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> (which itself is at a disadvantage compared to an authoritarian regime when it comes to allocating large sums of money to arbitrary things) I don't know abou

> (which itself is at a disadvantage compared to an authoritarian regime when it comes to allocating large sums of money to arbitrary things) I don't know about that. If central planning were a good way to run an economy, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
I'm talking about resource allocation, not central planning. If Pooh Bear decides tomorrow that China will learn how to build pool floats then China will learn how to build pool floats. Everyone falls in line. If the leader of a western democracy wants to do something similar they have to convince people to want to do it and that takes time, policy carrots/sticks and propaganda/indoctrination.
- free_rms 6y ago
  The US military budget for 2020 is 720 billion dollars. That doesn't even include DHS. Most of it's going to bullshit, like Abrams tanks that the army doesn't even want. Our problem isn't that we're too free and liberal, our problem is that we're too crooked and stagnant.
  - caycep 6y ago
    Granted...my cynical side is tempted to say, this is a backhanded way to get proper economic stimulus injected into the economy from fiscal conservatives...but graft is graft and in general is less efficient that a proper stimulus.
socialdemocrat 6y ago
People keep getting better his wrong. The USSR stagnated. It did not collapse. The collapse was actually caused by going too capitalist. China isn’t going too capitalist too fast. Nor is it stagnating. And let us not forget that when the USSR stagnated it has had decades of success in science, education, space exploration etc.
- crististm 6y ago
  Let's assume USSR stagnated. When everyone else moves forward and you 'stagnate', for all practical purposes you are moving backward from where you could have been.
- valuearb 6y ago
  It never had decades of economic success. It’s economic growth was slow, it’s living standards poor. Sure the central planners prioritized some gaudy projects like a space program, but at the expense of its poor population.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    That's super false. They went from a backwards agricultural society with actual serfs to an industrialized world power in 3-4 decades despite a nazi invasion killing 20 million russians. That sounds like decades of economic success to me.
    - tharne 6y ago
      Russia has an economy the size of New York state. In a country of over 140 million people, that is no one's definition of success. Soviets didn't leave them much beyond a decaying nuclear arsenal and bunch of ugly buildings.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        Compared to 1917 Russia? Huge success. From 1917 until the 60s or so they vastly improved the lives of average Russians. From the 70s until 1989, not so much, and then after 89 you can't really put it on the USSR since it didn't exist anymore.
      - JPLeRouzic 6y ago
        >> Russia has an economy the size of New York state. According to Wikipedia it is 2.6 times more than New York state: - New York's gross state product in 2018 was $1.7 trillion. - Russia has a GDP of $4.519 trillion in 2020 >> In a country of over 140 million people, that is no one's definition of success. It's half GDP per capita of USA, but USA has half of GDP per capita of Macau or Qatar. Ireland or Norway have a better GDP per capita than US. And if there was no wealth transfer between "rich" US states and "poor" US states, those would be much poorer, and would become comparable to Russia.
ludamad 6y ago
I'd say it was a data point. There is probably more concrete lessons to be learned before giving up on (admittedly complex and fraught) central planning
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Especially given the fact that we have, in theory, the order of magnitude of computing power necessary to calculate an economy. But to implement it well would certainly be the most complex and titanic project in the history of computing, and even then it might fail for some unknown reason.
  - ludamad 6y ago
    Worse yet, a failure where the wrong people accumulate wealth will just look like planned corruption to the masses. Sadly one reason why central planning often is accompanied by censorship
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Yes. You would either need massive censorship or insane levels of technical transparency. In both ways it's a huge technical challenge.
    - archibaldJ 6y ago
      It has often occured to me that one of the rationale to start a colony in Mars is that wealth (at least on Earth) is mainly distributed among the wrong people, which is why so many short-sighted decisions have been made collectively by us who dominate the planet. And real innovations and progressive things are super rare. And they are often accompanied by (unnecessary) tragedies or sufferings that don't have to be that way. Theatres and facades are the norms. But I now have come to the realisation that wrong is perhaps only in the eye of the beholder. And there will always be censorship in a society as long as you look hard enough for it. Probably a feature not a bug though. Maybe it just demonstrates this is the best we get collectively with neural circuitries like ours.
