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The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. The fact that consumer goods are manufactured in countries by people who can't afford to buy them and sold to

The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. The fact that consumer goods are manufactured in countries by people who can't afford to buy them and sold to people in other countries who throw them away is a symptom of the vast disparity in cost of doing business in the respective countries. Subsidies are always and everywhere the product of a central planner. In order to criticize a distributed system properly it is necessary to identify those things that are the product of the distributed system, rather than those things that are the product of centralized planning.

rualca 6y ago
> The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. There's a difference between an measurement that's imposed by a dominant economic actor and having a centrally planned economy. Bailouts were arguably applied centrally by a central bank, but they are distributed throughout all economic actors that apply for bailouts and meet requirements.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  I agree there is a difference. Also “meet requirements” is intended to portray the process as somewhat objective but its not. They write those requirements with an eye towards who they want to get the bailout.
quietbritishjim 6y ago
The trillion dollar bailouts are indeed central planning, but they are a reaction to a failure in distributed planners as recognised by the most firm believers in distributed planning. As in, "Oh crap, this free market is in the process of unravelling, the only way to stop it is to throw a bailout at it." So it's still a product of decentralised planning (to use your term). The reaction following a bailout is usually, "whoops, we didn't do enough central planning beforehand" i.e. the new banking regulations such as tighter loan-to-deposit ratios. So, overall, this supports the parent comment's point of the inefficiencies of decentralised planning.
- drran 6y ago
  USSR, as the country, failed because of central planning. Bailout is not a good solution too, because capital flow from competitive players to incompetent, which is bad for evolution. US banking system is far behind other banking systems because of that.
  - quietbritishjim 6y ago
    I absolutely was not expressing an opinion either way. All I was saying is that the parent comment was raising a point that supported the opposite argument than they thought, not that I agreed or disagreed with it.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > they are a reaction to a failure in distributed planners as recognised by the most firm believers in distributed planning. No, they are a reaction to the perceived failures of “distributed planning” as perceived by advocates of central planning. Free marketers have always said that those banks need to be allowed to fail because they made bad decisions and bankruptcy sells their assets so the creditors can get paid and new management can operate them. With bailout you have this bizarre system where profits are privatized and losses are socialized, which is not a distributed system or a free market.
pietrovismara 6y ago
Bailouts are a necessary resort when the market fails to self regulate. Which spoiler alert, it has always done cyclically since capitalism is a thing. The question is not if there will be another crisis, is when it will be. Under a free market, economical crisis are a certainty.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Nothing makes them necessary, and the free market regulates by allowing those businesses to fail. Since we don’t have a free market, but a regulated one, those crises you refer to are symptoms of a regulated market. Cyclic failures are also a result of the banking system and their use of scrip as opposed to specie.
andrepd 6y ago
> The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. > In order to criticize a distributed system properly it is necessary to identify those things that are the product of the distributed system, rather than those things that are the product of centralized planning. What you call "central planning" is merely the emergent behaviour of the "distributed" capitalist system. A certain bearded German economist warned that in such an economy, the state is just another apparatus of the bourgeoisie. Turning the old cliché on its head, pure capitalism only works in theory, never in practice. In the real world, disparities in money are disparities in power, which ensure things such as bailouts and more fundamentally, banking laws that are effectively a license (for some) to print free money for themselves.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > A certain bearded German economist warned that in such an economy, the state is just another apparatus of the bourgeoisie. That bearded economist was on to something. Alas nowadays policy advocates in his tradition seem to want the bourgeoisie state to write and enforce more rules, forgetting that those rules are unlikely to benefit anyone other than an oligarch. > pure capitalism only works in theory, never in practice. Thats dogma and unlikely to be true. > In the real world, disparities in money are disparities in power, which ensure things such as bailouts and more fundamentally, banking laws that are effectively a license (for some) to print free money for themselves. Its more accurate to say that "disparities in power lead to disparities in money." Certainly there are other forms of power, like the ones people use to expropriate money and assets from those who have money and assets but less power.

rualca 6y ago

> The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. There's a difference between an measurement that's imposed by a dominant economic actor and having a centrally planned economy. Bailouts were arguably applied centrally by a central bank, but they are distributed throughout all economic actors that apply for bailouts and meet requirements.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
I agree there is a difference. Also “meet requirements” is intended to portray the process as somewhat objective but its not. They write those requirements with an eye towards who they want to get the bailout.

quietbritishjim 6y ago

The trillion dollar bailouts are indeed central planning, but they are a reaction to a failure in distributed planners as recognised by the most firm believers in distributed planning. As in, "Oh crap, this free market is in the process of unravelling, the only way to stop it is to throw a bailout at it." So it's still a product of decentralised planning (to use your term). The reaction following a bailout is usually, "whoops, we didn't do enough central planning beforehand" i.e. the new banking regulations such as tighter loan-to-deposit ratios. So, overall, this supports the parent comment's point of the inefficiencies of decentralised planning.

drran 6y ago
USSR, as the country, failed because of central planning. Bailout is not a good solution too, because capital flow from competitive players to incompetent, which is bad for evolution. US banking system is far behind other banking systems because of that.
- quietbritishjim 6y ago
  I absolutely was not expressing an opinion either way. All I was saying is that the parent comment was raising a point that supported the opposite argument than they thought, not that I agreed or disagreed with it.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> they are a reaction to a failure in distributed planners as recognised by the most firm believers in distributed planning. No, they are a reaction to the perceived failures of “distributed planning” as perceived by advocates of central planning. Free marketers have always said that those banks need to be allowed to fail because they made bad decisions and bankruptcy sells their assets so the creditors can get paid and new management can operate them. With bailout you have this bizarre system where profits are privatized and losses are socialized, which is not a distributed system or a free market.

pietrovismara 6y ago

Bailouts are a necessary resort when the market fails to self regulate. Which spoiler alert, it has always done cyclically since capitalism is a thing. The question is not if there will be another crisis, is when it will be. Under a free market, economical crisis are a certainty.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Nothing makes them necessary, and the free market regulates by allowing those businesses to fail. Since we don’t have a free market, but a regulated one, those crises you refer to are symptoms of a regulated market. Cyclic failures are also a result of the banking system and their use of scrip as opposed to specie.

andrepd 6y ago

> The trillion dollar bailouts are central planning. > In order to criticize a distributed system properly it is necessary to identify those things that are the product of the distributed system, rather than those things that are the product of centralized planning. What you call "central planning" is merely the emergent behaviour of the "distributed" capitalist system. A certain bearded German economist warned that in such an economy, the state is just another apparatus of the bourgeoisie. Turning the old cliché on its head, pure capitalism only works in theory, never in practice. In the real world, disparities in money are disparities in power, which ensure things such as bailouts and more fundamentally, banking laws that are effectively a license (for some) to print free money for themselves.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> A certain bearded German economist warned that in such an economy, the state is just another apparatus of the bourgeoisie. That bearded economist was on to something. Alas nowadays policy advocates in his tradition seem to want the bourgeoisie state to write and enforce more rules, forgetting that those rules are unlikely to benefit anyone other than an oligarch. > pure capitalism only works in theory, never in practice. Thats dogma and unlikely to be true. > In the real world, disparities in money are disparities in power, which ensure things such as bailouts and more fundamentally, banking laws that are effectively a license (for some) to print free money for themselves. Its more accurate to say that "disparities in power lead to disparities in money." Certainly there are other forms of power, like the ones people use to expropriate money and assets from those who have money and assets but less power.