago
You mean like lifting more than 300 millions people out of dire poverty? Chinese in their 40s and 50s rabidly defend their government, because it delivered. I bemoan lack of democracy, Xinjiang repression, pollution and all the rest; but the fact is that the past 30 years have been a success of unseen proportions for China.
- shrubble 7y ago
  After the Cultural Revolution and after the Four Pests Campaign, there wasn't any other direction to go than up, for those who were still alive, that is. The Chinese were made poor by the Communist party and only rescued by moving away from the doctrine to something else.
- novok 7y ago
  And the ones in their 60s remember half their family dying from the famine when they were children, especially the villagers who moved out. When you live in a country where any negative expression will get you killed, arrested, etc. You quickly only hear the positive voices.
seamyb88 7y ago
If you're going to (try to) attack Communism as an ideology, try criticising states who actually organise themselves in accordance with Communist ideology. China and (Stalin's) Soviet Union are not examples of such. There are more Billionaires in Beijing than in London. You have criticised a Capitalist country.

claudeganon 7y ago

That China experienced a revanchist revolution in the 1980s and moved to an authoritarian Capitalist model? While I know we’re treading into “No True Scotsman” territory here, I don’t think it’s controversial (not the least among historians) to say from the Deng era on, the Chinese communist project was supplanted and replaced with a State Capitalist mode.

yowlingcat 7y ago
While state capitalism is definitely a thing distinct different from free-market capitalism, I do get the sense that the two have some stylistically similar technoutopian overtures, and those overtures carry a lot more impact now when they come from a now top state-capitalist machine.
Nasrudith 7y ago
How is that Revanchism? Tibet was kind of conquered 30 yeara ago and the claim over Tibet was a preexisting condition. They already were reclaiming all historical territory.

DoctorNick 7y ago

>What's fun about this piece is that it puts into perspective how absurd, unworkable, and thoroughly ripped off of Star Trek the Chilean control room was, which is thoroughly entertaining. Pretty presumptuous, considering how it was never really put into practice before Allende was murdered and Pinochet's brutal regime was installed by the CIA. Reminds me of a quote: “The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century – without exception – has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement – from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador – not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.” – William Blum

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yowlingcat 7y ago
You're of course correct about the brutal coup and how genuinely dark it is a splotch on history (one of many during the time, to be sure). I may have spoken a little clumsily there, but I think that's what makes this black humor. The sad truth is that neither regime really had a fighting chance against the CIA geopolitical regime.
NaggingGranpa 7y ago
You give the CIA too much credit. Much of the armed forces and the civilian populace hated Allende and his policies. Pinochet was an opportunist who jumped on the bandwagon when it was already in motion. The CIA had it easy. In South Vietnam, under more adverse conditions, the CIA failed miserably.

lowdose 7y ago

Have you seen NSA Chief Keith Alexander's "Information Dominance Center" in Fort Belvoir, Virginia that was designed to look like the 'Starship Enterprise' spacecraft from Star Trek? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/the-us-army-star-trek-command-center-2013-9 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/the-us-...

yowlingcat 7y ago
Wow, I missed this. How cringe-inducing!

Iv 7y ago

(Disclaimer: I am an enthusiast of discussions around planned economy and wish we talked more about it instead of dismissing it as failed communism) China tried centrally planned economy. It resulted in tens of millions of death in the great famines of the 50s and 60s. Planned economy where a strong state and a market economy coexist, on the other hand, is a model that had success in many places. Not only China, but post-war France or South Korea had state plans but also economic freedoms. My opinion is that there was absolutely no way in the 70s and probably just the glimpse of a chance nowadays to have the processing power and the amount of information to manage all the details of a national economy. The emergent markets take care of all the information that can't be in the supercomputer of the central planning: that Bob's potatoes are tastier than Alice's. That Charles is more serious in his plumbing work than Yoshiko. You absolutely need an emergent system at that level. It is true, however, that on a national scale emergent systems can have bad behaviors. It all hinges on individual, local decisions. A policy can't really emerge. That's where you have a state to step in. South Korea, for instance, decided that it needed a steel industry, because it wanted to make warships. Market forces thought it made no sense to make steelworks so the government forced it. France decided to go nuclear on public funds because it anticipated the Algerian oil would become harder to get for geological and political reasons, but the market thought oil was cheap enough! And China is interesting today. I wish we looked further than its (obvious) authoritarianism and were able to look critically at its economic system. It is an oddity as it proposes a solution to blend communism and capitalism. In capitalism, the idea is that you can get dividends from your investments in a company and that you can buy and sell shares. That's 100% possible in China. In communism, the idea is that the means of production belong to the people. And, in China, the end owner of most big companies and of the biggest holding structures in the country is the state. Now to call it successful communist you have to believe that the Chinese government is representative of the will of the people, which I do not. But I also think that the system they implemented would world equally well if China was a democracy. Really, we need to consider the Chinese economic system separately from its political system. Use capitalism for the local day-to-day individual decisions and state-planned economy for the long-term global strategies. The invisible hand won't handle an energy transition or plan for a 20 year overhaul of the electric grid.

chr1 7y ago