al3xandre 6y ago
What if the USSR had machine learning-powered central planning, fed by IOT data collection across all supply chain in all industries. Shall we try again?
- valuearb 6y ago
  It would have failed faster?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Central planning is 100% an engineering problem. Mises didn't call it the "Calculation Problem" for nothing. As long as economic complexity grows slower than processing power, there will be a point where central planning will be doable. Of course, there is also the problem of incentives, but in the Soviet Union the problem of incentives was really only relevant as far as higher-ups reporting data, Soviet workers worked as hard and as well as any. That is not to say that central planning directed by a centralized Leninist state is something that I think is desirable (or even something that would be theoretically desirable), but massive computing power is a quantum shift in the possibility of centralized and decentralized planning. The fact that it worked as well as it did in the USSR through pencil and paper is stunning.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Computers can’t determine economic priorities. In a free market demand does. In a planned economy politics does. Computers are essentially useless for a planned economy. All they can do is provide quicker orders for factories to produce the wrong things in the wrong quantities.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        The free market does not determine economic priorities. People, making choices with limited resources and having to priorities, determine economic priorities. The free market is then able to compute, using billions of people making operation to optimize in exchange for profit, what is the most optimal way of organizing production, which actualizes prices, which allows consumers to actualize demand. This process is prone to massive inefficiencies such as the business cycle, and has a cost to the consumer which is profit. If one was able to reproduce it without recessions and depressions, and with a rate of profit of zero, the economy would have much higher efficiency and growth. In a planned economy, consumers, be it governmental consumers or average workers, make choices with limited monetary resources about what should be purchased. If there is too much demand, then you end up with a shortage, until the next 5 year plan in which the central planners of the politburo look over the shortage and surplus, do some predictions, and re-allocate supply as well as actualize prices. This is an issue, because there is a 5 year updating period, and planners are prone to error as well as erroneous information. If your planners had accurate real-time information, and were able to re-calculate the economy every day or so, then the issues of over-supply or under-supply, "orders for factories to produce the wrong things in the wrong quantities" would be fixed. Maybe this stems from a misconception according to which, in a planned economy, there is no money or no consumer, no buyers and sellers. It is not so. Planned economies have money, they have sellers and buyers, and so on. What is being replaced is the role of the investor and capitalist, which decides where to allocate resources. Therefore, the issue is not in calculation of end-consumer demand, that is the same as in capitalism, the issue is in organization of production. A Marxist would formulate it by saying that the Soviet economy has not abolished the commodity form. If the Soviets were able to make a 5-year plan every day, and had instant and perfectly accurate supply information, the vast majority of economic inefficiencies would have disappeared. Or, in other words, the factories would have quickly updated orders to produce the things the people want in exactly the quantity they want it.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> If central planning were a good way to run an economy, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed. The Soviet Union put the first man into space and had severe shortages of food and consumer goods at the same time. Because that's what central planning does. It causes priorities to be distorted. Whatever the central planning committee is focused on happens and everything else withers and suffocates. On net it's a massive catastrophic loss, but the places where resources are directed, get them in abundance. (This is also why it's extremely susceptible to corruption and favoritism.)
coreblocks 6y ago
When Gorbachev took over, they realized the government actually had no mathematical model of how the economy of USSR worked. Politicians had been basically been allocating resources blind for decades. They tried to shift to a more data driven approach toward the final years of the USSR, but it was way too late to have an effect.
- ikerdanzel 6y ago
  Basically USSR collapsed for trying to match USA by overspending. Do you realized that is going on with China as well. Given their wastage is several magnitude higher than most western countries, go check what is happening to their reserve in the last 3 years. Also, seems like mother nature is compounding those wastage as well. Maybe we get to see Chernobyl 2 and Agfhan like what happened to USSR?

