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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 imp
by 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 agoI 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.
- lazyasciiart 2y agoI would probably focus on the government-mandated construction of new cities and control over which citizens go to university and where they can live, and that there is a wide spectrum of control between the USA and central planners managing the graphics in video game production.
- Jensson 2y ago> control over which citizens go to university and where they can live I am pretty sure Chinese citizens are allowed to live where they can afford and they are allowed to go to university if they score well enough on the public tests. Just like in Europe. If you are talking about the random arrests that happens in China, that is due to the undemocratic authoritarian regime and corruption, not due to central planning.
- lazyasciiart 2y agoNo, they aren’t. Look up the hukou residence permit system.
- Jensson 2y agoThat has already ended, there is no such discrimination any longer, the Hokou now is just a way to track people. Loosening that up is a big contributor to the Chinese miracle. Edit: Also class based societies are typically not called central planning, it is lack of human rights. Western nations do similar levels of planning just by deciding how many new houses are allowed to be built, you need a permit for every business to ensure you don't take too much electricity etc, tons of central planning everywhere.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoHaving worked at a school in China in which a large number of the students were there because their nonlocal hukou didn't entitle them to attend local public schools, it's pretty surreal to see someone claiming that the hukou controls where people are allowed to live. How are you imagining that happens?