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Central planning has a very good record in countries like China/South Korea. Non central social changes are just very very slow.

jajko 2y ago
Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Main reason why EU won't ever compete with US economically, while being also very rich and actually more populous. You should also compare it to situation where those countries wouldn't be centrally planned. Not so possible without time machine, so let's leave out measuring of efficiency of such systems. Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed and fell down overnight, literally all those economies experienced massive boosts. I know I've lived through such transition there, hard to describe with words.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  > Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed I am not saying central planning is a cure all. Trying a bad economic system with any kind of planning will fail. > Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Correct, in the absence of strong top down rule (whether democracy or not), social changes are just going to be very slow (this doesn't mean strong top down rule will result in good changes, just that otherwise it is slow). The US needed a civil war to abolish slavery and two world wars for many other social changes (similar to most of western Europe). I am not saying A or B is better. But without central planning the chances of any big cultural changes in Sudan type countries happening in the next 50 or even 100 years is very remote.
- joker99 2y ago
  That is not the main reason. Not even close. Here’s a list of main reasons, in no particular order: - 8 different currencies across EU member states - 24 languages - 27 sovereign countries with wildly different economic, social, foreign, military … policies - laws and regulations are only slowly harmonised across the board - deep seating historic prejudices (which lead to major wars in the past) - unfriendly and downright hostile neighbours - a smaller amount of natural resources to exploit - etc etc
  - walthamstow 2y ago
    The EU has existed for less than a lifetime. Before that we were competing against each other, with bloody consequences. How many wars were fought on European soil between 1776 and today? I couldn't even begin to answer that.
- feedforward 2y ago
  With regards to central planning, neither China nor the US is fully in or out of it. China still has Five Year Plans and some central planning, but Deng Xioping took steps away from it in the 1980s. There's a mythology the US has no central planning, but it has had a lot of central planning since 1932 and certainly since 1941. Market makers watch for the presidentially nominated Powell to come out and announce the fed funds rate for our fiat currency, and the economy either speeds up or slows down in response. We are typing on a network the government paid BBN and other companies to create, on chips descended from the Fairchild chips that Air Force contracts funded. For various historical reasons, much of the central planning in the US is done via its very well funded military (then well funded military contractors pay think tanks and politicians to go out and say they're not so well funded)
giantg2 2y ago
I'm not sure China is a good example of it working, unless you limit it to the past couple decades and ignore the human rights issues. South Korea may be a decent example, but also has some possible indirect negative effects, given all the protests, urban/rural divide, and social/birthrate issues. Sure they have the whole not starving thing handled, but so do the majority of countries regardless of central planning or not.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  Do you realise you are commenting in the context of a massive famine and millions of lives lost? All the countries in Africa and almost any non developed country will gladly take post Mao Chinese leadership and there current status quo over their current lives. Human rights don't come before people have a certain dignity to live. Trying to preach human rights to a starving population is just .....
  - giantg2 2y ago
    Do you realize we're talking about approaches that work? What stages did China and South Korea go through to get to today? The 40s and 50s were pretty bad in either country. Show me a prosperous centralized government that didn't have some ethnic or political cleansing at it's roots. Or you could not red herring me and supply a proposed solution that could work instead of painting my opposition to central planning as an opposition to fixing famine in an emotional appeal.
logicchains 2y ago
>Central planning has a very good record in countries like China It's got a very terrible track record in China; the government caused tens of millions of its own people to starve to death, and set the economic development back decades. The GDP per capita in Taiwan is more than double that of China currently, but both started at a similar position. If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  > If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better. This is just absurd. Taiwan's entire economy is TSMC + some small things. Copying political systems doesn't get you per capita standard of living. Yes Mao's China did stupid things but post Mao China has done well economically atleast. They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well.
  - Ray20 2y ago
    >They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well. Literally zero work is required for this. You just need to stop keeping people in extreme poverty - and that's it.
albertopv 2y ago
China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly something different
yorwba 2y ago
Central planning has an extremely bad record in China, especially when it comes to famine. During the Great Leap forward, the central planners demanded the implementation of new Lysenkoist farming practices that were reportedly a great success and on track to deliver a record harvest. The central planners then dispensed generous daily rations from the granaries, so that everyone could eat their fill, causing farmers to spend less effort on the side crops they had been growing in addition to working on the state farms. The central planners decided that they didn't need quite so many agricultural workers, so they redirected the labor surplus to increasing steel production in order to catch up with the British Empire and overtake the United States. And they also increased food exports to other countries. Then it all came crashing down: the reports of huge productivity increases were made up, the record harvest was a record low, the surplus was a deficit, tens of millions of people starved. (Steel production did not meaningfully increase either.) You could argue that it was just a very expensive beginner's mistake because they'd only been doing the central planning thing for about a decade at that point, but then after Mao's death less than two decades later, the first big economic reform was the Household Responsibility System where farmers would decide for themselves what to grow, and the state would just buy it from them. So I think the verdict from the world's greatest experts in agricultural central planning is clear: don't do it.
- crop_rotation 2y ago
  I have mentioned this elsewhere as well, no kind of planning saves one from bad economic policy. Post Deng China has a very very good record of bringing prosperity (and China still central planning).
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > and China still central planning Every country has some central planning, China doesn't have much more central planning today than your average European country. Or do you believe some CCP central planner decided to put in scantily clad anime girls in games from China? China today is very capitalist, they lack democracy, not capitalism.
    - 2y ago

jajko 2y ago

Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Main reason why EU won't ever compete with US economically, while being also very rich and actually more populous. You should also compare it to situation where those countries wouldn't be centrally planned. Not so possible without time machine, so let's leave out measuring of efficiency of such systems. Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed and fell down overnight, literally all those economies experienced massive boosts. I know I've lived through such transition there, hard to describe with words.

