2 ms·

This happens at the micro level (one employee is swapped for another who is better) and at the macro level (banks/tesla) and at the country level (socialism is

by brc 12y ago

This happens at the micro level (one employee is swapped for another who is better) and at the macro level (banks/tesla) and at the country level (socialism is replaced by more efficient and humane capitalism as in ussr/GDR). The problem is when the bad employee cannot be removed, the bank is bailed out or the people are unable to get themselves a new form of government. The key to efficient reallocation is not letting too much power concentrate in one location. And I think that is the thing at risk the most right now. Governments have become too powerful and are preventing the necessary creative destruction, like an operating system refusing to run the garbage collector and preventing new programs from running.

FireRabbit 12y ago
The problem with the USSR wasn't its economic system, it was the fact it was a corrupt dictatorship.
- hvs 12y ago
  Which was required by its economic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    Then why was national socialism such a huge success in Germany?
    - brc 12y ago
      It's a late reply but national socialism only ran for a short time before being replaced with a wartime economy. In effect the program ran fine because it didn't run long enough for garbage collection to be an issue.
  - ticviking 12y ago
    This is a real problem, but not as big as Libertarians like to make it out to be. Additionally there is a tendency to ignore the very large command economies within our market Surely the command economy within Wal-Mart is at least as large as the USSR was, and it appears to have just as many inefficiencies, and absurdities generated by perverse incentives and miscalculations.Because it is not the state it manages to do away with the most egregious cruelties of a planned economy, and is definitely preferable to a state planed economy, but it's also probably not the best we can do. Spend a bit of time studying Yugoslavia and the ideas of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management if you're interested in non-anarchocapitalist solutions to the calculation problem

by brc 12y ago

FireRabbit 12y ago

The problem with the USSR wasn't its economic system, it was the fact it was a corrupt dictatorship.

hvs 12y ago
Which was required by its economic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  Then why was national socialism such a huge success in Germany?
  - brc 12y ago
    It's a late reply but national socialism only ran for a short time before being replaced with a wartime economy. In effect the program ran fine because it didn't run long enough for garbage collection to be an issue.
- ticviking 12y ago
  This is a real problem, but not as big as Libertarians like to make it out to be. Additionally there is a tendency to ignore the very large command economies within our market Surely the command economy within Wal-Mart is at least as large as the USSR was, and it appears to have just as many inefficiencies, and absurdities generated by perverse incentives and miscalculations.Because it is not the state it manages to do away with the most egregious cruelties of a planned economy, and is definitely preferable to a state planed economy, but it's also probably not the best we can do. Spend a bit of time studying Yugoslavia and the ideas of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management if you're interested in non-anarchocapitalist solutions to the calculation problem