7 ms·

And that's as it should be. State-allocated capital without a private finance sector has failed miserably, like in terms of millions of people starving, everyw

by jbooth 13y ago

And that's as it should be. State-allocated capital without a private finance sector has failed miserably, like in terms of millions of people starving, everywhere it's been tried. There's a middle ground here. "Well-regulated market". Communists don't understand the market part (see Great Leap Forward) and Libertarians are idolators who think the market will automatically settle into the best thing for society if only we didn't have a government (see Somalia).

bduerst 13y ago
Most of the self-proclaimed libertarians I have spoken to typically resort to 'No True Scotsmans' whenever you bring up a counter to their utopia. I say "utopia" because to them, a libertarian future was an insulated fantasy in which they controlled how everyone behaves.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
soup10 13y ago
I'm not advocating more government programs or central planning. I think it's more of a cultural issue and balancing social responsibility with profits.
scarmig 13y ago
That's a wild overstatement. There have certainly been massive socialist famines, but there's also been massive capitalist ones (see: colonies of the UK in the 19th century). And socialist famines don't happen everywhere socialism is instituted (people did not starve en masse in East Germany), and in many of the places where famine actually did occur, it's probably better to view it as a success of central planning (in the limited sense that mass death was a purposeful, desired outcome, not something coming about because of economic incompetence). Amartya Sen has done a lot of research on this: the big factor that determines whether famines happen or not is less planning than it is democratic political structure.
- watwut 13y ago
  Central planning in Russia was really incompetent and food shortages in Russia (not Ukraina) while Stalin was in power were often result of incompetence. In short, they used the fields in a wrong way.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Incompetence is a matter of degree, as is famine. I'd be the last to say that Soviet economic competence was close to ideal. Indeed, it was significantly worse than even Tsarist economic management. But food shortages aren't the same as famines, and in the famines (assuming we're talking about the famines of the early 30s), economic incompetence wasn't the primary driving factor, although this may be simply a case where we simply have different definitions of incompetence. Stalin explicitly wanted millions of Ukrainians to die as collective punishment for not being sufficiently red, and it's fair to say that he thought it was better to have a dead peasant than a peasant not part of a collective farm, where they and all their activities could be made easily legible to the Soviet State and placed under bodily control. Those millions of deaths racked up could have been avoided if Stalin had wanted to, even within the rubric of central planning. It's really not even a matter of the famine being something that could've been "averted": the famine wasn't a natural occurrence but something engineered. Central planning, particularly central planning under a dictatorship, being highly conducive to psychopaths killing millions of people is something I'd agree with, but it needs explicit argumentation.
- jbooth 13y ago
  There's a spectrum, obviously, but the post I was responding to, as phrased, seemed to be oversimplifying and basically arguing against letting the invisible hand, defined as a bunch of selfish a-holes creating market forces, work at all. (The poster clarified downthread that that's not what they meant, don't want to misrepresent them here.) I don't disagree with your conclusion about political structure, but if we're talking about pure collective planning with no reliance on private allocation of capital, that's never actually been done with a democratic political structure anyplace larger than a kibbutz. Democratic socialism, IMO, is much closer to well-regulated capitalism than it is to communism.
thwest 13y ago
A significant private finance sector present in the 1920s in the US did nothing to prevent the great depression, where millions of people starved.
- jbooth 13y ago
  And we passed a bunch of regulations afterwards which reduced the possibility of that happening again.
  - revscat 13y ago
    Regulations which, I believe, have largely been repealed.
    - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
      The future looks "bright" and full of "hope".
    - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
      It's all a heck of a lot richer story than that. If she's not just a curse word by now, Amity Schlae's (sp?) book on the Depression isn't bad at all. I dunno; all the bright-line false alternative stuff doesn't work. Economic history is still interesting. I believe it turns out that the regulation that got repealed probably would not have mattered much other than possibly setting up transparent exchanges for derivatives, and that seem speculative as well. YMMV, IMO, all that.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  A good argument can be made that it's the 1914 takeover of money creation by the government that led do the financial collapse in 1930.
gopher1 13y ago
Is China a well regulated market? Or are they communists who don't understand markets?
- jbooth 13y ago
  China's a big place, a lot of people, several sets of rules depending on where you are and I don't even know which decade you're asking about. IM-uneducated-O their national decision makers currently do a better job than ours on economic policy (they actually invest in infrastructure and aren't in bankers' pockets on the plus side, a bit too cozy with leading industrial firms on the minus side), while local government there tends to be very corrupt by our standards.
  - gopher1 13y ago
    So maybe state-allocated capital doesn't always lead to mass famine?
    - jbooth 13y ago
      Are you just trolling? My comment made multiple references to the private sector that currently exists in China. You're aware that there's a healthy private sector in China currently, right? The name "Deng Xiaopeng" ringing any bells? They've had grains futures markets for 25 years now. Not state-allocated capital for food. Seems kinda implausible that you just missed that one. I'd suggest reading a newspaper sometime. Maybe a history book or two.
      - gopher1 13y ago
        Ahh I see. So your definition of the famine-inducing kind of state capital allocation is so narrow as to only include those instances where famine actually occurred. State allocated capital is totally fine then, so long as some of (undetermined amount?) a country's economic allocation of capital is governed by market forces?
        13y ago
danmaz74 13y ago
I don't think the OP was arguing for a system "without a private finance sector". He was just arguing for a "middle ground" where effective regulation could cut the excessive of the private finance sector.

