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Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also

Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.

ugh 15y ago
Central planning is how humans organize cooperation. It’s everywhere. To argue that it never works is ridiculous on its face. Central planning probably gets harder the more humans want to cooperate and market mechanisms are very likely superior in those situations but that doesn’t mean that central planning doesn’t work.
galactus 15y ago
Wasn't "the internet" created by the gouvernment too?
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  The early days of Internet were funded by the US government but not in the same way as Minitel. The French government massively subsidized the deployment of Minitel by giving away millions of terminals (in exchange for not giving the subscriber the white pages on paper) and that helped launch it. But if you ignore the arguments about who funded what there are lots of aspects of Minitel that are interesting because it helped to kick off the wide use of smart cards, the underlying network was packet switched (X.25) and the servers handling Minitel were distributed through the network (so service providers ran their own services). It wouldn't view Minitel as a failure, however, just because it was replaced by the web. The French were years (probably 10) ahead of the rest of the world in terms of electronic communication and commerce. They had a large internal market online in the 1980s handling a huge amount of commerce.
  - madflo 15y ago
    I may add that that after all, all the money granted for the Minitel program by the gouvernement has been recovered with taxes on Minitel minutes. I would consider the Minitel as a success of central planning. 20 years of e-economy and quite a lot of money moving from French citizen to French corporations or smaller businesses.
euromix 15y ago
we soon go back to central planning with google or facebook dont worry :)))
Klinky 15y ago
Central planning never works. But the Internet was the spin-off of a centrally planned government network. I am not sure it's accurate to say the failure of "competing" services was due to the failures of central planning, but more related to the onward march of technology(cheaper & faster). Even now the Internet is far from decentralized & some of the biggest services on the Internet are centralized and proprietary.
- mikecane 15y ago
  >>>some of the biggest services on the Internet are centralized and proprietary. Which all tend to eventually fail. The Source, CompuServe, Delphi, AOL, all failed.
  - Klinky 15y ago
    Firstly, suggesting dial-up ISPs failed because they had a centralized business structure makes no sense. That's like saying horse & buggy manufacturers went out of business due to their centralized business structure rather than the introduction of the car. Also for the record AOL is still around & those companies were successful for their time. Second, I was speaking about things like ICANN, root DNS servers, Tier 1 providers & Client/Server architecture as being non-decentralized. Additionally some of the biggest services on the Internet are indeed centralized. Google, Facebook, iTunes. ISP options have also been drastically reduced over the last two decades.
    - mikecane 15y ago
      I think we are talking at cross-purposes here, in different perspectives, so let's stop.
      - Klinky 15y ago
        Well perhaps your point was that those services were walled gardens & incompatible with each other before the Internet took off. The Internet opening up with it's low cost ISPs & flexibility was the end of those walled garden services & many BBSs, true. That doesn't really have anything to do with the Internet being centrally planned or not. It was just planned to be more open than those other services.
LaGrange 15y ago
Except the cases where central planning works, like (DUH!) Minitel (until the internet came, it didn't fail, it just got upgraded, duh), going to the Moon (distributed attempt at reaching the moon, also known as the living pyramid), justice system (as soon as you introduce the ability for appeal), the Internet, DNS system (it may be not centralized, but it is centrally planned), Google, Apple, and your own consciousness. Central planning never works.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  [...] and your own consciousness. I can't tell if the "central planning" you refer to with respect to consciousness is supposed to be a homunculus or an intelligent designer, but either way I disagree. Brains are pretty well distributed, and various degrees and kinds of brain damage have shown that no specific location is an inherently privileged "command center" of the brain; [different] people have continued to be thinking people without each part of it.
  - LaGrange 15y ago
    I agree, I actually meant "central planning" as in "your behavior is centrally planned by your brain". "Consciousness" was a pretty awkwardly chosen word, obviously.
- iwwr 15y ago
  The problem is not that central planning fails to build a certain thing (like a bridge or a road), but that it diverts resources from more productive uses. Things that are built or created are visible, but they obscure the things that might have been created otherwise. We never actually get to know the ways resources might have been allocated otherwise; and indeed these other things may be mundane and boring, yet they are the consequence of the free choices of individuals. Of course, it can be argued that governments don't just do investments, that they can provide services that may be impossible to obtain otherwise. But when we wonder into real investment territory (like a particular bridge), we have to be able to produce a R.O.I. What we have to consider is that the alternative uses of the capital will contribute to economic growth and in a longer timeframe, the glamorous visible things like a space program may actually pay for themselves. Not only that, these expenditures will be self-sustaining and long lasting. Or otherwise said, money spent on space (and other visible things) without a R.O.I. is actually detracting from future growth and delaying actual practical space exploration.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
niczar 15y ago
It's not so much a success of central planning at all. The minitel succeeded not because it was beautifully planned; it succeeded because massive gov't investment put one in every home. It allowed the network effect to apply immediately. Otherwise service providers could not have invested because there would have been no users; and there would have been no users because there would have been no services. Note that the investment was recovered over time; but it would never have originated from private enterprise. Today the same kind of thing could be happening with electric cars. People won't buy them until there's plugs everywhere, and plugs won't be put everywhere until most people have electric cars. Massive gov't investment could short circuit this problem in a pinch, and end foreign oil dependency. There's no money in it for Goldmann Sachs or Halliburton, so forget about it, though.