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

I'm talking about resource allocation, not central planning. If Pooh Bear decides tomorrow that China will learn how to build pool floats then China will learn how to build pool floats. Everyone falls in line. If the leader of a western democracy wants to do something similar they have to convince people to want to do it and that takes time, policy carrots/sticks and propaganda/indoctrination.

free_rms 6y ago
The US military budget for 2020 is 720 billion dollars. That doesn't even include DHS. Most of it's going to bullshit, like Abrams tanks that the army doesn't even want. Our problem isn't that we're too free and liberal, our problem is that we're too crooked and stagnant.
- caycep 6y ago
  Granted...my cynical side is tempted to say, this is a backhanded way to get proper economic stimulus injected into the economy from fiscal conservatives...but graft is graft and in general is less efficient that a proper stimulus.

socialdemocrat 6y ago

People keep getting better his wrong. The USSR stagnated. It did not collapse. The collapse was actually caused by going too capitalist. China isn’t going too capitalist too fast. Nor is it stagnating. And let us not forget that when the USSR stagnated it has had decades of success in science, education, space exploration etc.

crististm 6y ago
Let's assume USSR stagnated. When everyone else moves forward and you 'stagnate', for all practical purposes you are moving backward from where you could have been.
valuearb 6y ago
It never had decades of economic success. It’s economic growth was slow, it’s living standards poor. Sure the central planners prioritized some gaudy projects like a space program, but at the expense of its poor population.
- free_rms 6y ago
  That's super false. They went from a backwards agricultural society with actual serfs to an industrialized world power in 3-4 decades despite a nazi invasion killing 20 million russians. That sounds like decades of economic success to me.
  - tharne 6y ago
    Russia has an economy the size of New York state. In a country of over 140 million people, that is no one's definition of success. Soviets didn't leave them much beyond a decaying nuclear arsenal and bunch of ugly buildings.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      Compared to 1917 Russia? Huge success. From 1917 until the 60s or so they vastly improved the lives of average Russians. From the 70s until 1989, not so much, and then after 89 you can't really put it on the USSR since it didn't exist anymore.
    - JPLeRouzic 6y ago
      >> Russia has an economy the size of New York state. According to Wikipedia it is 2.6 times more than New York state: - New York's gross state product in 2018 was $1.7 trillion. - Russia has a GDP of $4.519 trillion in 2020 >> In a country of over 140 million people, that is no one's definition of success. It's half GDP per capita of USA, but USA has half of GDP per capita of Macau or Qatar. Ireland or Norway have a better GDP per capita than US. And if there was no wealth transfer between "rich" US states and "poor" US states, those would be much poorer, and would become comparable to Russia.

ludamad 6y ago

I'd say it was a data point. There is probably more concrete lessons to be learned before giving up on (admittedly complex and fraught) central planning

sudosysgen 6y ago
Especially given the fact that we have, in theory, the order of magnitude of computing power necessary to calculate an economy. But to implement it well would certainly be the most complex and titanic project in the history of computing, and even then it might fail for some unknown reason.
- ludamad 6y ago
  Worse yet, a failure where the wrong people accumulate wealth will just look like planned corruption to the masses. Sadly one reason why central planning often is accompanied by censorship
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Yes. You would either need massive censorship or insane levels of technical transparency. In both ways it's a huge technical challenge.
  - archibaldJ 6y ago
    It has often occured to me that one of the rationale to start a colony in Mars is that wealth (at least on Earth) is mainly distributed among the wrong people, which is why so many short-sighted decisions have been made collectively by us who dominate the planet. And real innovations and progressive things are super rare. And they are often accompanied by (unnecessary) tragedies or sufferings that don't have to be that way. Theatres and facades are the norms. But I now have come to the realisation that wrong is perhaps only in the eye of the beholder. And there will always be censorship in a society as long as you look hard enough for it. Probably a feature not a bug though. Maybe it just demonstrates this is the best we get collectively with neural circuitries like ours.

