7 ms·

Absolutely fascinating. I'm sure I'm biased by my own philosophy, but this seems to be a good reminder that for all the flaws in capitalist economies, a central

Absolutely fascinating. I'm sure I'm biased by my own philosophy, but this seems to be a good reminder that for all the flaws in capitalist economies, a centrally planned economy really just doesn't function. Also a good reminder that strong individuals can adapt with creative ideas that will always be one step ahead of the central planners.

api 12y ago
Agreed. Politics is often not a question of picking the best option, but of picking the least awful option from among a list of very bad ideas. Will you have death by lethal injection, hanging, or being set on fire? I'd pick the first. Being an advocate of the "capitalistic welfare state" (as I am) is a similar sort of choice. Why is this? I don't think it's just intellectual cop-out. I think the problem is that economics and all the other complex systems issues that hide behind politics are things that human beings are just not well-equipped to understand. We're bad at economics and social planning for the same reason we are bad at understanding the genome holistically. We just can't "grok" stuff like that. I sometimes wonder if this isn't a neurological barrier. After all, how often in human evolution did we confront the need to understand parallel auto-adaptive systems with tangled webs of causality, multiple positive and negative feedback loops, and chaotic behavior? This may require neurological hardware that we just don't have, so we try to muddle through by applying linear reductionism. It doesn't work very well, but it's the only cognitive tool we have for decomposing a system that remotely works at all. The free-ish market with a welfare state is a mess of hacks we've come up with through historical experimentation that seems to offer the benefits of certain classes of systems while mitigating their downsides. It's not pretty but it doesn't hurt as bad as being set on fire.
- aptwebapps 12y ago
  "I think the problem is that economics and all the other complex systems issues that hide behind politics are things that human beings are just not well-equipped to understand. We're bad at economics and social planning for the same reason we are bad at understanding the genome holistically. We just can't "grok" stuff like that." I think we _can_ grok stuff like that, but not easily and not without study. I think that the main reason there are so many arguments about economics is that most people have not done that and because people know where various economic arguments lead and they've already made up their minds on those issues. Economics is just too fundamentally intertwined with public policy to be left to pure economists. Almost (and that's just a hedge) everybody who puts forth economic opinions online, for example, has some sort of political axe to grind.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    Never mind that economics still insist on modeling as if the system will auto-balance (equilibrium) if left alone. A notion that just about every other science, that is not out there in the lala land of social sciences, have since replaced with dynamic modeling. They insist that debt is just a exchange between individuals, with banks just sitting there passing the baskets back and forth.
maceo 12y ago
As much as Cuba's economy is nothing to aspire to, the WWF says that they're the only country on earth that has undergone sustainable development. That is, the have the 2nd highest HDI in Latin America and they've managed to achieve it with a sustainable ecological footprint. Of course, this doesn't outweigh the fact that people on the island have very little freedom, but it does say something about the power of central planning in developing economies that don't destroy the planet. http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf
- sanoli 12y ago
  What? Cuba kept a sustainable ecological footprint because its economy, with the embargo and collapse of the Soviet Union, just couldn't afford industrialization.
delackner 12y ago
In all the negativity of the article, you could easily miss the fact that Cuba has higher life expectancy than all the countries you mention except Chile, and lower violent crime rates by far, universal health care, and universal education. They also have suffered 50 years of a trade embargo by their main natural customer (they were a huge Sugar exporter to the United States before we cut them off).
- msandford 12y ago
  I think a very interesting question is "why does Cuba have higher life expectancy?" It might be due to universal healthcare, or it might be that people simply can't afford "bad" food and mostly eat what they're given by the government. And the government doesn't give them fast food, it gives them traditional staples like rice, beans, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Health_indicators_and_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Health_indi... Just because the healthcare is universal doesn't mean that it's good. There are differing views of the efficacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Contrasting_views_on_Cuba.27s_health_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Contrasting... The main criticisms are that the government has the power to first game the statistics or outright manufacture them. And because journalists don't have the freedom to report honestly (repeat negative exposure means no more visas) we don't actually know if the stats are gamed a little or a lot.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The US and Cuba have roughly comparable rates of death due to coronary heart disease and stroke.
  - kenrikm 12y ago
    Or it could be because it's propaganda [1]. Nah can't be that dictitorial communist states have always been known for being extremely honest. I hear they also have a low infant mortality rate.. [2] [1] great healthcare! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3AnxSgdxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3AnxSgdxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7mLp9j-3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7mLp9j-3k [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI
rdtsc 12y ago
Interestingly sub-economies of giant corporations are effectively planned economies, with a dictatorial bureaucratic apparatus sitting on top -- the management pyramid. To get away one would switch companies. To get a way from a country one would move to another country (well not always so easy... but you get the gist of it)
mempko 12y ago
Capitalism has nothing to do with central or not centrally planned economies. The soviet union was a capitalist society but was centrally planned. In fact most people, even in the USA, spend their days in small centrally planned economies known as corporations.
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  The Soviets did not have the computational ability to solve large-scale logistics problems. Their 'central planning' was always doomed.

