AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain(ainarratives.com)
ainarratives.com
AI and Communism: Narratives of AI Behind the Iron Curtain
https://www.ainarratives.com/resources/ai-communism
103 comments
> WalMart is very centrally planned. More than the USSR was at peak. By the 1980s, WalMart required UPC bar codes on everything, and a different bar code on cartons and cases. Headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas did purchasing and distribution control for the entire WalMart economy. They had central planning at a level Gosplan could only dream of.
> Amazon, of course, has taken that even further.
Whenever people describe WalMart or Amazon as centrally planned economies, I can't help but scoff. The idea that "retail = economy" is wildly off base. WalMart and Amazon are generally not producing anything. They are strictly distribution! What's more, it's all set in a market economy with dynamically determined market prices. This is so far from the idea of centrally planned economies as to be a ridiculous conception, yet it's so regularly used.
> Amazon, of course, has taken that even further.
Whenever people describe WalMart or Amazon as centrally planned economies, I can't help but scoff. The idea that "retail = economy" is wildly off base. WalMart and Amazon are generally not producing anything. They are strictly distribution! What's more, it's all set in a market economy with dynamically determined market prices. This is so far from the idea of centrally planned economies as to be a ridiculous conception, yet it's so regularly used.
WalMart tells manufacturers what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, in very explicit terms. Ask anyone who sells to WalMart.
"Who tells whom what to do?" - V.I. Lenin
"Who tells whom what to do?" - V.I. Lenin
My family runs a business that sells to WalMart and I worked in merchandising in mega-scale retail briefly and this is 98% bull shit that is either done because you've bought whole hog insane narratives or are trying to fit your own. The idea that WalMart tells P&G how to make Tide is laughable.
That would be relevant if WalMart sold only Tide from P&G. I guess they sell more of their own brands, produced by whomever, according to their terms. Similar to what COSTCO has as 'Kirkland', and ALDI/Trader Joe's as theirs, and so on.
> Whenever people describe WalMart or Amazon as centrally planned economies
It's a lucky thing that nobody said that then, or that straw man wouldn't have anything to do. Full work for all straw men!
It's a lucky thing that nobody said that then, or that straw man wouldn't have anything to do. Full work for all straw men!
The author of the comment didn’t quibble about this in their reply nor is my characterization an inordinate one. The author is making a clear comparison between the “central planning” of mega-scale retailers and Gosplan. It’s implied that the comparison is reasonable in that Amazon and WalMart are somehow equivalent to or close to the economy of the USSR or else the comparison itself was self-defeating and therefore wouldn’t have been made. It’s not a straw man at all.
Not to completely disagree but saying distribution is less important than production is a bit like taking apart a machine that has the minimum possible number of parts for operation and deciding some gears are more critical than others, yet if you were to remove any of them the entire machine fails.
Production of goods and services is usually not as difficult as the art of efficiently distributing them. In a capitalist society, needs and wants become essentially the same thing and demands are often more virtual rather than actual as the ultimate demand for everything not being directly consumed is usually to gain more tickets/tokens/coins to potentially be eligible for more future needs/wants. The main beauty of a capitalist system is that it self propagates as there is an inherent or unspoken need for everyone to continue doing something for the system in order to not lose what has been acquired. Other systems do seem to theoretically have the potential for much greater efficiencies but defining one and actioning it are incredibly difficult, often because they are rarely actually planned and those doing the planning do not always have human rights as priority when doing so.
Production of goods and services is usually not as difficult as the art of efficiently distributing them. In a capitalist society, needs and wants become essentially the same thing and demands are often more virtual rather than actual as the ultimate demand for everything not being directly consumed is usually to gain more tickets/tokens/coins to potentially be eligible for more future needs/wants. The main beauty of a capitalist system is that it self propagates as there is an inherent or unspoken need for everyone to continue doing something for the system in order to not lose what has been acquired. Other systems do seem to theoretically have the potential for much greater efficiencies but defining one and actioning it are incredibly difficult, often because they are rarely actually planned and those doing the planning do not always have human rights as priority when doing so.
> but saying distribution is less important than production
This isn't something that I said. I said that distribution does not an economy make. I'm demonstrating the extremely limited value of calling Amazon or WalMart an economy by showing that they are not very close to what an economy is. An additional contrast that could be made is that Amazon and WalMart are generally doing extremely minimal investment as well.
This isn't something that I said. I said that distribution does not an economy make. I'm demonstrating the extremely limited value of calling Amazon or WalMart an economy by showing that they are not very close to what an economy is. An additional contrast that could be made is that Amazon and WalMart are generally doing extremely minimal investment as well.
Ok I missed where someone had called them economies. Agreed they are not. It’s interesting, the main reason why they exist is our society did not author a better system or one at all really. It’s always been assumed that capital gain is sufficient to ensure distribution.
IMHO, the main issues of USSR economy in addition to central planning were total lack of economic and social incentives for productive work. Career growth and personal income were almost independent of how a person performed in their daily job. There was simply no motivation (at least in the last two decades of the USSR's existence).
Things I've read about the Soviet Union was before Khrushchev moving into management was perilous. You didn't get fired if you (or your boss) effed up or lost a power struggle you got shot.
