8 ms·

To the Austrians out there: you can theorize and even model scenarios where this is not only a bad but a terrible idea but I would like to point out some empiri

To the Austrians out there: you can theorize and even model scenarios where this is not only a bad but a terrible idea but I would like to point out some empirically successful government institutions of managed resources in free parts of the world: Fannie and Freddie, TVA, Statoil, just to name a few. These effectively manage limited resources, are profitable, and the windfall does not end up in private hands. Yea, the commies accidentally created famines, but the root cause was their refusal to engage with anything other than their theories and model… which, should sound like the former issue raised with their economic counterparts…

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
> Yea, the commies accidentally created famines I'd actually argue the stalinists created famines not by accident but at least partially by intent. Their economic modelling and planning were terrible, yes -- in part because of ideological blindness you mention. But the existence of the NEP for a short period of time in the 20s shows that at least some of the Bolsheviks were able to demonstrate more flexible thinking. But they were also legitimately terrible, damaged, malevolent people who were the products of a nasty civil war. Starving their perceived enemies and brutalizing whole populations to do so was part of their MO.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  Good points all around! The same general problem of recovering from a brutal civil war seems core to Maoists as well! Ideology and gunpowder make for a terrible brew.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    The first half of the 20th century was a cruel time and engineered cruel people, of all ideological stripes. 50 years of living with the consequences of WWI.
- muro 3y ago
  I would say they were also a cause, not just a product of a nasty civil war.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Not the Tsarist monsters who sent waves of young men to be butchered in WWI?
    - muro 3y ago
      Every country in WWI did that, no? Anf while didn't say they were the only cause, they certainly didn't try to minimise casualties.
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        My point is that the first act the Bolsheviks did was to end Russian involvement in WWI and end that slaughter. (At the cost of massive loss of territory and reprisal from western powers.) It ain't black and white.
        muro 3y ago
        That's a good point. I thought the Russian civil war was already happening at that time, so it enabled everyone in Russia to focus on that one alone. Is that incorrect?
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        Civil war happened a bit later, but I guess it's blurry because it was also mixed up with the foreign invasion / punishments that came out of the Soviet withdrawal from the war and Brest-Litovsk. The allies were enraged by the withdrawal from the war, but of course also extremely interested in destroying the new Bolshevik regime. So right away after 1918 they were thrown into a conflict setting. I'd have to defer to an actual historian here for the full details, but my understanding of the history is that the "whites" that the Bolsheviks fought in the civil war were funded and aided by foreign powers (Britain, etc.), and that that funding and intervention began the moment Brest-Litovsk was signed, but then later transitioned into the full civil war scenario. Of course it all depends on how you draw definitional lines around civil war vs revolution, etc.
- bitL 3y ago
  Stalinists were trying to create economies of scale by centralizing agriculture to large conglomerates but weren't smart enough to avoid supply disruption that together with dry years, optimistic communication/lies and foreign export led to massive famines throughout the whole USSR. One can see the same pattern in large corps where the front falls suddenly off.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    But it was also bound up with ideological and ethnic campaigns against e.g. Ukrainian nationalists and the Ukrainian peasantry generally. Stalin was a big fan of collective punishment, repopulation, depopulation, etc. Sociopath. Resistance of aspects of the peasantry to collectivization, etc. became an excuse for brutal policies, independent of any theoretical "socialist" policy. Remember Marx (and even Lenin) wrote nothing about e.g. agricultural policy or even what socialization of industry would look like in practice. So these people (Stalin and his apparatus) were making it up as they went along, and they were awful people. e.g. Stalin came to power against Trotsky and the Left Opposition by insisting on maintaining the NEP and taking a more gradual and pragmatic approach and then turned around, exterminated his opponents, and did the precisely the opposite and forced mass collectivization (leading to mass starvation.)
analog31 3y ago
Moreover, it seems to me that with the amount of oversight needed to prevent the mines from laying waste to their surroundings and abusing their workers, and the anticipated bail-out when it goes bankrupt, the government might as well just run it.
hackeraccount 3y ago
I wouldn't hold up Fannie and Freddie as a model for anything.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  Why not? They’ve created an insane amount of private wealth in the US and are profitable. FHA loans have caused more good than harm.
  - Kiro 3y ago
    For someone outside the US those names are only associated with the financial crisis. I don't even know what they are and honestly thought they were another Lehman brothers that didn't exist anymore, so your comment read like a joke.
    - mattmaroon 3y ago
      If it makes you feel better, most American home owners have a loan that originated with one of them and still don’t know any more about them than you do.
    - JauntTrooper 3y ago
      Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FHLMC) are companies that the US federal government set up and sponsors in order to support the mortgage industry and provide liquidity to banks and other financial institutions that provide mortgages to Americans. So if a bank offers a mortgage to a customer and the loan conforms with Fannie and Freddie's underwriting policies, Fannie and Freddie will buy it from them them. They then package some of those loans into a loan portfolio and sell it to fixed income investors. About 70% of US mortgages are supported by Fannie and Freddie.
      - williamcotton 3y ago
        Unfortunately reality isn’t the point of these online exchanges.
- 3y ago
mughinn 3y ago
The problem is that the State exists to abuse the rights of the people I don't understand how or why profits ending up on private hands is bad, you are a private hand and the State robs you all the time
- andybak 3y ago
  > The problem is that the State exists to abuse the rights of the people The state exists for a multiplicity of reasons - some of which are harmful and some of which are beneficial. And if the state doesn't exist then other actors will step in to and will also do a mixture of harm and good. Any attempt to handwave away the nuance just sounds silly.
  - mughinn 3y ago
    The existance of the State is an infringement on your rights, any good that comes out of it isn't really an argument. It's akin as saying that killing all poor people would eradicate poverty, so it is harmful in some ways but it has some benefits Other actors would also be States, we the people should fight against all States, not just the current one
    - fmajid 3y ago
      Because human rights are so well-protected in Afghanistan, Somalia or other such failed states. The alternative to a functioning state is not some techno-anarchist utopia, its warlordism and feudalism. Even the Taliban were seen as preferable to that (they got their initial political capital by rescuing boys kidnapped by warlords to be used as catamites).
      - malermeister 3y ago
        The techno-anarchist utopia is neo-feudalism. They just hope to be on top this time.
        mughinn 3y ago
trompetenaccoun 3y ago
It's about macroeconomics, it doesn't mean that you can not have the state run anything at all. Austrian economists are not anarchists. For example I can point to successful schemes in Saudi or China and still see that on the grand scheme of things private markets are a lot more efficient. You're pointing to the exception as a criticism of the rule. If they do it right this step makes a lot of sense for Chile. It doesn't negate the fact that socialist policies have economically ruined South America at large. Venezuela is the best example, it used to be the richest of them all not very long ago.
- alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
  Not "socialist policies" Populist dictators have ruined everything.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

