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Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

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Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#11

Post by duncan_bayne »

nosuchthing wrote: post #10
duncan_bayne wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America certainly is not a pure capital system, it's a mix of regulations and financial forces and incentives. Yes, sadly. It's solvable if you remove ideology from loaded terms like communism, capitalism, socialism, etc. No, it's not. Claiming that you can solve the calculation problem by ignoring economic ideology is like claiming you can solve the travelling salesman problem in O(N) time, if only you'd remove the…

>[ https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem ] is a problem of mathematics, not of ideology. Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption. We're starting to see countries with %20+ unemployment and simply describing that as an issue of mathematics would seem inadequate.

Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption.

Yes. And both theory and history have shown that there is only one way to compute a chaotic system: let it run :)

That is, the only way to effectively allocate natural resources and consumption at the scale of a modern industrial economy is based upon market prices.

Austrian Economics has provided the theory of why this is so, and several large-scale experiments (including North Korea and the USSR) have demonstrated that the theory is correct.

We're starting to see countries with %20+ unemployment and simply describing that as an issue of mathematics would seem inadequate.

I didn't - or at least, I didn't mean to. What I meant to say was that socialism is fundamentally, theoretically, and practically broken.

If you're going to try to fix issues like 20% unemployment, unaffordable healthcare, horrendous pollution, and unaffordable housing, then you need to pick a mechanism that actually works :)

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#12

Post by orionblastar »

nosuchthing wrote: post #9
orionblastar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Communism broke itself. There is the myth that Reagan created the SDI program that didn't really exist to make the USSR spend more on research for space based defense to catch up, but I think that is a red herring. Communism would pay janitors more money than it paid scientists and engineers, simply because that janitor was a member of the Communist party. Many scientists and engineers defected from Russia to…

Attributing bad economic decisions as inherently a fault of social service programs in the case of Greece or the USSR is a red herring. Canada, Switzerland, Neatherlands, Norway seem to be successfully managed countries with large social service programs.

The difference being in how those social programs were implemented and the taxes raised to cover the costs of them.

The USSR had a high cost in the military and suffered from economic stagnation. Unable to grow enough wheat they had to buy from the USA to feed their people.

Greece didn't raise taxes enough to cover their debts from social programs. As their economy grew worse the cost of health insurance rose and costed more.

A lot of European nations can afford socialist programs because they don't spend a lot on their military due to the USA protecting the European coasts after WW2.

Canada also does not spend a lot on their military due to a partnership with the USA to protect their coasts as well. So they have more money for socialist programs.

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#13

Post by chipsy »

orionblastar wrote: post #5
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the USA outspending the USSR, forcing resource exhaustion is what broke communism. If you have unlimited renewable energy, self-driving electric vehicles, IBM's watson providing clinical expertise instead of doctors, etc, you could provide socialism without taking from people (because labor no longer has value compared to software and automation).

I think Communism broke itself. There is the myth that Reagan created the SDI program that didn't really exist to make the USSR spend more on research for space based defense to catch up, but I think that is a red herring. Communism would pay janitors more money than it paid scientists and engineers, simply because that janitor was a member of the Communist party. Many scientists and engineers defected from Russia to…

A hole in the "USA out innovated" premise is that Silicon Valley was based on military spending. See Steve Blank's "Secret History" series for examples.

And, speaking more generally, the U.S. Department of Defense is the world's largest employer, 3.2 million strong. When taking into account benefits, pensions, etc., it may also be called the largest socialist program.

That statistic paints a big picture; it's not that having a market economy was sufficient to become the sole superpower of the 1990's. It was that the U.S. had a lot of centralized spending in "the right places at the right times" and then allowed the marketplace to pick up the results and run with them wherever convenient. However, it's very difficult to backpedal and reallocate now that this has been done, and the status quo probably won't change until a crisis motivates it.

The pattern of every emerging market - Japan, Korea, China - is that state power still entangles itself somehow, even if there is a marketplace at the low level. We have never had a "purely ideological" state anywhere.

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#14

Post by Gibbon1 »

orionblastar wrote: post #12
nosuchthing wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attributing bad economic decisions as inherently a fault of social service programs in the case of Greece or the USSR is a red herring. Canada, Switzerland, Neatherlands, Norway seem to be successfully managed countries with large social service programs.

The difference being in how those social programs were implemented and the taxes raised to cover the costs of them. The USSR had a high cost in the military and suffered from economic stagnation. Unable to grow enough wheat they had to buy from the USA to feed their people. Greece didn't raise taxes enough to cover their debts from social programs. As their economy grew worse the cost of health insurance rose and cos…

Japan and Britain haven't really been able to feed themselves for a 100 years. The Soviet Union before 1965 had high growth rates.

My thoughts are that when a countries central powers make good bets on human capital, infrastructure, and technology, then market economies can feed off of those and produce high rates of growth.

Brezhnev and his compatriots in the soviet union never let a vibrant consumer economy develop. And growth stagnated. Faced with the same problem in the early 80's the Chinese Communists implemented market reforms. That combined with previous investments in human capital, plus sometimes heavy handed restrictions on population growth appears to have been successful. (Also the Chinese were able to cut a deal with the US and Europe to allow mostly unfettered access to developed world markets, which the Soviets didn't have)

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#15

Post by reality_czech »

chipsy wrote: post #13
orionblastar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Communism broke itself. There is the myth that Reagan created the SDI program that didn't really exist to make the USSR spend more on research for space based defense to catch up, but I think that is a red herring. Communism would pay janitors more money than it paid scientists and engineers, simply because that janitor was a member of the Communist party. Many scientists and engineers defected from Russia to…

A hole in the "USA out innovated" premise is that Silicon Valley was based on military spending. See Steve Blank's "Secret History" series for examples. And, speaking more generally, the U.S. Department of Defense is the world's largest employer, 3.2 million strong. When taking into account benefits, pensions, etc., it may also be called the largest socialist program. That statistic paints a big picture; it's not tha…

To be honest, I find it frustrating when people trot out the old "sillicon valley was created by central planning" meme. If it were that easy to create a sillicon valley, there would be dozens of them by now. Believe me, Chinese bureacurats have tried. There are whole "ghost cities" in China that the government ordered built, but that people never moved into. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/07/20/what-will-b...