Aside: Lem is great, he has books as quirky as Philip K. Dick, as hard sci-fi as Clark and as funny and weird as Douglas Adams. If you like sci-fi and haven't tried Lem check out Solaris or Futorogical Congress (quirky), Invincible (hard sci-fi) and Cyberiad (funny and very weird).
And on top of that Lem published nonfiction books about philosophy of science and futurology.
Dick even thought Lem was in reality a collection of writers hired by communist party to inflitrate USA through science fiction and to gain monopoly on the publishing market :)
Also there's saying in Polish that Lem's books divide into "early Lem" where astronauts explore stars and find glorious communism and "late Lem" where astronauts explore cosmos and find dystopian communism :)
And on top of that Lem published nonfiction books about philosophy of science and futurology.
Dick even thought Lem was in reality a collection of writers hired by communist party to inflitrate USA through science fiction and to gain monopoly on the publishing market :)
Also there's saying in Polish that Lem's books divide into "early Lem" where astronauts explore stars and find glorious communism and "late Lem" where astronauts explore cosmos and find dystopian communism :)
The funniest Lem story for me is from the Star Diaries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Diaries).
It's the story where he - alone - travels in his rocket ship and a tiny meteor destroys the steering mechanism.
He has everything he needs to fix it, the only problem: Simultaneously somebody needs to do something on the outside and on the inside of the spaceship. But he is alone.
He is lucky though, on the star maps he finds a few space/time bending vortexes. He manages to manipulate the rockets to fly through that cluster of vortexes.
Then, during the next night, he wakes up - someone who looks exactly like him woke him up and asks him to go and help him with the repairs. He refuses because he thinks he is in a dream and repairs performed in a dream don't help with the real world problem. He prefers sleep undisturbed by such dreams.
The next evening the situation is the opposite: He goes to his room and finds someone looking exactly like him sleeping in his bed. He wakes him up and tries to convince him to do repairs, but the sleepy guy refuses because repairs performed in a dream don't help with the real world problem.
The space/time vortexes somehow made him appear as different versions of himself on the ship. The story continues with ever more complicated plots between various instances of himself. There even is a bit of violence when Ijon of Wednesday finds Ijon of Saturday with a blue eye (like someone hit him) and later it turns out Ijon of Thursday had hit Ijon of Friday in there encounter. Or something like that, it's just extremely funny. At the end of the vortex cluster there are so many versions of Ijon on the spaceship they have to hold a congress with public order and an agenda and lots and lots of discussions.
Turns out you can't even rely on yourself, he never manages to get exactly one other person to join with the repairs. Either he cannot convince the other guy for various reasons ("I'm you from Saturday and the controls have not been repaired yet. So it makes no sense for me to join you, from Wednesday, because if the repairs had been done on Wednesday I would know!"), or there are two many but only two space suits and they argue until the next vortex removes too many people and they have to start from scratch.
Really, check it out, the Ijon Tichy "Star Diaries" are about the funniest stories out there, and are quite deep too. Definitely a treasure. I read almost all of Lem's books in my (East German) childhood.
It's the story where he - alone - travels in his rocket ship and a tiny meteor destroys the steering mechanism.
He has everything he needs to fix it, the only problem: Simultaneously somebody needs to do something on the outside and on the inside of the spaceship. But he is alone.
He is lucky though, on the star maps he finds a few space/time bending vortexes. He manages to manipulate the rockets to fly through that cluster of vortexes.
Then, during the next night, he wakes up - someone who looks exactly like him woke him up and asks him to go and help him with the repairs. He refuses because he thinks he is in a dream and repairs performed in a dream don't help with the real world problem. He prefers sleep undisturbed by such dreams.
The next evening the situation is the opposite: He goes to his room and finds someone looking exactly like him sleeping in his bed. He wakes him up and tries to convince him to do repairs, but the sleepy guy refuses because repairs performed in a dream don't help with the real world problem.
The space/time vortexes somehow made him appear as different versions of himself on the ship. The story continues with ever more complicated plots between various instances of himself. There even is a bit of violence when Ijon of Wednesday finds Ijon of Saturday with a blue eye (like someone hit him) and later it turns out Ijon of Thursday had hit Ijon of Friday in there encounter. Or something like that, it's just extremely funny. At the end of the vortex cluster there are so many versions of Ijon on the spaceship they have to hold a congress with public order and an agenda and lots and lots of discussions.
Turns out you can't even rely on yourself, he never manages to get exactly one other person to join with the repairs. Either he cannot convince the other guy for various reasons ("I'm you from Saturday and the controls have not been repaired yet. So it makes no sense for me to join you, from Wednesday, because if the repairs had been done on Wednesday I would know!"), or there are two many but only two space suits and they argue until the next vortex removes too many people and they have to start from scratch.
Really, check it out, the Ijon Tichy "Star Diaries" are about the funniest stories out there, and are quite deep too. Definitely a treasure. I read almost all of Lem's books in my (East German) childhood.
Lem's "His Master's Voice" is the closest in fiction to what academic research feels like.
I would also add Fiasco to the list of great Lem works.
I would also add Fiasco to the list of great Lem works.
