- cross-posted to:
- slop@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- slop@hexbear.net
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11620989
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Central planning when done by governments: 😡
Central planning when done by private monopolies: 😃
Capitalist logic
Central planning was already perfectly viable with 1950s tech. It has never been a question of technology and the whole discussion about technology is a red herring, it’s a distraction from the fact that planning does and has worked.
It’s not a technical problem, it’s a political and organizational problem. That is one in which incorrect theories about how the economy should work, as those put forward by the architects of the Kosygin reforms in the USSR which re-inserted the profit motive into the Soviet planned economy, can and will corrode, corrupt and eventually fatally damage the system in the long term.
What technology does is make the system function more efficiently and accurately with less manpower required, so of course it is something that is beneficial and desirable, but it does not fundamentally change the viability of planning.
Central planning is also not incompatible with the existence of markets, as China has shown, though markets are not a strictly necessary feature in all cases and an economy can also function entirely without them, as the DPRK shows.
In the history of Humanity, two countries went from being underdeveloped peasant societies with high illiteracy and poverty rates to being two literal economic superpowers with over 95% literacy rate within a few decades. Both built on the back of central economic planning.
The DPRK also has a thriving, unregulated black market to make up for the holes in the central planning system. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, nor indicative of a failure of planned systems, but I think is an acknowledgement that some level of a hybrid system is and always will be necessary to make up for people’s wants once their needs are met.
Hence the Chinese system - government ownership and central planning for industrial goods and commodities, private ownership and markets for tech and some specialty consumer goods.
Policing the left as always. “Hey fellow leftists just don’t get too uppity here now”
Fellow Western leftists in this time of “U.S.” instability please remember Communism Bad.
I’ve often wondered if things might be different if the new elected US President had 60 days to submit a 4-year economic plan and budget to Congress; instead of the annual budget clown show that leads to blatant pork and government shutdowns. Probably not, capitalism being capitalism.
