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Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

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Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#41

Post by [deleted] »

DoctorNick wrote: post #35
NaggingGranpa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nixon also made Vietnamization a high level goal of his presidency. How did that work out? Propaganda? Latin America is based on caste. If your "revolution" is based on stealing from the Spanish-blooded landowners to feed Amerindian losers who breed like rabbits, you will get opposition. Not much propaganda needed. And when the landowners send their sons to the army officer corps, you will have opposition with actual…

>Propaganda? Latin America is based on caste. If your "revolution" is based on stealing from the Spanish-blooded landowners to feed Amerindian losers who breed like rabbits , you will get opposition. Pretty clear what your views are.

[deleted]

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#42

Post by iudqnolq »

nullstyle wrote: post #38
iudqnolq wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel is referred to by reputable news organizations as a Nobel prize. The prize is determined by the same committee that decides the other prizes, and is awarded in the same ceremony. The only difference is who pays for it: the Swedish central bank donated to the Nobel foundation to cover the awards. https://www.nobelprize.org/about/

That doesn't seem to be fully accurate. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166032/th...

That book appears (based on the publicly available abstract) to argue that the Central Bank of Sweden funded the Nobel Prize because of ulterior motives. I don't have the knowledge necessary to take a stance on that claim. However, my comment merely argued that the implementation of the Nobel Prize in Economics is such that the prize is awarded in the exact same way as all the other Nobel Prizes; in other words, it's no less reputable than the originals. The book (again, only based on the abstract) doesn't rebut that.

Arguing that the Nobel Prize award process is fundamentally flawed and biased in favor of the mainstream might be valid (I don't have the knowledge to know the answer), but it's not what the comment I replied to was doing.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#43

Post by tsimionescu »

ccvannorman wrote: post #29
coldtea wrote: post #19

It's funny in a way, that a modern person believes that through technology we can very well reach consciousness with computers, go to Mars, design our genes, achieve immortality, colonize the universe, find the "god's particle", and so on, but successfully modelling an economy is impossible...

I don't think that's the precise way people feel. Socialism/etc HAS "failed", and capitalism HAS "succeeded", for certain definitions of failed and succeeded. What people assume is that socialism today would fail (and I agree). But if presented with new facts, e.g. here is a robot that can produce food, gather solar power, and manufacture goods for you, and there is one per household, suddenly the literal definition…

I get the point in principle that technology can make new social systems possible, and it seems plausible.

But I don't get what the example you give has to do with making socialism (worker control of corporations) more workable. The major problems of socialism have always seemed to be 2:

1 - how to transition from current society to a socialist one without violent revolution, which usually ends in dictatorships, instead of the radical democracy of socialism.

2 - how to maintain a socialist project in a capitalist world usually focused on destroying it, often with military power.

I don't see how a wonder robot would help with either of these problems. Or, I'm wondering what do you mean by socialism and what problems do you perceive that version of socialism to have that could be fixed by a UBI robot?

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#44

Post by chr1 »

ccvannorman wrote: post #29
coldtea wrote: post #19

It's funny in a way, that a modern person believes that through technology we can very well reach consciousness with computers, go to Mars, design our genes, achieve immortality, colonize the universe, find the "god's particle", and so on, but successfully modelling an economy is impossible...

I don't think that's the precise way people feel. Socialism/etc HAS "failed", and capitalism HAS "succeeded", for certain definitions of failed and succeeded. What people assume is that socialism today would fail (and I agree). But if presented with new facts, e.g. here is a robot that can produce food, gather solar power, and manufacture goods for you, and there is one per household, suddenly the literal definition…

It's still not palatable, because when you get your food and charge your phone you still need to decide what to do with your free time and how to convince others to help you. Capitalism is essentially a system of voting on what is important. When food becomes abundant enough to not cost much, everyone will get it independently of the system, same as everyone gets free email now. But capitalism will still be needed to decide what else is important to do. Of course capitalism is not perfect and lots of people still choose to waste their vote on pointless activities like watching sports or reality shows instead of science and space travel, but because unlike socialism the vote is transferable they end up transferring at least part of their vote to useful things.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#45

Post by tsimionescu »

helpPeople wrote: post #37
ccvannorman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the precise way people feel. Socialism/etc HAS "failed", and capitalism HAS "succeeded", for certain definitions of failed and succeeded. What people assume is that socialism today would fail (and I agree). But if presented with new facts, e.g. here is a robot that can produce food, gather solar power, and manufacture goods for you, and there is one per household, suddenly the literal definition…

The literal definition of socialism is an impossibility, power always gets concentrated among the few. "This time will be different" crowd hadn't been compelling. Human nature hadn't changed.

Socialism is essentially only an extension of democracy to the economic system. Since democracy seems to work relatively decently (warts and all) for most prosperous societies, I don't see why human nature is a good argument for saying it's impossible.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#46

Post by chr1 »

Iv wrote: post #12
yowlingcat wrote: post #2

A sad trod through a common delusion of grandeur I see on the internet these days. If the Chilean control room was really ripped off of Star Trek, that's a little absurd and hilarious but moreover sad. On the flip side, I'm not sure how much I agree with its premise and conclusion. Sure, it's easy to mock technocommunism historically if you ignore the elephant in the room that is China. While not in the same category…

(Disclaimer: I am an enthusiast of discussions around planned economy and wish we talked more about it instead of dismissing it as failed communism) China tried centrally planned economy. It resulted in tens of millions of death in the great famines of the 50s and 60s. Planned economy where a strong state and a market economy coexist, on the other hand, is a model that had success in many places. Not only China, but…

The problem with communism is not so much the lack of processing power as the lack of feedback, even if the computer knew that Bob's potatoes are better, under communism it would not be able to give any extra reward to Bob for that.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#48

Post by pitaj »

coldtea wrote: post #19

It's funny in a way, that a modern person believes that through technology we can very well reach consciousness with computers, go to Mars, design our genes, achieve immortality, colonize the universe, find the "god's particle", and so on, but successfully modelling an economy is impossible...

For small economies it's absolutely possible. But as economies scale, the computational power necessary increases exponentially.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#49

Post by chr1 »

coldtea wrote: post #19

It's funny in a way, that a modern person believes that through technology we can very well reach consciousness with computers, go to Mars, design our genes, achieve immortality, colonize the universe, find the "god's particle", and so on, but successfully modelling an economy is impossible...

The problem is not the modelling itself, but collecting the data required for the model and deciding what to do. To get accurate data you'd need surveillance cameras everywhere and to decide what to do you either need to ignore everyone's opinion, or implement a system of voting that will look very similar to money.

Re: Cybersyn and Allende’s Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism

#50

Post by sudosysgen »

pitaj wrote: post #48
coldtea wrote: post #19

It's funny in a way, that a modern person believes that through technology we can very well reach consciousness with computers, go to Mars, design our genes, achieve immortality, colonize the universe, find the "god's particle", and so on, but successfully modelling an economy is impossible...

For small economies it's absolutely possible. But as economies scale, the computational power necessary increases exponentially.

Good thing that computing power also scales exponentially with time then.
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