I just fed some web pages I wrote about Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad into GPT-3, and it admitted it was an evil machine!
https://donhopkins.medium.com/gpt-3-riffs-on-stanislaw-lems-...
TLDR: Trurl built an evil machine that would look at all the websites on the Internet, and then it’d take all the information and compress it into a single website!
https://donhopkins.medium.com/gpt-3-riffs-on-stanislaw-lems-...
TLDR: Trurl built an evil machine that would look at all the websites on the Internet, and then it’d take all the information and compress it into a single website!
> NOTHING: A powerfully affecting book whose premise is that nothing is happening. The author is highly original and the writing has a dreamlike quality.
This sounds like artifact description from Dwarf Fortress. Now I want them to include GPT-3 to make these descriptions :)
This sounds like artifact description from Dwarf Fortress. Now I want them to include GPT-3 to make these descriptions :)
It's worth to mention that there were Soviet attempts to build such systems, see OGAS [1] which was led by mathematician Victor Glushkov [2]. The remarkable fact is that those attempts have failed due to bureaucrats fighting for their own power. It looks like the human nature and socialism are incompatible things – individuals in charge are just consumed by their ego.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Glushkov
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Glushkov
Had OGAS been suggested at other times, it would probably have been implemented.
After the October Revolution, the CPSU were so open to change and so far from being ossified and giving up power that they basically implemented Keynesian capitalism until Stalin came about.
But the longer you wait until after the revolution, the longer bureaucrats and egomaniac get to consolidate power, and the more difficult it is to change things. That's one of the major issues with Marxist-Leninist government structures.
After the October Revolution, the CPSU were so open to change and so far from being ossified and giving up power that they basically implemented Keynesian capitalism until Stalin came about.
But the longer you wait until after the revolution, the longer bureaucrats and egomaniac get to consolidate power, and the more difficult it is to change things. That's one of the major issues with Marxist-Leninist government structures.
I'm still reading my way chronologically through some books written at the time but the early 20th century communists all seem fairly benignly and boringly moderate by modern standards.
I'm intrigued to see how it develops.
I'm intrigued to see how it develops.
> bureaucrats and egomaniac get to consolidate power, and the more difficult it is to change things. That's one of the major issues with Marxist-Leninist government structures.
This just means that Marxist-Leninist ideology is not compatible with reality, and does not work.
This just means that Marxist-Leninist ideology is not compatible with reality, and does not work.
The actual structure I'm talking about isn't the ideology as a whole, it's just how Lenin decided to set up the bureaucracy. We can all agree that doesn't work.
As far as the ideology itself there definitely are many problems but I think you can't conclude that from the above.
As far as the ideology itself there definitely are many problems but I think you can't conclude that from the above.
It's interesting to note that central planning has been highly effective for small nation state sized corporations such as Walmart[0] presumably long before any adoption of AI, and that attempts at pervasive internal markets at Sears[1] arguably rapidly accelerated its downfall.
That's absolutely not to say that Walmart is a direct exemplar of successful Soviet-style "state capitalism" or socialism, nor that Sears is a proof by contradiction of the efficient market hypothesis, or any such thing. But for a long time now we seem to be living in a hybrid world, and hence we should be open to societal changes and solutions from either direction -- even if ideology makes that uncomfortable. Anyone advocating for a society with near 100% market mechanisms or near 0% market mechanisms is almost certainly wearing ideological blinkers.
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564287/the-peoples-...
[1] I read a great long-form piece written around the time of the parent company's bankruptcy in 2018, but I can't find it. This Bloomberg piece appears to be relevant, though I have only skimmed it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-...
That's absolutely not to say that Walmart is a direct exemplar of successful Soviet-style "state capitalism" or socialism, nor that Sears is a proof by contradiction of the efficient market hypothesis, or any such thing. But for a long time now we seem to be living in a hybrid world, and hence we should be open to societal changes and solutions from either direction -- even if ideology makes that uncomfortable. Anyone advocating for a society with near 100% market mechanisms or near 0% market mechanisms is almost certainly wearing ideological blinkers.
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564287/the-peoples-...
[1] I read a great long-form piece written around the time of the parent company's bankruptcy in 2018, but I can't find it. This Bloomberg piece appears to be relevant, though I have only skimmed it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-...
Centralized control works out OK in retail because if an evil madman seizes power over Walmart everyone can go to Target instead.
Yup, this is a very important point to be made. Central planning works very well when there is free association, that is, there is a market for people to pick organizations to associate with. A failure by planners leads to people quitting working there, downsizing, less business, all things that cannot happen in an organization where there's no alternative for people, such as a nation state. There is no low friction feedback mechanism for a state that enables it to reorganize as needed, mainly because we don't get to decide what state we are a citizen of.
Walmart is arguably already a private unaccountable tyranny that has seized near complete market control in many, many locations. Again, the criticisms and potential solutions cut both ways.
Interesting. That implies an authoritarian dictatorship is necessary for central planning -- what reason is there that democratically elected representatives cannot operate centralized systems of resource procurement/management/allocation?
Also, aren't Walmart and Amazon technically run democratically by their shareholders? Wouldn't the remedy for a madman running Walmart be a replacement elected by the board?
