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> There are multiple ways to describe China's economy but the most accurate and relevant for this topic is that it's a command economy That brings up an intere

> There are multiple ways to describe China's economy but the most accurate and relevant for this topic is that it's a command economy That brings up an interesting point. It seems to be a conventional wisdom that centrally planned economies don't work (and did not work in cases where they were tried) as well as Western-style capitalism because of the communication and command bottlenecks. But what if those bottlenecks have been greatly increased in the information age of Internet, other global communication networks, and data collection? The western-capitalist system has the problem of getting stuck in local minima, being driven as a network of actors. What if the downsides of that are finally greater than the performance hit due to central planning bottlenecks?

jmyeet 1y ago
What is "conventional wisdom"? It's propaganda, basically. You might be tempted to think of academics as if they're operating independently, almost as if they're in an Ivory Tower where they bless us with missives occasionally as they make deep, apolitical discoveries. But that's just not the case. There is an entire ecosystem of think tanks and funding to push the neoliberalism agenda. This is entirely self-interested. And it's not necessarily that funding is buying particular opinions. It's that anyone who contradicts this narrative simply gets self-selected out of the academic grants pipeline. I stend to refer to this as the Tyranny of Austrian Economists [1]. There is an entire industry built to convince people that capitalism is good and collectivism of any kind is bad. It also misattributes the wealth of the developed world to capitalism when it's really about exploitation (eg slavery), colonialism and imperialism. It's really no different to all the industry funded tobacco research that "proved" how safe smoking was. Africa isn't poor. The people might generally be poor but Africa is not. It's simply been looted by the West. You don't commit resources to an imperial project that is poor. If command economies are so unsuccessful why do they need to be isolated and starved (eg Cuba)? Won't they just fail on their own? The whole point is to punish any contradiction to capitalist dogma and to engineer their failure to prove that point. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Austrian_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Austrian_School
- selimthegrim 1y ago
  Who was isolating and starving Yugoslavia? They did a pretty good job of failing on their own.
AnimalMuppet 1y ago
There are two problems with a command economy. First, as you say, because of communication bottlenecks. 300 small bakeries (number made up) keep a better eye on how much bread is needed in Manhattan than a technocrat in DC, or even Albany. As you say, we now have the communication technology to overcome that. But second, there is the command problem. You may be able to get the data there, but who's going to make the decisions? They were made by 300 (or however many) bakery owners; now they're going to be made by one or a few people. They may have the data, but do they know what to do with it? Do they know enough about bakeries and bread? Do they have the mental capacity to replace 300 people? This gets worse as you get bigger scale. What if you're not just trying to do the bakeries of Manhattan? What if you're trying to do all the food supply in Manhattan? All of retail in Manhattan? All of retail in the whole country? The other problem with a commander is that they can decide that they want something, whether or not the data supports it. And their subordinates may decide that they'll get better promotions (or at least keep their jobs) if they 1) do what the commander says and 2) tell the commander what he wants to hear. Better ability to communicate the data does not fix the second problem at all.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  You don't really micromanage things, just like managers in a company shouldn't micromanage things. You don't make decisions on how much bread should be made by each of the 300 bakeries; you decide that making bread itself is important so you give subsidies. You decide that making bread locally is important so subsidies are only available to locally made and not imported bread. You decide that whole wheat bread is more important than white bread so you give subsidies only to whole wheat bread.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    That's one possible outcome, yes. If the commander is smart/realist enough, you might even get it.

jmyeet 1y ago

What is "conventional wisdom"? It's propaganda, basically. You might be tempted to think of academics as if they're operating independently, almost as if they're in an Ivory Tower where they bless us with missives occasionally as they make deep, apolitical discoveries. But that's just not the case. There is an entire ecosystem of think tanks and funding to push the neoliberalism agenda. This is entirely self-interested. And it's not necessarily that funding is buying particular opinions. It's that anyone who contradicts this narrative simply gets self-selected out of the academic grants pipeline. I stend to refer to this as the Tyranny of Austrian Economists [1]. There is an entire industry built to convince people that capitalism is good and collectivism of any kind is bad. It also misattributes the wealth of the developed world to capitalism when it's really about exploitation (eg slavery), colonialism and imperialism. It's really no different to all the industry funded tobacco research that "proved" how safe smoking was. Africa isn't poor. The people might generally be poor but Africa is not. It's simply been looted by the West. You don't commit resources to an imperial project that is poor. If command economies are so unsuccessful why do they need to be isolated and starved (eg Cuba)? Won't they just fail on their own? The whole point is to punish any contradiction to capitalist dogma and to engineer their failure to prove that point. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Austrian_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Austrian_School

selimthegrim 1y ago
Who was isolating and starving Yugoslavia? They did a pretty good job of failing on their own.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago

There are two problems with a command economy. First, as you say, because of communication bottlenecks. 300 small bakeries (number made up) keep a better eye on how much bread is needed in Manhattan than a technocrat in DC, or even Albany. As you say, we now have the communication technology to overcome that. But second, there is the command problem. You may be able to get the data there, but who's going to make the decisions? They were made by 300 (or however many) bakery owners; now they're going to be made by one or a few people. They may have the data, but do they know what to do with it? Do they know enough about bakeries and bread? Do they have the mental capacity to replace 300 people? This gets worse as you get bigger scale. What if you're not just trying to do the bakeries of Manhattan? What if you're trying to do all the food supply in Manhattan? All of retail in Manhattan? All of retail in the whole country? The other problem with a commander is that they can decide that they want something, whether or not the data supports it. And their subordinates may decide that they'll get better promotions (or at least keep their jobs) if they 1) do what the commander says and 2) tell the commander what he wants to hear. Better ability to communicate the data does not fix the second problem at all.

kccqzy 1y ago
You don't really micromanage things, just like managers in a company shouldn't micromanage things. You don't make decisions on how much bread should be made by each of the 300 bakeries; you decide that making bread itself is important so you give subsidies. You decide that making bread locally is important so subsidies are only available to locally made and not imported bread. You decide that whole wheat bread is more important than white bread so you give subsidies only to whole wheat bread.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  That's one possible outcome, yes. If the commander is smart/realist enough, you might even get it.