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I feel like we are going too far. Central planning in presence of hostile adversaries unrestricted by any ethical systems failed. And by what measures has “free

I feel like we are going too far. Central planning in presence of hostile adversaries unrestricted by any ethical systems failed. And by what measures has “free market” has proven itself as successful? You can come up with your measures of success and others will propose measures of shortcoming. Others will even dispute the claim the American-led west is anything different from a centrally planned set of cooperating economies.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
What are those adversaries and why were they unrestricted ethically?
bruce511 3y ago
Central planning, in this context, is not the same as political philosophy. So be careful not to conflate the two. Central planning does happen in free-market economies all the time, at various levels. An HOA for example is a hyper-local example of central planning. The larger the scale the stronger the lever, and hence the more variable the result. The "free market" brings all kinds of its own oroblems of course - I'm not arguing for the elimination of planning - but long-range planning at national scales, is hard.
- NemoNobody 3y ago
  Haha, I love "Central Planning" is viewed as a bad thing by most normal Americans - like the commies are the only ones doing it. It takes a huge amount of "Central Planning" for our economy to function - as its fundamentally based on the concept of delayed gratification. Those concepts are very very similar. Any American that has worked and budgeted towards any financial goal should be able to see that for what it is... essentially the same thing.
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    Planning isn't the problem, planning to the point of forcing others is the problem. USSR stooped so low as to plan vacations of its workers: where they could go and with whom they could go. https://daily.jstor.org/workers-of-the-world-take-pto/ https://daily.jstor.org/workers-of-the-world-take-pto/ Not all central planning is the same. An American budgeting their finances is not the same as USSR deciding what the entire country should do during their vacations.
    - NemoNobody 3y ago
      It's the same here - we just have more options and corporations tell us where to go and what to wear, watch and do. The corporate world is much more efficient tho
lokar 3y ago
Critics of mostly free market systems generally base their argument on a comparison of wealth levels in such systems. They implicitly assume (or don’t care) that in a planned system the total wealth would be the same, just distributed differently. There is little evidence to support this.
- elteto 3y ago
  Correct. Moreover, if you shift the goalposts (wealth is no longer/can’t be primarily defined by a balance in a bank account) then society will adapt and create different wealth constructs to make up for it. So, you’ll have the government caste with nicer perks and opportunities, and then everyone else from there on down.
  - NemoNobody 3y ago
    Haha, yeah but it will all different people getting the perks than those with perks now
    - elteto 3y ago
      Yes, we know how egalitarian the USSR was, they didn’t discriminate against Jews or Asian minorities at all… /s
chaostheory 3y ago
> Central planning in presence of hostile adversaries unrestricted by any ethical systems failed. This is what happens in any system that leans too much on central planning. What we’re witnessing is just entropy ie late stage capitalist society in decline due to too much power being centralized. It’s not exclusive to capitalist economies. Historically, it’s even worse in primarily socialist economies because there are much less divisions of power from the start, where as in capitalist systems this happens over time. For this reason, the same decline happens much faster in primarily socialist systems. The main flaw in thinking that socialism is better than capitalism, despite the clear results in the 20th century, is missing the fact that corrupt sociopaths don’t just disappear just because you changed the economic and political system; they adapt.
- bruce511 3y ago
  I don't know for sure, but I feel like you're possibly conflating socialism with communism? They are really quite different political models, although I'll grant you that both have a spectrum of examples. Equally capitalism, socialism and communism are all (somewhat) tangential to government organisation (single party, two party, multiparty, monarchy, dictator etc.) And I understand here that I'm painting with a very broad brush here - grouping some very dissimilar things together under the same terms while disregarding a lot of nuance)
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    Communism is just late stage socialism. Besides even if they were two separate things, by design in socialism nearly everything is centrally planned. Corruption just spreads much faster in systems where you centralize power from the start ie you want the groups running the media, producing goods, and managing the laws to be separate entities
    - bruce511 3y ago
      I think we'll gave to agree to disagree there. In my understanding socialism and communism are two very different animals. Communism is about the absolute equality of all - no rich, no poor. Socialism is about caring for the poor, with no upper bound on the rich. In other words one squeezes from the top down. The other pushes from the bottom up.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