Also, aren't Walmart and Amazon technically run democratically by their shareholders? Wouldn't the remedy for a madman running Walmart be a replacement elected by the board?
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Would the communist central price-fixing have benefited from AI? I mean, could the fixing of consumer prices have been automated by an AI system? Maybe using machine learning?
It's simple compared to modern machine learning, but linear programming [1] was initially developed by Leonid Kantorovich partly with the goal of automating central planning. Most of his ideas weren't implemented in practice though.
Here's a recent paper surveying some of that work and how one might approach the central allocation problem with the benefit of modern techniques: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01539
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming
Here's a recent paper surveying some of that work and how one might approach the central allocation problem with the benefit of modern techniques: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01539
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming
Allende tried something similar in Chile with project Cybersyn. Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Shame that Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
There's no reason to think it would have produced better results than a free market economy.
There are dozens of reasons. Free markets have deduplication of labour, concepts like patents and IP that are inefficient are necessary, there are economic crises that wreck compound growth in the long term, there are issues of inequality, humans may be lazy and not attempt to allocate their capital in the most appropriate way (see index funds), socially useful endeavors may not be profitable, etc...
But central planning is insanely hard, so it's not easy.
That said, the USSR which literally used pen and paper for planning was the #2 economy in the world, so it clearly has some potential.
Now there can be other reasons to not want planning.
But central planning is insanely hard, so it's not easy.
That said, the USSR which literally used pen and paper for planning was the #2 economy in the world, so it clearly has some potential.
Now there can be other reasons to not want planning.
> There are dozens of reasons. Free markets have deduplication of labour, concepts like patents and IP that are inefficient are necessary, there are economic crises that wreck compound growth in the long term, there are issues of inequality, humans may be lazy and not attempt to allocate their capital in the most appropriate way (see index funds), socially useful endeavors may not be profitable, etc...
There's no reason to think that economic crises and inequality would be absent in a planned economy.
There's no reason to think that economic crises and inequality would be absent in a planned economy.
The USSR was unaffected by the Great Depression, unlike all capitalist countries. It’s because it used planning for use instead of markets for profit.
The USSR didn't have the great depression, but they did have the HoloDomor or terror famine of Ukraine between 1932 and 1933 and the wider Soviet Famine of that period.
The history of the famine later went on to inspire the book Animal Farm and were a pure artifact of the central planning economy forcing the export of the very food required to feed millions of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...
The history of the famine later went on to inspire the book Animal Farm and were a pure artifact of the central planning economy forcing the export of the very food required to feed millions of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...
Yes, the Soviet famines were due to erroneous data due to dysfunctional bureacracies.
Which is exactly why "pen and paper" are an issue.
Which is exactly why "pen and paper" are an issue.
Calling the famine an issue of erroneous data does a disservice to the victims. Millions of people don't starve while having their food confiscated at gun point due to an accounting error.
It's the proximate cause. As we all know it had horrible effects. Had the USSR been able to accurately measure food production it wouldn't have happened, so it is indeed the proximal cause.
The interesting thing about market economies is that the economy itself measures the food and distributes it in a maximally efficient manner when left unmolested, no central planner needed.
Distributed economies will always be more efficient than planned economies, because everyone on a distributed economy participates in the cognitive load of measuring and distributing resources, so the network has more processing power and less latency than a centrally planned economy.
Distributed economies will always be more efficient than planned economies, because everyone on a distributed economy participates in the cognitive load of measuring and distributing resources, so the network has more processing power and less latency than a centrally planned economy.
And yet many starved during the Great Depression as food was being destroyed to prevent its price from cratering.
Also, planning can be distributed too. Historically it always has been, to varying degrees depending on technology available.
Also, planning can be distributed too. Historically it always has been, to varying degrees depending on technology available.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
As for food being always produced in market economies, see the Bengal famine. Food wasn't destroyed in the Holodonor, it was simply redistributed. Similar famines happened under capitalism, all it takes is for a crop to come up first or for cash crops combined with the anarchy of production to lead to a crop that is beneath the requirements.
So no, similar famines did happen under capitalism, and your thesis is simply incorrect.
Markets can have latencies measuring in years or more, see the bullwhip effect. It's incorrect to say that they will be lo always have more processing power and less latency. They would if they were theoretically perfect, but markets are already at their limit and are not far away from the most primitive of planning.
As for food being always produced in market economies, see the Bengal famine. Food wasn't destroyed in the Holodonor, it was simply redistributed. Similar famines happened under capitalism, all it takes is for a crop to come up first or for cash crops combined with the anarchy of production to lead to a crop that is beneath the requirements.
So no, similar famines did happen under capitalism, and your thesis is simply incorrect.
Markets can have latencies measuring in years or more, see the bullwhip effect. It's incorrect to say that they will be lo always have more processing power and less latency. They would if they were theoretically perfect, but markets are already at their limit and are not far away from the most primitive of planning.
The Soviet famines were intentional genocide. Communist Party leaders always had plenty to eat.
https://victimsofcommunism.org/
https://victimsofcommunism.org/
This used to be believed by academic historians, until the opening of the Soviet Archives in 1992, and now the consensus is that it wasn't, it was just really bad data.
The link you're citing had multiple authors resign due to academic dishonesty and is funded by the US government, therefore making it state propaganda.