> Yea, the commies accidentally created famines I'd actually argue the stalinists created famines not by accident but at least partially by intent. Their economic modelling and planning were terrible, yes -- in part because of ideological blindness you mention. But the existence of the NEP for a short period of time in the 20s shows that at least some of the Bolsheviks were able to demonstrate more flexible thinking. But they were also legitimately terrible, damaged, malevolent people who were the products of a nasty civil war. Starving their perceived enemies and brutalizing whole populations to do so was part of their MO.

williamcotton 3y ago
Good points all around! The same general problem of recovering from a brutal civil war seems core to Maoists as well! Ideology and gunpowder make for a terrible brew.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The first half of the 20th century was a cruel time and engineered cruel people, of all ideological stripes. 50 years of living with the consequences of WWI.
muro 3y ago
I would say they were also a cause, not just a product of a nasty civil war.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Not the Tsarist monsters who sent waves of young men to be butchered in WWI?
  - muro 3y ago
    Every country in WWI did that, no? Anf while didn't say they were the only cause, they certainly didn't try to minimise casualties.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      My point is that the first act the Bolsheviks did was to end Russian involvement in WWI and end that slaughter. (At the cost of massive loss of territory and reprisal from western powers.) It ain't black and white.
      - muro 3y ago
        That's a good point. I thought the Russian civil war was already happening at that time, so it enabled everyone in Russia to focus on that one alone. Is that incorrect?
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        Civil war happened a bit later, but I guess it's blurry because it was also mixed up with the foreign invasion / punishments that came out of the Soviet withdrawal from the war and Brest-Litovsk. The allies were enraged by the withdrawal from the war, but of course also extremely interested in destroying the new Bolshevik regime. So right away after 1918 they were thrown into a conflict setting. I'd have to defer to an actual historian here for the full details, but my understanding of the history is that the "whites" that the Bolsheviks fought in the civil war were funded and aided by foreign powers (Britain, etc.), and that that funding and intervention began the moment Brest-Litovsk was signed, but then later transitioned into the full civil war scenario. Of course it all depends on how you draw definitional lines around civil war vs revolution, etc.
bitL 3y ago
Stalinists were trying to create economies of scale by centralizing agriculture to large conglomerates but weren't smart enough to avoid supply disruption that together with dry years, optimistic communication/lies and foreign export led to massive famines throughout the whole USSR. One can see the same pattern in large corps where the front falls suddenly off.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  But it was also bound up with ideological and ethnic campaigns against e.g. Ukrainian nationalists and the Ukrainian peasantry generally. Stalin was a big fan of collective punishment, repopulation, depopulation, etc. Sociopath. Resistance of aspects of the peasantry to collectivization, etc. became an excuse for brutal policies, independent of any theoretical "socialist" policy. Remember Marx (and even Lenin) wrote nothing about e.g. agricultural policy or even what socialization of industry would look like in practice. So these people (Stalin and his apparatus) were making it up as they went along, and they were awful people. e.g. Stalin came to power against Trotsky and the Left Opposition by insisting on maintaining the NEP and taking a more gradual and pragmatic approach and then turned around, exterminated his opponents, and did the precisely the opposite and forced mass collectivization (leading to mass starvation.)

