Comment by nradov
2 days ago
That's so naive. Economic central planning is a fool's errand. Regardless of how good the computers are, it can never work because it's impossible to gather accurate demand data. Only free market economics can ever work at scale over the long term.
That is nothing but an ideological statement without any evidence, one that is being disproven as we speak.
Free market economics haven't worked out great for the vast majority of people.
Go ahead, plan my Christmas Eve. What time I wake up, what time I leave the house, which routes I take, what things I buy. Assign the kWhs of electricity and liters of water and fuel that I'll use up, plan ingredients for my meals of the day.
The belief that a central "digital planning engine" could plan the lives of an entire society is an incredibly naive idea from early cybernetics. This doesn't work even in small thought experiments because of information limits. No central system can access all the local knowledge and constantly changing circumstances.
Free market economics is working great for the vast majority of people. Median living standards in capitalism countries are higher than ever. Regardless of ideology the data is quite clear on this point.
Where are you getting this data? Does it include the USSR and China? I bet it does.
> Economic central planning is a fool's errand.
crazy, because the two biggest cases of economic central planning are the USSR which grew faster than any civilization ever (a literacy rate of 30% to 100% in 60 years) and China who is currently making the United States world power look like a toddler.
There's clearly something to central planning, it's still up in the air if you can totally plan an economy centrally. I tend to agree with Chibber.
If you think China is centrally planned, I think you are talking past each other. China has a deep market economy.
All land in China is state owned, what in the world are you talking about? I can't tell if you don't know about China's state-capitalism or if you're trying to do purity politics about economic governance. Literally no one would describe china as "not centrally planned"
As I stated above, economic central planning can never work over the long term. The USSR didn't last very long, and it turns out that most of their economic statistics were fake anyway. Communists always lie about everything.
China still doesn't exert much power in world affairs. And their economic successes over the past few decades have come about by embracing free market principles. The stuff they tried to centrally plan has largely failed.
Literally no expert believes the USSR fell because of economic central planning. It is truly absurd to look at a 60 historic industrialization and urbanization and see "failure" in the long term.
> China still doesn't exert much power in world affairs.
So true, king.