The link you're citing had multiple authors resign due to academic dishonesty and is funded by the US government, therefore making it state propaganda.
People died. That was not due to bad data.
It’s worth looking at primary sources for “Holodomor”, a depressing amount are from Ukrainian fascists.
The consensus among historians is that there was indeed a famine, one of the periodic environmental ones in the region. Planning was indeed slow to react to the famine and the sabotage by landlords, so food aid arrived late.
It was also the last famine in the region. The landlords that destroyed food were expropriated, land was collectivised and agriculture was industrialised. Talk to any older Ukrainians and they’ll tell you there was plenty of food throughout their lifetimes until the 90s after the USSR was defeated.
The consensus among historians is that there was indeed a famine, one of the periodic environmental ones in the region. Planning was indeed slow to react to the famine and the sabotage by landlords, so food aid arrived late.
It was also the last famine in the region. The landlords that destroyed food were expropriated, land was collectivised and agriculture was industrialised. Talk to any older Ukrainians and they’ll tell you there was plenty of food throughout their lifetimes until the 90s after the USSR was defeated.
Wasn't the Great Famine in 1932 and 1933 a direct result of central (mis-)planning? PS: also I wonder if you actually experienced living in a centrally planned economy, the East German economy for instance stumbled from one crisis into the next, not as bad as the Soviet Union under Stalin obviously (as in: people didn't starve to death), but a healthy economy is pretty much the opposite of the "real socialist" economies of the Eastern Bloc.
There had been periodic environmental famines in Eastern Europe for centuries. The one in the 30s in Ukraine was exacerbated by landlords (kulaks) refusing to sell food to the state for lower prices and even destroying grain and cattle in an effort to raise prices. Incomplete information meant central planning was slow to react to both of these problems and many did starve, but of course capitalist countries also exaggerated the numbers.
My parents and extended family lived in România before 89, they describe quickly improving conditions, in some ways better than today. Guaranteed homes, education and jobs went a long way, for example.
All of the Eastern European economies also started off semi-feudal with little industry when compared to Western Europe. They were also under constant attack and blockade from the capitalist countries, that’s what the Cold War was about.
Regardless of all that, it’s a fact that the Soviet economy was unaffected by the Great Depression, which was the whole point on planned economies.
My parents and extended family lived in România before 89, they describe quickly improving conditions, in some ways better than today. Guaranteed homes, education and jobs went a long way, for example.
All of the Eastern European economies also started off semi-feudal with little industry when compared to Western Europe. They were also under constant attack and blockade from the capitalist countries, that’s what the Cold War was about.
Regardless of all that, it’s a fact that the Soviet economy was unaffected by the Great Depression, which was the whole point on planned economies.
Doesn't it have more to do with the fact that they didn't even recover yet from the 1st World War? Also don't forget Holodomor. It literally happened after the Great Depression yet unlike Western Nations, 3.5 million people died from disease or starvation. Unlike in said Western countries that just had an economic collapse.
Of course there are. If you have good knowledge of the economy and of production mechanisms you can simply not do anything that could cause a crash. The issue is getting the knowledge to behind with, obviously.
Inequality is necessary to some level but empirically it's possible to make it much smaller.
Empirically the USSR had a single economic crisis without exogenous cause which was caused by incorrect accounting of agricultural production at its heart.
Inequality is necessary to some level but empirically it's possible to make it much smaller.
Empirically the USSR had a single economic crisis without exogenous cause which was caused by incorrect accounting of agricultural production at its heart.
> If you have good knowledge of the economy and of production mechanisms you can simply not do anything that could cause a crash
But we don't have that knowledge. Economists disagree on many foundational questions. At some point, economics shades into psychology and we certainly don't have theories that predict human behavior.
I don't discount the possibility that knowledge can help economies run more smoothly but you're understating the difficulty here.
> Empirically the USSR had a single economic crisis without exogenous cause which was caused by incorrect accounting of agricultural production at its heart.
The idea that the USSR had one economic crisis is a bizarre joke. The only way you can justify this comment is to ignore all the shortages and poverty and make some tortured semantic argument about what constitutes a "crisis".
Empirically speaking, free markets trounced centrally planned economies in the 20th century. If you can't recognize that, I'm not sure why anyone would take you seriously.
But we don't have that knowledge. Economists disagree on many foundational questions. At some point, economics shades into psychology and we certainly don't have theories that predict human behavior.
I don't discount the possibility that knowledge can help economies run more smoothly but you're understating the difficulty here.
> Empirically the USSR had a single economic crisis without exogenous cause which was caused by incorrect accounting of agricultural production at its heart.
The idea that the USSR had one economic crisis is a bizarre joke. The only way you can justify this comment is to ignore all the shortages and poverty and make some tortured semantic argument about what constitutes a "crisis".
Empirically speaking, free markets trounced centrally planned economies in the 20th century. If you can't recognize that, I'm not sure why anyone would take you seriously.
I mean knowledge of the real economy. What materials there are and what is done with it. That's all you need in a planned economy to avoid crises.
I said that the USSR had one economic crisis that wasn't due to exogenous circumstances. Which is true.
