• queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Central planners in the Soviet Union didn’t even have computers and they lacked the level of scientific understanding we have today of the environment, of our resources, and of the limits to growth. We’ve all heard about Mao killing the sparrows in China.

    This isn’t a reason to never try central planning again.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        They had computers towards the end, of course, but they were extremely primitive. The kinds of disaster predictions you can do on a machine built to run Tetris are nothing compared to what can be done with today’s technology.

        Also, it’s not like markets can actually deal with disasters. Without at least some central planning disaster response and relief is impossible.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            We largely have stuck with market based economies because they currently are much more responsive to changes.

            No, we still have market based economies because they make a few people very very rich.

            We needed markets before computers and instant mass communication. Things are different now

            While computers have gotten more powerful there is zero evidence to support that we have gotten to the point where they could run a planned economy in any fashion.

            What about the fact that market-based responses to COVID were universally worse than centrally planned responses?