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> and have the central government plan around all the hard problems in society..." this is nonsense, consider Walmart, the US military, and nuclear power. Walm

> and have the central government plan around all the hard problems in society..." this is nonsense, consider Walmart, the US military, and nuclear power. Walmart is proof that centralized planning can have extremely successful results. The US military has no publicly known catastrophes in nuclear power. Nuclear power plants are too expensive (both upfront costs and insurance) for private enterprise and even small municipalities. Consider the Hoover Dam. Panama Canal. Both "capitalist" US and "communist" USSR planned their way through the space race. Planning is _good_. Everyone who is smart does it. It's how big things happen. What's important is to keep democracy on top of the plan. Walmart is heavily authoritarian. Marxist-Leninists believe in extending democracy to include the workplace and the economy. If you think that's "clearly destructive", I'd have you take a peek at climate change, deforestation, sweatshops, migrant toddler concentration camps, Flint Michigan, Tulsa Massacre, etc.. The USSR might not have been a utopia, or even good, but don't strut around like you're better than them and hand-wave away a rising-in-the-US ideology so frivolously.

jkingsbery 6y ago
It's away from the original point, but I think it's important to highlight the factual inaccuracies from your claims. This is meant charitably, I hope you will take it as such. 1. "Walmart is proof that centralized planning can have extremely successful results" - "Central planning" means something specific, and does not mean "having a plan," even a potentially large plan. It doesn't just mean planning by a rather large entity. From https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/central-planning/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/central-planning..., "a Centrally planned economy can overcome market failure and achieve equality of distribution." Walmart is therefore not an example of this since it does not fit the definition, and makes use of a competitive market for labor, real estate, and the goods it sells. The US had a plan for Apollo, but it still had to deal with a free market for the newly invented integrated circuits that made up its electronics - the government couldn't simply dictate that the desired number were produced. 2. "Nuclear power plants are too expensive (both upfront costs and insurance) for private enterprise" - A list of US Nuclear power plants (https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-plant-owners-and-operators https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-plant-ow...) shows several owned by private enterprises. According to https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power-policy.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr..., the world's first large scale nuclear power plant was owned by a government, but was built and operated by a private company. 3. "Planning is _good_... It's how big things happen." There are lots of things that happen without central planning. No one does a survey of how many computers the US needs and then tells Intel to make a certain amount of processors. Likewise for food, clothing, pencils, or whatever other goods we may need. Plans often make assumptions that prove unrealistic, and centrally planned governments have often proven unable to adjust, leading to famine unheard of in capitalist countries. 4. "Marxist-Leninists believe in extending democracy to include the workplace and the economy." In a Marxist economy, a bureaucrat figures out how much of a thing is needed, and tells people when they need to work to produce that thing, and how much of that thing they can get. There is no input from "the people," except for nominally the person who figures this out for everyone represents the people. Compare this to a capitalist economy, which may be imperfect, but allows everyone to vote on what's important for society to provide through spending preferences. 5. "don't strut around like you're better than them" - the claim was not that capitalist countries are perfect, but rather communist countries were/are a failure. The only one that has seen any lasting success in China, and that was only after it started adopting capitalist practices in some areas. The implication is also not that anyone is better than anyone else. In many locations in Eastern Europe, the same people with the same resources had vastly different qualities of life depending on whether they were on the west or east side of the Captialist-Communist border. The implication is only that communism is a terrible system and was a failure everywhere it was attempted.

jkingsbery 6y ago

It's away from the original point, but I think it's important to highlight the factual inaccuracies from your claims. This is meant charitably, I hope you will take it as such. 1. "Walmart is proof that centralized planning can have extremely successful results" - "Central planning" means something specific, and does not mean "having a plan," even a potentially large plan. It doesn't just mean planning by a rather large entity. From https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/central-planning/ https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/central-planning..., "a Centrally planned economy can overcome market failure and achieve equality of distribution." Walmart is therefore not an example of this since it does not fit the definition, and makes use of a competitive market for labor, real estate, and the goods it sells. The US had a plan for Apollo, but it still had to deal with a free market for the newly invented integrated circuits that made up its electronics - the government couldn't simply dictate that the desired number were produced. 2. "Nuclear power plants are too expensive (both upfront costs and insurance) for private enterprise" - A list of US Nuclear power plants (https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-plant-owners-and-operators https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/us-nuclear-plant-ow...) shows several owned by private enterprises. According to https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/usa-nuclear-power-policy.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr..., the world's first large scale nuclear power plant was owned by a government, but was built and operated by a private company. 3. "Planning is _good_... It's how big things happen." There are lots of things that happen without central planning. No one does a survey of how many computers the US needs and then tells Intel to make a certain amount of processors. Likewise for food, clothing, pencils, or whatever other goods we may need. Plans often make assumptions that prove unrealistic, and centrally planned governments have often proven unable to adjust, leading to famine unheard of in capitalist countries. 4. "Marxist-Leninists believe in extending democracy to include the workplace and the economy." In a Marxist economy, a bureaucrat figures out how much of a thing is needed, and tells people when they need to work to produce that thing, and how much of that thing they can get. There is no input from "the people," except for nominally the person who figures this out for everyone represents the people. Compare this to a capitalist economy, which may be imperfect, but allows everyone to vote on what's important for society to provide through spending preferences. 5. "don't strut around like you're better than them" - the claim was not that capitalist countries are perfect, but rather communist countries were/are a failure. The only one that has seen any lasting success in China, and that was only after it started adopting capitalist practices in some areas. The implication is also not that anyone is better than anyone else. In many locations in Eastern Europe, the same people with the same resources had vastly different qualities of life depending on whether they were on the west or east side of the Captialist-Communist border. The implication is only that communism is a terrible system and was a failure everywhere it was attempted.