I agree that free markets outperformed them. I'm saying there is clearly potential for improvement since the USSR was so dysfunctional and was planned with pen and paper.
I said that the USSR had one economic crisis that wasn't due to exogenous circumstances. Which is true.
I agree that free markets outperformed them. I'm saying there is clearly potential for improvement since the USSR was so dysfunctional and was planned with pen and paper.
There is no way to gain accurate, detailed knowledge of the real economy. It has always been impossible. That's one of several reasons why economic central planning is stupid.
This is stupid. We can definitely do that, even today, with basic computer technology.
[deleted]
#2 economy per capita, or in absolute numbers? I'm quite sure western nations had better economies when you adjust for each country's size.
In absolute numbers. But planning economies becomes so much more difficult at scale, though if we looked at the communist country with the highest per capita economy we would still see numbers that are middle of the pack.
[deleted]
At its highest, relative to the USA, USSR per capita gdp was only one third that of the USA. Not that impressive, even if you trust their numbers.
The USSR never published a GDP figure. It couldn't, because GDP makes no sense without a market.
But yes, the USSR as a whole had a third of the US's average GDP. I agree, it was less than the US. The thing that is surprising is that they got there by planning an economy with pen and paper, which is insane to me.
But yes, the USSR as a whole had a third of the US's average GDP. I agree, it was less than the US. The thing that is surprising is that they got there by planning an economy with pen and paper, which is insane to me.
I don't know how it's possible, but nearly every sentence you wrote is completely wrong.
I made a typo which I corrected (s/world/US/), other than that I don't see anything wrong.
A central planning economy requires calculating desired outputs and required inputs through multiple layers of a supply chain. The resultant outputs through each layer of the economy, exports, and imports have a direct value that was in fact measured in the soviet currency of Ruble's - these Ruble's could be exchanged for dollars and provide a useful GDP figure in any desired currency. The basket of goods a given amount of these Ruble's could buy internally vs. their dollar equivalent elsewhere also provides a reasonable measure of Purchasing Power Parity.
One can also bypass the production component and measure GDP in terms of the incomes in Ruble's paid to Soviet workers in combination with the export/import figures to arrive at a reasonable estimate.
One can also bypass the production component and measure GDP in terms of the incomes in Ruble's paid to Soviet workers in combination with the export/import figures to arrive at a reasonable estimate.
This is not in fact true.
The basket of goods didn't have any fixed ruble price, as much of it was free.
Much of production was never given a full price in rubles, as a large part of it was by direct resource allocation.
You can indeed estimate it using a basket of goods and their equivalent values, but not with income and import/export + exchange rates because you're then removing all natural wealth.
It's a very difficult problem. You can make an estimation, but it's still an estimation, that is, for hard GDP. For PPP I agree the numbers are accurate, but that's not what was being discussed.
The basket of goods didn't have any fixed ruble price, as much of it was free.
Much of production was never given a full price in rubles, as a large part of it was by direct resource allocation.
You can indeed estimate it using a basket of goods and their equivalent values, but not with income and import/export + exchange rates because you're then removing all natural wealth.
It's a very difficult problem. You can make an estimation, but it's still an estimation, that is, for hard GDP. For PPP I agree the numbers are accurate, but that's not what was being discussed.
Something being free simply means the government paid for it on behalf of the worker. Direct resource allocation likewise just implies the government paid for it albeit without consideration for margin or potentially the ability of the resource allocator to remain solvent.
Direct resource allocation implies that valuable resources were taken from one activity and allocated to another, the workers who produce the resource still get paid (hopefully!) and the equipment still undergoes wear and tear or upgrade requirements. The production's value can still be estimated either by the equivalent market rate of the good or by the cost of making it.
When the government pays people to build housing that they give away for free there is still "production". When the government orders a mine to ship steel to another location the workers are still paid.
When the government orders a mine to produce for no input and doesn't bother to maintain equipment they effectively take a loan against the capital equipment in the mine. Eventually the mines productivity falls to zero as the mine fails to remain solvent requiring more capital infusion.
If the government can order workers to work without pay then the estimation has to account for similar economics to slave states, which unfortunately is also well trodden ground owing to economies such as the US's prior to 1865.
Direct resource allocation implies that valuable resources were taken from one activity and allocated to another, the workers who produce the resource still get paid (hopefully!) and the equipment still undergoes wear and tear or upgrade requirements. The production's value can still be estimated either by the equivalent market rate of the good or by the cost of making it.
When the government pays people to build housing that they give away for free there is still "production". When the government orders a mine to ship steel to another location the workers are still paid.
When the government orders a mine to produce for no input and doesn't bother to maintain equipment they effectively take a loan against the capital equipment in the mine. Eventually the mines productivity falls to zero as the mine fails to remain solvent requiring more capital infusion.
If the government can order workers to work without pay then the estimation has to account for similar economics to slave states, which unfortunately is also well trodden ground owing to economies such as the US's prior to 1865.
The issue always comes to assign a price in US dollars.
The government may pay people in other things that were the result of direct resource allocation, so you simply cannot put a price to it.
What is the cost of land that the government gives you? What is the cost of a lump of coal? Clearly this is a lot more than the simple capital cost used to extract it.
The long and short of it is, you're not getting a meaningful price is US dollars.