crop_rotation 2y ago
> Ie when in Eastern Europe communism and central planning failed I am not saying central planning is a cure all. Trying a bad economic system with any kind of planning will fail. > Maybe but its doesn't work in democracies well. Correct, in the absence of strong top down rule (whether democracy or not), social changes are just going to be very slow (this doesn't mean strong top down rule will result in good changes, just that otherwise it is slow). The US needed a civil war to abolish slavery and two world wars for many other social changes (similar to most of western Europe). I am not saying A or B is better. But without central planning the chances of any big cultural changes in Sudan type countries happening in the next 50 or even 100 years is very remote.
joker99 2y ago
That is not the main reason. Not even close. Here’s a list of main reasons, in no particular order: - 8 different currencies across EU member states - 24 languages - 27 sovereign countries with wildly different economic, social, foreign, military … policies - laws and regulations are only slowly harmonised across the board - deep seating historic prejudices (which lead to major wars in the past) - unfriendly and downright hostile neighbours - a smaller amount of natural resources to exploit - etc etc
- walthamstow 2y ago
  The EU has existed for less than a lifetime. Before that we were competing against each other, with bloody consequences. How many wars were fought on European soil between 1776 and today? I couldn't even begin to answer that.
feedforward 2y ago
With regards to central planning, neither China nor the US is fully in or out of it. China still has Five Year Plans and some central planning, but Deng Xioping took steps away from it in the 1980s. There's a mythology the US has no central planning, but it has had a lot of central planning since 1932 and certainly since 1941. Market makers watch for the presidentially nominated Powell to come out and announce the fed funds rate for our fiat currency, and the economy either speeds up or slows down in response. We are typing on a network the government paid BBN and other companies to create, on chips descended from the Fairchild chips that Air Force contracts funded. For various historical reasons, much of the central planning in the US is done via its very well funded military (then well funded military contractors pay think tanks and politicians to go out and say they're not so well funded)

giantg2 2y ago

I'm not sure China is a good example of it working, unless you limit it to the past couple decades and ignore the human rights issues. South Korea may be a decent example, but also has some possible indirect negative effects, given all the protests, urban/rural divide, and social/birthrate issues. Sure they have the whole not starving thing handled, but so do the majority of countries regardless of central planning or not.

crop_rotation 2y ago
Do you realise you are commenting in the context of a massive famine and millions of lives lost? All the countries in Africa and almost any non developed country will gladly take post Mao Chinese leadership and there current status quo over their current lives. Human rights don't come before people have a certain dignity to live. Trying to preach human rights to a starving population is just .....
- giantg2 2y ago
  Do you realize we're talking about approaches that work? What stages did China and South Korea go through to get to today? The 40s and 50s were pretty bad in either country. Show me a prosperous centralized government that didn't have some ethnic or political cleansing at it's roots. Or you could not red herring me and supply a proposed solution that could work instead of painting my opposition to central planning as an opposition to fixing famine in an emotional appeal.

logicchains 2y ago

>Central planning has a very good record in countries like China It's got a very terrible track record in China; the government caused tens of millions of its own people to starve to death, and set the economic development back decades. The GDP per capita in Taiwan is more than double that of China currently, but both started at a similar position. If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better.

crop_rotation 2y ago
> If China had had a similar political system to Taiwan, its people's standard of living would be much better. This is just absurd. Taiwan's entire economy is TSMC + some small things. Copying political systems doesn't get you per capita standard of living. Yes Mao's China did stupid things but post Mao China has done well economically atleast. They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well.
- Ray20 2y ago
  >They had an enviable job of bringing so many people out of extreme poverty and have done well. Literally zero work is required for this. You just need to stop keeping people in extreme poverty - and that's it.

albertopv 2y ago

China had an empire lasting about 2000 years, truly something different

yorwba 2y ago

Central planning has an extremely bad record in China, especially when it comes to famine. During the Great Leap forward, the central planners demanded the implementation of new Lysenkoist farming practices that were reportedly a great success and on track to deliver a record harvest. The central planners then dispensed generous daily rations from the granaries, so that everyone could eat their fill, causing farmers to spend less effort on the side crops they had been growing in addition to working on the state farms. The central planners decided that they didn't need quite so many agricultural workers, so they redirected the labor surplus to increasing steel production in order to catch up with the British Empire and overtake the United States. And they also increased food exports to other countries. Then it all came crashing down: the reports of huge productivity increases were made up, the record harvest was a record low, the surplus was a deficit, tens of millions of people starved. (Steel production did not meaningfully increase either.) You could argue that it was just a very expensive beginner's mistake because they'd only been doing the central planning thing for about a decade at that point, but then after Mao's death less than two decades later, the first big economic reform was the Household Responsibility System where farmers would decide for themselves what to grow, and the state would just buy it from them. So I think the verdict from the world's greatest experts in agricultural central planning is clear: don't do it.

crop_rotation 2y ago
I have mentioned this elsewhere as well, no kind of planning saves one from bad economic policy. Post Deng China has a very very good record of bringing prosperity (and China still central planning).
- Jensson 2y ago
  > and China still central planning Every country has some central planning, China doesn't have much more central planning today than your average European country. Or do you believe some CCP central planner decided to put in scantily clad anime girls in games from China? China today is very capitalist, they lack democracy, not capitalism.
  - 2y ago