api 12y ago

Agreed. Politics is often not a question of picking the best option, but of picking the least awful option from among a list of very bad ideas. Will you have death by lethal injection, hanging, or being set on fire? I'd pick the first. Being an advocate of the "capitalistic welfare state" (as I am) is a similar sort of choice. Why is this? I don't think it's just intellectual cop-out. I think the problem is that economics and all the other complex systems issues that hide behind politics are things that human beings are just not well-equipped to understand. We're bad at economics and social planning for the same reason we are bad at understanding the genome holistically. We just can't "grok" stuff like that. I sometimes wonder if this isn't a neurological barrier. After all, how often in human evolution did we confront the need to understand parallel auto-adaptive systems with tangled webs of causality, multiple positive and negative feedback loops, and chaotic behavior? This may require neurological hardware that we just don't have, so we try to muddle through by applying linear reductionism. It doesn't work very well, but it's the only cognitive tool we have for decomposing a system that remotely works at all. The free-ish market with a welfare state is a mess of hacks we've come up with through historical experimentation that seems to offer the benefits of certain classes of systems while mitigating their downsides. It's not pretty but it doesn't hurt as bad as being set on fire.

aptwebapps 12y ago
"I think the problem is that economics and all the other complex systems issues that hide behind politics are things that human beings are just not well-equipped to understand. We're bad at economics and social planning for the same reason we are bad at understanding the genome holistically. We just can't "grok" stuff like that." I think we _can_ grok stuff like that, but not easily and not without study. I think that the main reason there are so many arguments about economics is that most people have not done that and because people know where various economic arguments lead and they've already made up their minds on those issues. Economics is just too fundamentally intertwined with public policy to be left to pure economists. Almost (and that's just a hedge) everybody who puts forth economic opinions online, for example, has some sort of political axe to grind.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Never mind that economics still insist on modeling as if the system will auto-balance (equilibrium) if left alone. A notion that just about every other science, that is not out there in the lala land of social sciences, have since replaced with dynamic modeling. They insist that debt is just a exchange between individuals, with banks just sitting there passing the baskets back and forth.

maceo 12y ago

As much as Cuba's economy is nothing to aspire to, the WWF says that they're the only country on earth that has undergone sustainable development. That is, the have the 2nd highest HDI in Latin America and they've managed to achieve it with a sustainable ecological footprint. Of course, this doesn't outweigh the fact that people on the island have very little freedom, but it does say something about the power of central planning in developing economies that don't destroy the planet. http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf

sanoli 12y ago
What? Cuba kept a sustainable ecological footprint because its economy, with the embargo and collapse of the Soviet Union, just couldn't afford industrialization.

delackner 12y ago

In all the negativity of the article, you could easily miss the fact that Cuba has higher life expectancy than all the countries you mention except Chile, and lower violent crime rates by far, universal health care, and universal education. They also have suffered 50 years of a trade embargo by their main natural customer (they were a huge Sugar exporter to the United States before we cut them off).

msandford 12y ago
I think a very interesting question is "why does Cuba have higher life expectancy?" It might be due to universal healthcare, or it might be that people simply can't afford "bad" food and mostly eat what they're given by the government. And the government doesn't give them fast food, it gives them traditional staples like rice, beans, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Health_indicators_and_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Health_indi... Just because the healthcare is universal doesn't mean that it's good. There are differing views of the efficacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Contrasting_views_on_Cuba.27s_health_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba#Contrasting... The main criticisms are that the government has the power to first game the statistics or outright manufacture them. And because journalists don't have the freedom to report honestly (repeat negative exposure means no more visas) we don't actually know if the stats are gamed a little or a lot.
- tptacek 12y ago
  The US and Cuba have roughly comparable rates of death due to coronary heart disease and stroke.
- kenrikm 12y ago
  Or it could be because it's propaganda [1]. Nah can't be that dictitorial communist states have always been known for being extremely honest. I hear they also have a low infant mortality rate.. [2] [1] great healthcare! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3AnxSgdxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3AnxSgdxA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7mLp9j-3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7mLp9j-3k [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_wKhXurFyI

rdtsc 12y ago

Interestingly sub-economies of giant corporations are effectively planned economies, with a dictatorial bureaucratic apparatus sitting on top -- the management pyramid. To get away one would switch companies. To get a way from a country one would move to another country (well not always so easy... but you get the gist of it)

mempko 12y ago

Capitalism has nothing to do with central or not centrally planned economies. The soviet union was a capitalist society but was centrally planned. In fact most people, even in the USA, spend their days in small centrally planned economies known as corporations.

jsprogrammer 12y ago
The Soviets did not have the computational ability to solve large-scale logistics problems. Their 'central planning' was always doomed.