[fnordsensei]

Planned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes.

The market does work, but it’s a giant paper clip AI and needs regulation in order to not turn everything into paper clips.

[anonymous908213]

> Planned economies don’t work great beyond small scopes.

This is a categorically false statement. The Soviets turned the Russian empire from an agricultural backwater with a minority literate populace, into an advanced industrialised state, scientific leader and economic superpower that was on par with the US for decades, a transformation that took place within a span of merely 20~30 years. Planned economies have been demonstrated to have extremely strong potential. Of course, a planned economy is only as good as its planning, and humans are fallible; we have yet to work out a solution to that particular issue.

[hylaride]

The USSR was never economically or scientifically on par with the US. They managed to be relatively competitive in some endeavours by concentrated massive percentages of their national people and resources on certain endeavours (industrialization, space, the military), often with brutal violence. The US was militarily competitive, often with more advanced equipment, at a fraction the economic resources - and did it at the same time as having one of the highest living standards in the world (and often had the positive results of military tech bleeding into the civilian sector, like computers).

Magnitogorsk, a massive soviet city built around a steel mill, was essentially built with American expertise (this whole documentary is extremely fascinating on how central planning got to sophisticated and how the USSR ground to a halt): https://youtu.be/h3gwyHNo7MI?t=1023

This is not to say that any planning is bad, but having a central state trying to control everything from how many belt buckles to make down to how far cab drivers should drive each year, and you're going to become a bureaucratic nightmare. Central planning everything becomes a logarithmic planning nightmare, especially when trying to innovate at the same time. You can't plan around output of innovation because the planners are often far removed from everything. A planner would probably try and "plan" on how to breed a faster horse instead of a car, for example.

I'm reminded of an interview I once saw with Gorbachev. He was talking about how he was just promoted into the central committee, essentially the highest ring of the Soviet state. He had just made it to the top and one of his first meetings was having dealing with the issue of persistent shortages of women's panty hose. He was flabbergasted that he was at the top rung of a country that can blast people into space, but can't deal with basic consumer goods availability.

Also, many countries have industrialized just as fast without central planning, particularly several asian ones. True, then did centrally set goals and use various carrot and stick initiatives, but otherwise let the market dictate most of the rest.

[corimaith]

Virtually any country that achieves political stability and effective institutions experiences rapid development in the modern world with open knowledge and trade networks.

There is nothing special about central planning in that manner that a laissez-faire economy would also achieve at that low development.

[kakacik]

This is all false, I guess you've never been to Soviet Union nor russia (that country doesn't deserve capital R). Central planning is dysfunctional at its core, ignoring subtleties of smaller parts. Also, it was historically always done in eastern Europe hand in hand with corruption, nepotism and incompetence where apparatchiks held most power due to going deepest in ass kissing and other rectal speleology hobbies, not because they were competent.

I come from one such country. After WWII, there was Austria and there was eastern bloc to compare. Austria was severely damaged and had much lower GDP than us. It took mere 40 years of open market vs centrally planned economy to see absolutely massive differences when borders reopened and people weren't shot anymore for trying to escape - we didn't have proper food in the shops ffs. Exotic fruits came few times a year, rotten or unripe. Even stuff grown in our country was often lacking completely. Any product ie electric ones, or cars were vastly subpar to western ones while massively more costly (and often design was plain stolen from the western companies).

Society as a whole made it because almost everybody had a big garden to complement everything basic missing in shops. The little meat you could buy was of worst quality, ladden with amount of toxic chemistry that wouldn't be acceptable in Bangladesh.

[AlexandrB]

Just had to break a few eggs[1] to make that omelette.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[grafmax]

Money is power. Markets produce wealth inequality. The richest use their money to buy influence and write the rules. Fundamentally a “regulated market” is an unstable system that eats itself, a fiction.

[inglor_cz]

No system consisting of humans is ever stable. We can dampen various events, but building a stable system is impossible. Too many things change constantly around us.

Not even old ossified feudal systems were stable. Either the Mongols came, or Black Death, or some smart-ass with his moveable type, and nothing was like before.

[mytailorisrich]

What is you definition of "markets"?

Markets are nothing more than the aggregate expression of what people do, need, desire. It's an expression of a free society. No market means a Stalinist society.

> Markets produce wealth inequality.

That always reminds of Margaret Thatcher's famous words in Parliament: "They'd rather the poor be poorer provided that the rich were less rich."

[littlecosmic]

Even under capitalism there is a lot of central planning at huge scales. Walmart is one American example. Woolworths and Coles are another couple in Australia. These companies aren’t rocketing up at the market each morning and taking the latest price… they are managing supply and pricing end to end for most of what they do in advanced.

[torginus]

All great achievements were result of economic planning.

The moon landing (and the necessary R&D and buildup) wasn't based on market-based economic incentives.

There are multiple examples of advanced high-tech economies built up with the help of central planning married to market forces - basically every East Asian country followed this blueprint.

The USSR was a much more powerful economy than it capitalist successor, even though it wasn't run especially effectively.

City supported housing initiatives produce with extensive public planning and infrastructure investments produce much better results than for-profit developers building the least amount of stuff for the most amount of money.

There are 3 main methods of economic control: profit motive, central planning, and intrinsic incentives. Purist approaches that rely on just one or reject the other tend to have bad outcomes.