by jbooth 13y ago

bduerst 13y ago

Most of the self-proclaimed libertarians I have spoken to typically resort to 'No True Scotsmans' whenever you bring up a counter to their utopia. I say "utopia" because to them, a libertarian future was an insulated fantasy in which they controlled how everyone behaves.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

soup10 13y ago

I'm not advocating more government programs or central planning. I think it's more of a cultural issue and balancing social responsibility with profits.

scarmig 13y ago

That's a wild overstatement. There have certainly been massive socialist famines, but there's also been massive capitalist ones (see: colonies of the UK in the 19th century). And socialist famines don't happen everywhere socialism is instituted (people did not starve en masse in East Germany), and in many of the places where famine actually did occur, it's probably better to view it as a success of central planning (in the limited sense that mass death was a purposeful, desired outcome, not something coming about because of economic incompetence). Amartya Sen has done a lot of research on this: the big factor that determines whether famines happen or not is less planning than it is democratic political structure.

watwut 13y ago
Central planning in Russia was really incompetent and food shortages in Russia (not Ukraina) while Stalin was in power were often result of incompetence. In short, they used the fields in a wrong way.
- scarmig 13y ago
  Incompetence is a matter of degree, as is famine. I'd be the last to say that Soviet economic competence was close to ideal. Indeed, it was significantly worse than even Tsarist economic management. But food shortages aren't the same as famines, and in the famines (assuming we're talking about the famines of the early 30s), economic incompetence wasn't the primary driving factor, although this may be simply a case where we simply have different definitions of incompetence. Stalin explicitly wanted millions of Ukrainians to die as collective punishment for not being sufficiently red, and it's fair to say that he thought it was better to have a dead peasant than a peasant not part of a collective farm, where they and all their activities could be made easily legible to the Soviet State and placed under bodily control. Those millions of deaths racked up could have been avoided if Stalin had wanted to, even within the rubric of central planning. It's really not even a matter of the famine being something that could've been "averted": the famine wasn't a natural occurrence but something engineered. Central planning, particularly central planning under a dictatorship, being highly conducive to psychopaths killing millions of people is something I'd agree with, but it needs explicit argumentation.
jbooth 13y ago
There's a spectrum, obviously, but the post I was responding to, as phrased, seemed to be oversimplifying and basically arguing against letting the invisible hand, defined as a bunch of selfish a-holes creating market forces, work at all. (The poster clarified downthread that that's not what they meant, don't want to misrepresent them here.) I don't disagree with your conclusion about political structure, but if we're talking about pure collective planning with no reliance on private allocation of capital, that's never actually been done with a democratic political structure anyplace larger than a kibbutz. Democratic socialism, IMO, is much closer to well-regulated capitalism than it is to communism.

thwest 13y ago

A significant private finance sector present in the 1920s in the US did nothing to prevent the great depression, where millions of people starved.

jbooth 13y ago
And we passed a bunch of regulations afterwards which reduced the possibility of that happening again.
- revscat 13y ago
  Regulations which, I believe, have largely been repealed.
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    The future looks "bright" and full of "hope".
  - ArkyBeagle 13y ago
    It's all a heck of a lot richer story than that. If she's not just a curse word by now, Amity Schlae's (sp?) book on the Depression isn't bad at all. I dunno; all the bright-line false alternative stuff doesn't work. Economic history is still interesting. I believe it turns out that the regulation that got repealed probably would not have mattered much other than possibly setting up transparent exchanges for derivatives, and that seem speculative as well. YMMV, IMO, all that.
WalterBright 13y ago
A good argument can be made that it's the 1914 takeover of money creation by the government that led do the financial collapse in 1930.

gopher1 13y ago

Is China a well regulated market? Or are they communists who don't understand markets?

jbooth 13y ago
China's a big place, a lot of people, several sets of rules depending on where you are and I don't even know which decade you're asking about. IM-uneducated-O their national decision makers currently do a better job than ours on economic policy (they actually invest in infrastructure and aren't in bankers' pockets on the plus side, a bit too cozy with leading industrial firms on the minus side), while local government there tends to be very corrupt by our standards.
- gopher1 13y ago
  So maybe state-allocated capital doesn't always lead to mass famine?
  - jbooth 13y ago
    Are you just trolling? My comment made multiple references to the private sector that currently exists in China. You're aware that there's a healthy private sector in China currently, right? The name "Deng Xiaopeng" ringing any bells? They've had grains futures markets for 25 years now. Not state-allocated capital for food. Seems kinda implausible that you just missed that one. I'd suggest reading a newspaper sometime. Maybe a history book or two.
    - gopher1 13y ago
      Ahh I see. So your definition of the famine-inducing kind of state capital allocation is so narrow as to only include those instances where famine actually occurred. State allocated capital is totally fine then, so long as some of (undetermined amount?) a country's economic allocation of capital is governed by market forces?
      - 13y ago

danmaz74 13y ago

I don't think the OP was arguing for a system "without a private finance sector". He was just arguing for a "middle ground" where effective regulation could cut the excessive of the private finance sector.