The great entrepreneurs who built Sillicon Valley-- Shockley, Ellison, Jobs, and the rest-- were people who were driven to find funding wherever they could get it. If the government had said no, they would have gone (and often did go) to someone else. Similarly, the academics who are getting funding from DARPA or the DOD now would gladly accept funding from private sources as well. The money is just as green.

The military certainly jump-started many technologies by putting money into the hands of engineers and scientists-- in some cases, possibly even by years or decades. But those technologies would have been invented anyway, just on a slower timescale.

It wasn't inventing the technologies that gave the West an edge-- it was commercializing them. And for that you need businessmen, not bureaucrats. If the USSR could have produced a competitive semiconductor industry, the 1980s and 1990s would have looked much different. Instead, they couldn't even keep loaves of bread on the shelves.

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#16

Post by letster »

Interesting thing it what will happen, in the future, when computers would-be improved enough to replace most human professions? It is profitable for separate producers to use automated systems but unemployed people have no enough money to buy their products. Will government regulate production like in socialistic economic model?

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#17

Post by deciplex »

letster wrote: post #16

Interesting thing it what will happen, in the future, when computers would-be improved enough to replace most human professions? It is profitable for separate producers to use automated systems but unemployed people have no enough money to buy their products. Will government regulate production like in socialistic economic model?

You're basically talking about a post-scarcity economy, which is coming in bits and pieces already. Based on what we've already seen with digital goods, the answer will probably be artificial scarcity by fiat, with (I would guess) approximately equivalent results. The letter of the law will assign virtually all property to a few holders of (intellectual) capital, who will lease it out at great cost and with unreasonable restrictions. People will break the law regularly of course, and it will be loosely enforced - but most of the population will be law-breakers and thus subject to the whim of a police state.

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#18

Post by angrymonk »

nosuchthing wrote: post #10
duncan_bayne wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America certainly is not a pure capital system, it's a mix of regulations and financial forces and incentives. Yes, sadly. It's solvable if you remove ideology from loaded terms like communism, capitalism, socialism, etc. No, it's not. Claiming that you can solve the calculation problem by ignoring economic ideology is like claiming you can solve the travelling salesman problem in O(N) time, if only you'd remove the…

>[ https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem ] is a problem of mathematics, not of ideology. Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption. We're starting to see countries with %20+ unemployment and simply describing that as an issue of mathematics would seem inadequate.

It is not a problem of mathematics. Most people confuse Mises's calculation problem with Hayek's knowledge problem (which is a mathematical issue). They are related but different. Hayek conceded that knowledge problem can be worked around by a supercomputer which can solve simultaneous differential equations to simulate the "artificial market". Mises never did that because that was not his main point. The ability of government to collect data (local knowledge) is not just what he calls into question. He calls into question the ability of government to reconcile individual preferences with scarcity. "The subjective use value of each is not immediately comparable as a purely individual phe- nomenon with the subjective use value of other men. It only becomes so in exchange value, which arises out of the interplay of the subjective valuations of all who take part in exchange."

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#19

Post by TFYS »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #11
nosuchthing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[ https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem ] is a problem of mathematics, not of ideology. Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption. We're starting to see countries with %20+ unemployment and simply describing that as an issue of mathematics would seem inadequate.

Well yes it involves math, but ultimately it involves decisions by people on what to do with natural resources and consumption. Yes. And both theory and history have shown that there is only one way to compute a chaotic system: let it run :) That is, the only way to effectively allocate natural resources and consumption at the scale of a modern industrial economy is based upon market prices. Austrian Economics has pr…

I think what you mean to say is that a planned economy is fundamentally, theoretically, and practically broken. Socialism doesn't necessarily mean a planned economy, there can be socialism with a market economy. Although I think some more economic planning is clearly necessary, just look at the environmental problems the "let it run" way of thinking has caused.

I think socialism is something that we need to transition into as our technology improves and does more work for us. What other option is there? If we don't have enough jobs for everyone, the only two options that I see are 1. We create new useless bullshit jobs just so we can continue using the current system of resource allocation, or 2. We create a system in which the means of production are at least partly owned by the society as a whole so the benefits of automation are more evenly distributed.

Re: Yes, Computers Have Improved. No, Communism Hasn't

#20

Post by rorykoehler »

I don't know many people who want to try Communism again however Capitalism also has it's inherent flaws. While Communism suffers from lack of incentive Capitalism suffers from an incentive to plunder the environment for short term personal gain. Even as a huge fan of Universal Basic Income, a scheme that aims to provide the lowest common denominator with a passable quality of life, I can acknowledge that the environmental problem will not be magically solved. In order to succeed as a civilization we need to give up the idea that a single ideology holds all the answers. Good ideas are everywhere and to stick to one ideology exclusively is akin to religious madness. We have more scientific understanding now than every before yet when it comes to political ideology a large portion of society choses to ignore science and go with whatever narrative they have made up in their head that confirms their own biases.
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