> There are, of course, still economists who think that the socialist calculation debate is not over. Yet I think it is quite clear that planning is all around us under capitalism. The planned economy works in theory, but more importantly, it works in practice. The current planning in companies like Walmart and Amazon shows the potential for a new classless society, a society of abundance and leisure.
> For now, planning works, but it works for them, for the rich capitalists and their profits, not for us and our needs. The next step is for us workers to organize and take the companies into our hands. And to lay the foundations for a society oriented towards need rather than profit.
Found your company and rule it as you wish, lets see if you retain your ideals all way to the top, or maybe not because that's the freedom and hard work you don't like. And I don't see why this article fits in this website.
as technologists I think it's tempting for us to look at the idea of the economy, or at least like the idea of a planned economy, in terms of an optimization problem. Ordering the most "deserving" inputs and outputs, those that lead to some level of human flourishing, over whatever timescale and via whatever primary, secondary, tertiary effects etc and assigning resources to them in proportion to their importance - and that the problems that need to be solved are identifying what those best orderings are, and logistics.
I think this is something of a mistake. The best use of resources isn't nearly the biggest problem facing a planned economy. The biggest problem, currently seen clearly in both russia and ukraine simultaneously, is that when a planned economy crops up, for war production or socialist reasons, there is a great temptation for those involved to do corruption, at whatever level they can. falsify reports, change production numbers, all sorts of crimes to accumulate power over the flows of resources, such that that power can be leveraged to trade for other things.
The real problem to be solved is a social one. How to make the watchers who watch the watchers? Corruption can in principle never be fully prevented entirely - enough people believing that corruption goes unpunished and any system will fall. But building a system convincingly self-sustaining enough that everyone can't quite be sure that others aren't checking their work (and in a more positive framing, one where people feel good work is both expected and rewarded), one where people can be confident corruption will be found, will pay dividends in people policing their own behavior.
> There are, of course, still economists who think that the socialist calculation debate is not over. Yet I think it is quite clear that planning is all around us under capitalism. The planned economy works in theory, but more importantly, it works in practice. The current planning in companies like Walmart and Amazon shows the potential for a new classless society, a society of abundance and leisure.
> For now, planning works, but it works for them, for the rich capitalists and their profits, not for us and our needs. The next step is for us workers to organize and take the companies into our hands. And to lay the foundations for a society oriented towards need rather than profit.
Found your company and rule it as you wish, lets see if you retain your ideals all way to the top, or maybe not because that's the freedom and hard work you don't like. And I don't see why this article fits in this website.
as technologists I think it's tempting for us to look at the idea of the economy, or at least like the idea of a planned economy, in terms of an optimization problem. Ordering the most "deserving" inputs and outputs, those that lead to some level of human flourishing, over whatever timescale and via whatever primary, secondary, tertiary effects etc and assigning resources to them in proportion to their importance - and that the problems that need to be solved are identifying what those best orderings are, and logistics.
I think this is something of a mistake. The best use of resources isn't nearly the biggest problem facing a planned economy. The biggest problem, currently seen clearly in both russia and ukraine simultaneously, is that when a planned economy crops up, for war production or socialist reasons, there is a great temptation for those involved to do corruption, at whatever level they can. falsify reports, change production numbers, all sorts of crimes to accumulate power over the flows of resources, such that that power can be leveraged to trade for other things.
The real problem to be solved is a social one. How to make the watchers who watch the watchers? Corruption can in principle never be fully prevented entirely - enough people believing that corruption goes unpunished and any system will fall. But building a system convincingly self-sustaining enough that everyone can't quite be sure that others aren't checking their work (and in a more positive framing, one where people feel good work is both expected and rewarded), one where people can be confident corruption will be found, will pay dividends in people policing their own behavior.
This goes for most economic systems as well.
The article mentions the book that lays out this thesis. Here's a direct link: https://www.versobooks.com/products/636-the-people-s-republi...
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