3 ms·

No problem there: an efficient planned economy would have no trouble whatsoever also planning for bullshit jobs, efficiently. Incidentally, does not look like

No problem there: an efficient planned economy would have no trouble whatsoever also planning for bullshit jobs, efficiently. Incidentally, does not look like bullshit jobs were specific to the USSR, they are indeed everywhere.

chupasaurus 6y ago
Incidentally, any amount of both plans and bullshit jobs in USSR hadn't produced enough goods to supply the food deficit. There could be no efficiency in a system developed by parties with personal interest.
ulzeraj 6y ago
I fail to see how magic advanced computer power would solve the problem of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth. Without prices there is no efficient distribution of resources.
- thrownagain 6y ago
  The same way they do so within a single sufficiently large corporation, and the same way the market utterly fails in such a situation. See https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ay...
  - thodin 6y ago
    Private companies are interested in getting real statistics, it was not like that in USSR. Even on largest auto-factory (AvtoVAZ) programmers were creating software with intentional bugs, so they can fix it later, during pre-programmed outages and get some bonuses. No one was interested in sending real statistics to Moscow, from head of local shop to head of large factory.
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      To be fair to those programmers, I've seen the same thing (or similar) in the US. It wasn't intentional bugs, but intentional delays in addressing them. That is, they sandbagged. They knew the fixes but didn't apply them so that they could hit monthly/quarterly/whatever targets. Or they knew they could knock out 100 features in a week, but that one feature would take 3 months. They'd mete out those 100 easy features over the three months so that they didn't appear stalled (they weren't, but management couldn't tell the difference between a stall and a hard problem).
      - thodin 6y ago
        Ok, another example: out famous "Cotton Scandal": http://shorturl.at/fzLPU http://shorturl.at/fzLPU For more than 10 years thousands of party members from soviet republic of Uzbekistan were sending fake data to Moscow (this included corruption on many levels across the country) about production of cotton. Everyone was involved, from top to bottom, I don't see how creation of any network would help with that. In fact programmers across USSR were putting tools into the software for state companies to produce "fixed" results for central planning committee. And in central planning committee they were also corrupt :) (my relative worked there in 80s and I know how it was organized on basic level).
  - alentist 6y ago
    What makes you think central planning within a single corporation is comparable to central planning for an entire society? I recommend reading about the theory of the firm to understand why they emerge and what makes them efficient.
- mantas 6y ago
  Prices did exist in USSR all the way till it eventually failed. But prices, just like currency exchange rate or salaries, had little connection to actual costs. Black markets meanwhile...
  - ulzeraj 6y ago
    Apparently those prices were determined mainly by bureaucratic means. Prices encapsulate production costs and demand for a product therefore in a socialist commonwealth bureaucrats and even supercomputers would have to base production on market information using data from capitalist era. By the fall of the SSSR the black market of illegally imported goods constituted a huge chunk of the soviet economy. Also I find intriguing how I got downvoted just by questioning. Makes you wonder how wisely those mod powers are being used.
    - mantas 6y ago
      Why would bureaucrats and/or supercomputers would have to base it on market information? They could keep bending prices as they see fit. By the fall of USSR, big chunks of black market were becoming legal :) Black market was a massive portion of economy throughout USSR existence though. Some people still buy old good CCCP propaganda. And even questioning fairy tale propaganda is bad for those people.
Shivetya 6y ago
the issue has always been that there are far more people than you expect who wish to only consume hence why these states only worked for as long as they did because authoritarian governments have little in the way of limits when it comes to compelling people to work. you would need an excessive abundance to accommodate the large numbers of people who do not believe they must contribute. I am not saying they won't work and produce wealth, those that do will only do so for themselves
Nasrudith 6y ago
Let me know when you find an efficent planned economy. It certainly couldn't occur under all of the communist economically illiterate assumptions of a universal fair price as an implication of their labor based value fallacy. Treating dynamic supply-demand feedback as fixed moral imperatives is a reciepe for disaster. It seems that fixed assumptions of "always right" is the surest path to insanity and travesties. Snark tangent aside, the issue with the USSR wasn't so much the bullshit jobs as the squandering of the labor of those performing actually important jobs via lack of support. They took labor for granted as a free input and neglected efficiency, exactly like slave owners and feudal lords they accused capitalists of being.