ugh 15y ago

Central planning is how humans organize cooperation. It’s everywhere. To argue that it never works is ridiculous on its face. Central planning probably gets harder the more humans want to cooperate and market mechanisms are very likely superior in those situations but that doesn’t mean that central planning doesn’t work.

galactus 15y ago

Wasn't "the internet" created by the gouvernment too?

jgrahamc 15y ago
The early days of Internet were funded by the US government but not in the same way as Minitel. The French government massively subsidized the deployment of Minitel by giving away millions of terminals (in exchange for not giving the subscriber the white pages on paper) and that helped launch it. But if you ignore the arguments about who funded what there are lots of aspects of Minitel that are interesting because it helped to kick off the wide use of smart cards, the underlying network was packet switched (X.25) and the servers handling Minitel were distributed through the network (so service providers ran their own services). It wouldn't view Minitel as a failure, however, just because it was replaced by the web. The French were years (probably 10) ahead of the rest of the world in terms of electronic communication and commerce. They had a large internal market online in the 1980s handling a huge amount of commerce.
- madflo 15y ago
  I may add that that after all, all the money granted for the Minitel program by the gouvernement has been recovered with taxes on Minitel minutes. I would consider the Minitel as a success of central planning. 20 years of e-economy and quite a lot of money moving from French citizen to French corporations or smaller businesses.

euromix 15y ago

we soon go back to central planning with google or facebook dont worry :)))

Klinky 15y ago

Central planning never works. But the Internet was the spin-off of a centrally planned government network. I am not sure it's accurate to say the failure of "competing" services was due to the failures of central planning, but more related to the onward march of technology(cheaper & faster). Even now the Internet is far from decentralized & some of the biggest services on the Internet are centralized and proprietary.

mikecane 15y ago
>>>some of the biggest services on the Internet are centralized and proprietary. Which all tend to eventually fail. The Source, CompuServe, Delphi, AOL, all failed.
- Klinky 15y ago
  Firstly, suggesting dial-up ISPs failed because they had a centralized business structure makes no sense. That's like saying horse & buggy manufacturers went out of business due to their centralized business structure rather than the introduction of the car. Also for the record AOL is still around & those companies were successful for their time. Second, I was speaking about things like ICANN, root DNS servers, Tier 1 providers & Client/Server architecture as being non-decentralized. Additionally some of the biggest services on the Internet are indeed centralized. Google, Facebook, iTunes. ISP options have also been drastically reduced over the last two decades.
  - mikecane 15y ago
    I think we are talking at cross-purposes here, in different perspectives, so let's stop.
    - Klinky 15y ago
      Well perhaps your point was that those services were walled gardens & incompatible with each other before the Internet took off. The Internet opening up with it's low cost ISPs & flexibility was the end of those walled garden services & many BBSs, true. That doesn't really have anything to do with the Internet being centrally planned or not. It was just planned to be more open than those other services.

LaGrange 15y ago

Except the cases where central planning works, like (DUH!) Minitel (until the internet came, it didn't fail, it just got upgraded, duh), going to the Moon (distributed attempt at reaching the moon, also known as the living pyramid), justice system (as soon as you introduce the ability for appeal), the Internet, DNS system (it may be not centralized, but it is centrally planned), Google, Apple, and your own consciousness. Central planning never works.

randallsquared 15y ago
[...] and your own consciousness. I can't tell if the "central planning" you refer to with respect to consciousness is supposed to be a homunculus or an intelligent designer, but either way I disagree. Brains are pretty well distributed, and various degrees and kinds of brain damage have shown that no specific location is an inherently privileged "command center" of the brain; [different] people have continued to be thinking people without each part of it.
- LaGrange 15y ago
  I agree, I actually meant "central planning" as in "your behavior is centrally planned by your brain". "Consciousness" was a pretty awkwardly chosen word, obviously.
iwwr 15y ago
The problem is not that central planning fails to build a certain thing (like a bridge or a road), but that it diverts resources from more productive uses. Things that are built or created are visible, but they obscure the things that might have been created otherwise. We never actually get to know the ways resources might have been allocated otherwise; and indeed these other things may be mundane and boring, yet they are the consequence of the free choices of individuals. Of course, it can be argued that governments don't just do investments, that they can provide services that may be impossible to obtain otherwise. But when we wonder into real investment territory (like a particular bridge), we have to be able to produce a R.O.I. What we have to consider is that the alternative uses of the capital will contribute to economic growth and in a longer timeframe, the glamorous visible things like a space program may actually pay for themselves. Not only that, these expenditures will be self-sustaining and long lasting. Or otherwise said, money spent on space (and other visible things) without a R.O.I. is actually detracting from future growth and delaying actual practical space exploration.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

niczar 15y ago

It's not so much a success of central planning at all. The minitel succeeded not because it was beautifully planned; it succeeded because massive gov't investment put one in every home. It allowed the network effect to apply immediately. Otherwise service providers could not have invested because there would have been no users; and there would have been no users because there would have been no services. Note that the investment was recovered over time; but it would never have originated from private enterprise. Today the same kind of thing could be happening with electric cars. People won't buy them until there's plugs everywhere, and plugs won't be put everywhere until most people have electric cars. Massive gov't investment could short circuit this problem in a pinch, and end foreign oil dependency. There's no money in it for Goldmann Sachs or Halliburton, so forget about it, though.