The USSR tried abolishing money without being ready for it. It’s a complex topic, and is worth reading about.
From the 60s onward, the USSR actually still managed to grow at a steady pace. It wasn’t until liberalization that it collapsed. Still, by planning from hand, they were less efficient, and computerized planning is already used in Capitalist countries by the largest and most effective companies like Amazon and Walmart.
As for Historical Materialism, it’s more a lense of analysis than an affirmation of anything. Just as a paleontologist sees history differently from a geologist and from a historian, Marxism is merely another lense.
As for Mises and the Economic Calculation Problem, it isn’t actually a problem for Socialism and Communism, nor is Capitalism immune to it either. Mises has been pretty thoroughly debunked by Marxists due to his poor understanding of Marx. You can predict demand before it happens in Capitalism without price signals, and production can be decided democratically and with the aid of computers and AI.
Not only that, but the Soviet Union’s success in achieving long term growth via hand calculation and Project Cybersyn both serve as historical evidence that Mises was wrong. This is only becoming even more clear with the advances in AI and computation, it’s no longer a real problem.
Well, I think we’ll have disagree here : you take on the calculation problem is the opposite of both my theorical framework and practical experience of industry (I work as an Electrical Engineer).
You can try to predict the demand of course, but the prediction is always fairly different from reality. Often, it’s workable. Sometimes it’s not.
But to be honest, the Economic Calculation Problem is ill-named, because from a Signal Processing persepctive, it’s not really a processing power problem. No, the problem is in the Signal-to-noise ratio of the signals used to do these calculation.
Ultimately, if you have a very noisy signal (and economic signals are incredibly noisy), there’s really not much you can do with just more processing power. And I have good reason to believe (based on Psycho-social understanding) that the way these signals are transmitted in Centrally Planned system (socialist or not), are particularly noisy themselves. Much more than prices-and-market based systems.
That being said, I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye here. Thanks for the discussion tho, it is always interesting to hear how other people think.
The USSR tried abolishing money without being ready for it. It’s a complex topic, and is worth reading about.
From the 60s onward, the USSR actually still managed to grow at a steady pace. It wasn’t until liberalization that it collapsed. Still, by planning from hand, they were less efficient, and computerized planning is already used in Capitalist countries by the largest and most effective companies like Amazon and Walmart.
As for Historical Materialism, it’s more a lense of analysis than an affirmation of anything. Just as a paleontologist sees history differently from a geologist and from a historian, Marxism is merely another lense.
As for Mises and the Economic Calculation Problem, it isn’t actually a problem for Socialism and Communism, nor is Capitalism immune to it either. Mises has been pretty thoroughly debunked by Marxists due to his poor understanding of Marx. You can predict demand before it happens in Capitalism without price signals, and production can be decided democratically and with the aid of computers and AI.
Not only that, but the Soviet Union’s success in achieving long term growth via hand calculation and Project Cybersyn both serve as historical evidence that Mises was wrong. This is only becoming even more clear with the advances in AI and computation, it’s no longer a real problem.
Well, I think we’ll have disagree here : you take on the calculation problem is the opposite of both my theorical framework and practical experience of industry (I work as an Electrical Engineer).
You can try to predict the demand of course, but the prediction is always fairly different from reality. Often, it’s workable. Sometimes it’s not.
But to be honest, the Economic Calculation Problem is ill-named, because from a Signal Processing persepctive, it’s not really a processing power problem. No, the problem is in the Signal-to-noise ratio of the signals used to do these calculation.
Ultimately, if you have a very noisy signal (and economic signals are incredibly noisy), there’s really not much you can do with just more processing power. And I have good reason to believe (based on Psycho-social understanding) that the way these signals are transmitted in Centrally Planned system (socialist or not), are particularly noisy themselves. Much more than prices-and-market based systems.
That being said, I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye here. Thanks for the discussion tho, it is always interesting to hear how other people think.