What are those adversaries and why were they unrestricted ethically?

bruce511 3y ago

Central planning, in this context, is not the same as political philosophy. So be careful not to conflate the two. Central planning does happen in free-market economies all the time, at various levels. An HOA for example is a hyper-local example of central planning. The larger the scale the stronger the lever, and hence the more variable the result. The "free market" brings all kinds of its own oroblems of course - I'm not arguing for the elimination of planning - but long-range planning at national scales, is hard.

NemoNobody 3y ago
Haha, I love "Central Planning" is viewed as a bad thing by most normal Americans - like the commies are the only ones doing it. It takes a huge amount of "Central Planning" for our economy to function - as its fundamentally based on the concept of delayed gratification. Those concepts are very very similar. Any American that has worked and budgeted towards any financial goal should be able to see that for what it is... essentially the same thing.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  Planning isn't the problem, planning to the point of forcing others is the problem. USSR stooped so low as to plan vacations of its workers: where they could go and with whom they could go. https://daily.jstor.org/workers-of-the-world-take-pto/ https://daily.jstor.org/workers-of-the-world-take-pto/ Not all central planning is the same. An American budgeting their finances is not the same as USSR deciding what the entire country should do during their vacations.
  - NemoNobody 3y ago
    It's the same here - we just have more options and corporations tell us where to go and what to wear, watch and do. The corporate world is much more efficient tho

lokar 3y ago

Critics of mostly free market systems generally base their argument on a comparison of wealth levels in such systems. They implicitly assume (or don’t care) that in a planned system the total wealth would be the same, just distributed differently. There is little evidence to support this.

elteto 3y ago
Correct. Moreover, if you shift the goalposts (wealth is no longer/can’t be primarily defined by a balance in a bank account) then society will adapt and create different wealth constructs to make up for it. So, you’ll have the government caste with nicer perks and opportunities, and then everyone else from there on down.
- NemoNobody 3y ago
  Haha, yeah but it will all different people getting the perks than those with perks now
  - elteto 3y ago
    Yes, we know how egalitarian the USSR was, they didn’t discriminate against Jews or Asian minorities at all… /s

chaostheory 3y ago

> Central planning in presence of hostile adversaries unrestricted by any ethical systems failed. This is what happens in any system that leans too much on central planning. What we’re witnessing is just entropy ie late stage capitalist society in decline due to too much power being centralized. It’s not exclusive to capitalist economies. Historically, it’s even worse in primarily socialist economies because there are much less divisions of power from the start, where as in capitalist systems this happens over time. For this reason, the same decline happens much faster in primarily socialist systems. The main flaw in thinking that socialism is better than capitalism, despite the clear results in the 20th century, is missing the fact that corrupt sociopaths don’t just disappear just because you changed the economic and political system; they adapt.

bruce511 3y ago
I don't know for sure, but I feel like you're possibly conflating socialism with communism? They are really quite different political models, although I'll grant you that both have a spectrum of examples. Equally capitalism, socialism and communism are all (somewhat) tangential to government organisation (single party, two party, multiparty, monarchy, dictator etc.) And I understand here that I'm painting with a very broad brush here - grouping some very dissimilar things together under the same terms while disregarding a lot of nuance)
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Communism is just late stage socialism. Besides even if they were two separate things, by design in socialism nearly everything is centrally planned. Corruption just spreads much faster in systems where you centralize power from the start ie you want the groups running the media, producing goods, and managing the laws to be separate entities
  - bruce511 3y ago
    I think we'll gave to agree to disagree there. In my understanding socialism and communism are two very different animals. Communism is about the absolute equality of all - no rich, no poor. Socialism is about caring for the poor, with no upper bound on the rich. In other words one squeezes from the top down. The other pushes from the bottom up.