analog31 3y ago

Moreover, it seems to me that with the amount of oversight needed to prevent the mines from laying waste to their surroundings and abusing their workers, and the anticipated bail-out when it goes bankrupt, the government might as well just run it.

hackeraccount 3y ago

I wouldn't hold up Fannie and Freddie as a model for anything.

williamcotton 3y ago
Why not? They’ve created an insane amount of private wealth in the US and are profitable. FHA loans have caused more good than harm.
- Kiro 3y ago
  For someone outside the US those names are only associated with the financial crisis. I don't even know what they are and honestly thought they were another Lehman brothers that didn't exist anymore, so your comment read like a joke.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    If it makes you feel better, most American home owners have a loan that originated with one of them and still don’t know any more about them than you do.
  - JauntTrooper 3y ago
    Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FHLMC) are companies that the US federal government set up and sponsors in order to support the mortgage industry and provide liquidity to banks and other financial institutions that provide mortgages to Americans. So if a bank offers a mortgage to a customer and the loan conforms with Fannie and Freddie's underwriting policies, Fannie and Freddie will buy it from them them. They then package some of those loans into a loan portfolio and sell it to fixed income investors. About 70% of US mortgages are supported by Fannie and Freddie.
    - williamcotton 3y ago
      Unfortunately reality isn’t the point of these online exchanges.
3y ago

mughinn 3y ago

The problem is that the State exists to abuse the rights of the people I don't understand how or why profits ending up on private hands is bad, you are a private hand and the State robs you all the time

andybak 3y ago
> The problem is that the State exists to abuse the rights of the people The state exists for a multiplicity of reasons - some of which are harmful and some of which are beneficial. And if the state doesn't exist then other actors will step in to and will also do a mixture of harm and good. Any attempt to handwave away the nuance just sounds silly.
- mughinn 3y ago
  The existance of the State is an infringement on your rights, any good that comes out of it isn't really an argument. It's akin as saying that killing all poor people would eradicate poverty, so it is harmful in some ways but it has some benefits Other actors would also be States, we the people should fight against all States, not just the current one
  - fmajid 3y ago
    Because human rights are so well-protected in Afghanistan, Somalia or other such failed states. The alternative to a functioning state is not some techno-anarchist utopia, its warlordism and feudalism. Even the Taliban were seen as preferable to that (they got their initial political capital by rescuing boys kidnapped by warlords to be used as catamites).
    - malermeister 3y ago
      The techno-anarchist utopia is neo-feudalism. They just hope to be on top this time.
      - mughinn 3y ago

trompetenaccoun 3y ago

It's about macroeconomics, it doesn't mean that you can not have the state run anything at all. Austrian economists are not anarchists. For example I can point to successful schemes in Saudi or China and still see that on the grand scheme of things private markets are a lot more efficient. You're pointing to the exception as a criticism of the rule. If they do it right this step makes a lot of sense for Chile. It doesn't negate the fact that socialist policies have economically ruined South America at large. Venezuela is the best example, it used to be the richest of them all not very long ago.

alvarezbjm-hn 3y ago
Not "socialist policies" Populist dictators have ruined everything.