al3xandre 6y ago

What if the USSR had machine learning-powered central planning, fed by IOT data collection across all supply chain in all industries. Shall we try again?

valuearb 6y ago
It would have failed faster?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Central planning is 100% an engineering problem. Mises didn't call it the "Calculation Problem" for nothing. As long as economic complexity grows slower than processing power, there will be a point where central planning will be doable. Of course, there is also the problem of incentives, but in the Soviet Union the problem of incentives was really only relevant as far as higher-ups reporting data, Soviet workers worked as hard and as well as any. That is not to say that central planning directed by a centralized Leninist state is something that I think is desirable (or even something that would be theoretically desirable), but massive computing power is a quantum shift in the possibility of centralized and decentralized planning. The fact that it worked as well as it did in the USSR through pencil and paper is stunning.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Computers can’t determine economic priorities. In a free market demand does. In a planned economy politics does. Computers are essentially useless for a planned economy. All they can do is provide quicker orders for factories to produce the wrong things in the wrong quantities.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      The free market does not determine economic priorities. People, making choices with limited resources and having to priorities, determine economic priorities. The free market is then able to compute, using billions of people making operation to optimize in exchange for profit, what is the most optimal way of organizing production, which actualizes prices, which allows consumers to actualize demand. This process is prone to massive inefficiencies such as the business cycle, and has a cost to the consumer which is profit. If one was able to reproduce it without recessions and depressions, and with a rate of profit of zero, the economy would have much higher efficiency and growth. In a planned economy, consumers, be it governmental consumers or average workers, make choices with limited monetary resources about what should be purchased. If there is too much demand, then you end up with a shortage, until the next 5 year plan in which the central planners of the politburo look over the shortage and surplus, do some predictions, and re-allocate supply as well as actualize prices. This is an issue, because there is a 5 year updating period, and planners are prone to error as well as erroneous information. If your planners had accurate real-time information, and were able to re-calculate the economy every day or so, then the issues of over-supply or under-supply, "orders for factories to produce the wrong things in the wrong quantities" would be fixed. Maybe this stems from a misconception according to which, in a planned economy, there is no money or no consumer, no buyers and sellers. It is not so. Planned economies have money, they have sellers and buyers, and so on. What is being replaced is the role of the investor and capitalist, which decides where to allocate resources. Therefore, the issue is not in calculation of end-consumer demand, that is the same as in capitalism, the issue is in organization of production. A Marxist would formulate it by saying that the Soviet economy has not abolished the commodity form. If the Soviets were able to make a 5-year plan every day, and had instant and perfectly accurate supply information, the vast majority of economic inefficiencies would have disappeared. Or, in other words, the factories would have quickly updated orders to produce the things the people want in exactly the quantity they want it.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> If central planning were a good way to run an economy, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed. The Soviet Union put the first man into space and had severe shortages of food and consumer goods at the same time. Because that's what central planning does. It causes priorities to be distorted. Whatever the central planning committee is focused on happens and everything else withers and suffocates. On net it's a massive catastrophic loss, but the places where resources are directed, get them in abundance. (This is also why it's extremely susceptible to corruption and favoritism.)

coreblocks 6y ago

When Gorbachev took over, they realized the government actually had no mathematical model of how the economy of USSR worked. Politicians had been basically been allocating resources blind for decades. They tried to shift to a more data driven approach toward the final years of the USSR, but it was way too late to have an effect.

ikerdanzel 6y ago
Basically USSR collapsed for trying to match USA by overspending. Do you realized that is going on with China as well. Given their wastage is several magnitude higher than most western countries, go check what is happening to their reserve in the last 3 years. Also, seems like mother nature is compounding those wastage as well. Maybe we get to see Chernobyl 2 and Agfhan like what happened to USSR?