The government may pay people in other things that were the result of direct resource allocation, so you simply cannot put a price to it.
What is the cost of land that the government gives you? What is the cost of a lump of coal? Clearly this is a lot more than the simple capital cost used to extract it.
The long and short of it is, you're not getting a meaningful price is US dollars.
Do you accounted the zarist backwardness from which the USSR started and the incredible WWII destruction in the USSR territory in lives and buildings?
There are potentially plausible reasons such as that a free economy system could take longer to achieve an efficient market equilibrium compared to a centrally planned system.
There is no such thing as a market equilibrium. The real world is constantly in flux.
So long as a monopolistic centrally planned company acts on a free market do you consider your point unchallenged, or does the fact that the free markets tend to become dominated by large centrally planned corporations cause some tension?
There's no reason to think a free market economy is the single best solution we could ever hope to stumble upon. We keep evolving, we will evolve out of the "free" market economy as well.
The central planning will always produce better results, but only if you know the optimal strategy. Since it's impossible to know the optimal strategy a free market is a better solution in practice. Until a sufficiently strong AI arrives.
Was it actually Pinochet who masterminded the coup? ;-)
> Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology.
Nonsense. Hayek explained why that can't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit
Of course, it can be planned - Lenin and Stalin showed that. Just make an AI that emulates those two geniuses.
But the results would be equally great like they were in Soviet Russia or Mao's China. Why would anyone in a centrally planned economy work beyond the bare minimum needed to survive?
It's hilarious that someone has to call you out on that. HN...
> Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
I won't say that the coup was great, but it likely did less damage to the people than Cybersyn would have done.
Nonsense. Hayek explained why that can't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit
Of course, it can be planned - Lenin and Stalin showed that. Just make an AI that emulates those two geniuses.
But the results would be equally great like they were in Soviet Russia or Mao's China. Why would anyone in a centrally planned economy work beyond the bare minimum needed to survive?
It's hilarious that someone has to call you out on that. HN...
> Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
I won't say that the coup was great, but it likely did less damage to the people than Cybersyn would have done.
> But the results would be equally great like they were in Soviet Russia or Mao's China.
That's your HUGE assumption. While I didn't make any assumption, you are making a big leap of faith here without anything to back it. Pretty much what I would call nonsense.
> Why would anyone in a centrally planned economy work beyond the bare minimum needed to survive?
Sigh. I don't know, maybe ask the many artists, intellectuals, sportsmen, scientists, etc that came out of URSS? How can you be so certain about human nature when nobody can agree on that?
> Nonsense. Hayek explained why that can't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit
Ah yes, Hayek, the economist accomplice of the brutal Pinochet's dictatorship. Definitely someone without a strong bias.
Funny that they could only force people into the "free" market under the authority of a dictatorship born from a military coup.
That's your HUGE assumption. While I didn't make any assumption, you are making a big leap of faith here without anything to back it. Pretty much what I would call nonsense.
> Why would anyone in a centrally planned economy work beyond the bare minimum needed to survive?
Sigh. I don't know, maybe ask the many artists, intellectuals, sportsmen, scientists, etc that came out of URSS? How can you be so certain about human nature when nobody can agree on that?
> Nonsense. Hayek explained why that can't work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Conceit
Ah yes, Hayek, the economist accomplice of the brutal Pinochet's dictatorship. Definitely someone without a strong bias.
Funny that they could only force people into the "free" market under the authority of a dictatorship born from a military coup.
Hayek did not, actually. His argument for it can't work but it can work using markets assumes P=NP and that humans are capable of running algorithms that computers can't, but only when they act as perfectly self interested rational actors.
It does not assume P=NP as far as I can tell, unless you understand something I've missed? I'd be very interested in an explanation for how a market assumes P=NP, if I got one I'd basically be done with the concept of markets because I do not believe P=NP.
A market economy is a distributed network, a self healing network and a self organizing network that optimizes itself for resource distribution, an emergent property of human populations with asymmetric distribution. The network itself runs algorithms much more efficiently than a centrally planned economy which does not have these traits. A sufficiently powerful AI could perform as well as a market economy, but it would be redundant and have other effects, such as taking agency from the benefactors of the economy. I don't know that it could outperform a market economy, it's possible that it could but so far I'm not sure.
A market economy is a distributed network, a self healing network and a self organizing network that optimizes itself for resource distribution, an emergent property of human populations with asymmetric distribution. The network itself runs algorithms much more efficiently than a centrally planned economy which does not have these traits. A sufficiently powerful AI could perform as well as a market economy, but it would be redundant and have other effects, such as taking agency from the benefactors of the economy. I don't know that it could outperform a market economy, it's possible that it could but so far I'm not sure.
The problem of maximizing your self-interest in a market is general enough that finding a solution to it can require solving an NP-hard problem. This is actually true, real financial problems are NP-hard.
The market does not optimize for resource distribution, it optimizes for profit. It is tyrannical in that it removes your agency, as a member of the market you have no other choice but to optimize for profit in many important situations.
This is already dysfunctional enough to completely destroy a society, so we have to implement fictions like IP and regulations to tame the beast.
As far as central planning goes it's certainly possible to plan an economy while allowing people to choose their jobs and start small companies.