chupasaurus 6y ago

Incidentally, any amount of both plans and bullshit jobs in USSR hadn't produced enough goods to supply the food deficit. There could be no efficiency in a system developed by parties with personal interest.

ulzeraj 6y ago

I fail to see how magic advanced computer power would solve the problem of economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth. Without prices there is no efficient distribution of resources.

thrownagain 6y ago
The same way they do so within a single sufficiently large corporation, and the same way the market utterly fails in such a situation. See https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ayn-rand-destroyed-sears https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4385-failing-to-plan-how-ay...
- thodin 6y ago
  Private companies are interested in getting real statistics, it was not like that in USSR. Even on largest auto-factory (AvtoVAZ) programmers were creating software with intentional bugs, so they can fix it later, during pre-programmed outages and get some bonuses. No one was interested in sending real statistics to Moscow, from head of local shop to head of large factory.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    To be fair to those programmers, I've seen the same thing (or similar) in the US. It wasn't intentional bugs, but intentional delays in addressing them. That is, they sandbagged. They knew the fixes but didn't apply them so that they could hit monthly/quarterly/whatever targets. Or they knew they could knock out 100 features in a week, but that one feature would take 3 months. They'd mete out those 100 easy features over the three months so that they didn't appear stalled (they weren't, but management couldn't tell the difference between a stall and a hard problem).
    - thodin 6y ago
      Ok, another example: out famous "Cotton Scandal": http://shorturl.at/fzLPU http://shorturl.at/fzLPU For more than 10 years thousands of party members from soviet republic of Uzbekistan were sending fake data to Moscow (this included corruption on many levels across the country) about production of cotton. Everyone was involved, from top to bottom, I don't see how creation of any network would help with that. In fact programmers across USSR were putting tools into the software for state companies to produce "fixed" results for central planning committee. And in central planning committee they were also corrupt :) (my relative worked there in 80s and I know how it was organized on basic level).
- alentist 6y ago
  What makes you think central planning within a single corporation is comparable to central planning for an entire society? I recommend reading about the theory of the firm to understand why they emerge and what makes them efficient.
mantas 6y ago
Prices did exist in USSR all the way till it eventually failed. But prices, just like currency exchange rate or salaries, had little connection to actual costs. Black markets meanwhile...
- ulzeraj 6y ago
  Apparently those prices were determined mainly by bureaucratic means. Prices encapsulate production costs and demand for a product therefore in a socialist commonwealth bureaucrats and even supercomputers would have to base production on market information using data from capitalist era. By the fall of the SSSR the black market of illegally imported goods constituted a huge chunk of the soviet economy. Also I find intriguing how I got downvoted just by questioning. Makes you wonder how wisely those mod powers are being used.
  - mantas 6y ago
    Why would bureaucrats and/or supercomputers would have to base it on market information? They could keep bending prices as they see fit. By the fall of USSR, big chunks of black market were becoming legal :) Black market was a massive portion of economy throughout USSR existence though. Some people still buy old good CCCP propaganda. And even questioning fairy tale propaganda is bad for those people.

Shivetya 6y ago

the issue has always been that there are far more people than you expect who wish to only consume hence why these states only worked for as long as they did because authoritarian governments have little in the way of limits when it comes to compelling people to work. you would need an excessive abundance to accommodate the large numbers of people who do not believe they must contribute. I am not saying they won't work and produce wealth, those that do will only do so for themselves

Nasrudith 6y ago

Let me know when you find an efficent planned economy. It certainly couldn't occur under all of the communist economically illiterate assumptions of a universal fair price as an implication of their labor based value fallacy. Treating dynamic supply-demand feedback as fixed moral imperatives is a reciepe for disaster. It seems that fixed assumptions of "always right" is the surest path to insanity and travesties. Snark tangent aside, the issue with the USSR wasn't so much the bullshit jobs as the squandering of the labor of those performing actually important jobs via lack of support. They took labor for granted as a free input and neglected efficiency, exactly like slave owners and feudal lords they accused capitalists of being.