A sufficiently advanced AI would inevitably be more efficient, simply releasing all IP restrictions, all binning that is not necessary, ending all unproductive landlordism, and the compound growth from the lack of crises would do it.
Now you could be opposed to it from an ideological point of view, but no matter what you're misstating Hayek's point, as he contends that it is not, actually, possible to perform the economic calculation outside of markets, due to computing brain magic of humans only when they act that way.
Also, the mere principle that a market can run the economic calculations more efficiently than another computer is a violation of the Church-Turing hypothesis. There is no machine that we know of that can do any computation with better complexity than a Turing machine, save for quantum computing.
The market does not optimize for resource distribution, it optimizes for profit. It is tyrannical in that it removes your agency, as a member of the market you have no other choice but to optimize for profit in many important situations.
This is already dysfunctional enough to completely destroy a society, so we have to implement fictions like IP and regulations to tame the beast.
As far as central planning goes it's certainly possible to plan an economy while allowing people to choose their jobs and start small companies.
A sufficiently advanced AI would inevitably be more efficient, simply releasing all IP restrictions, all binning that is not necessary, ending all unproductive landlordism, and the compound growth from the lack of crises would do it.
Now you could be opposed to it from an ideological point of view, but no matter what you're misstating Hayek's point, as he contends that it is not, actually, possible to perform the economic calculation outside of markets, due to computing brain magic of humans only when they act that way.
Also, the mere principle that a market can run the economic calculations more efficiently than another computer is a violation of the Church-Turing hypothesis. There is no machine that we know of that can do any computation with better complexity than a Turing machine, save for quantum computing.
Do you have an example of an NP hard problem a person would have to solve on the process of optimizing for self interest?
A market optimizes for whatever the participant wants, profit is simply a mechanism by which the overall market performs price discovery. You always have a choice to not optimize for profit, I make trades all the time where profit is not my goal.
Just choosing a job and being kindly allowed a small local marketplace is not agency.
Hayek's point would obviously violate the church-turing hypothesis (unless there's some hitherto unknown quantum-esque computation process going on in the human brain which I doubt, or you're mischaracterizing his point, I'm reading his book as we speak) but I believe that a sufficiently advanced machine capable of outperforming the market given equatable conditions (same information availability and processing) would probably perform those functions with less resource efficiency, not to mention the resources to build a redundant machine we don't need. If you build one that is better by using more energy and resources to scale its capabilities up, well now you're not optimizing resources on the whole because you're dedicating some for this machine to exist and operate, the resources to build the machine and maintain operation are then distributed suboptimally.
If a machine that uses the same net resources for this task and with equal capabilities could outperform the marketplace at efficiently distributing resources, and there are NP hard problems in personal finance, wouldn't that mean P=NP?
A market optimizes for whatever the participant wants, profit is simply a mechanism by which the overall market performs price discovery. You always have a choice to not optimize for profit, I make trades all the time where profit is not my goal.
Just choosing a job and being kindly allowed a small local marketplace is not agency.
Hayek's point would obviously violate the church-turing hypothesis (unless there's some hitherto unknown quantum-esque computation process going on in the human brain which I doubt, or you're mischaracterizing his point, I'm reading his book as we speak) but I believe that a sufficiently advanced machine capable of outperforming the market given equatable conditions (same information availability and processing) would probably perform those functions with less resource efficiency, not to mention the resources to build a redundant machine we don't need. If you build one that is better by using more energy and resources to scale its capabilities up, well now you're not optimizing resources on the whole because you're dedicating some for this machine to exist and operate, the resources to build the machine and maintain operation are then distributed suboptimally.
If a machine that uses the same net resources for this task and with equal capabilities could outperform the marketplace at efficiently distributing resources, and there are NP hard problems in personal finance, wouldn't that mean P=NP?
I'm on my phone right now, but there is a paper on the exact P=NP efficient market question.
I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently.
As for resources, us as a society already dedicate trillions of dollars a year to market planning - its called profits and capital gains, as well as the entire finance and real estate industry. As long as the planning system requires less than a trillion dollars a year to run even without being more efficient than the market at whichever cost function we choose it will be more efficient overall.
I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently.
As for resources, us as a society already dedicate trillions of dollars a year to market planning - its called profits and capital gains, as well as the entire finance and real estate industry. As long as the planning system requires less than a trillion dollars a year to run even without being more efficient than the market at whichever cost function we choose it will be more efficient overall.
> I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently.
That sounds to me like an ideological position, which is fine of course.
But the question arises, if solving distribution problems requires a participant to solve NP hard problems as you've said (I'd appreciate a link to that paper whenever you can get around to it, I seriously do want to read it and am not just shouting "source", same goes for the distributed planning in anarchist planned economies we were discussing in another thread) then how would that not be true for a machine? Either the problem is NP hard or it isn't, regardless of what entity is trying to solve it.
That sounds to me like an ideological position, which is fine of course.
But the question arises, if solving distribution problems requires a participant to solve NP hard problems as you've said (I'd appreciate a link to that paper whenever you can get around to it, I seriously do want to read it and am not just shouting "source", same goes for the distributed planning in anarchist planned economies we were discussing in another thread) then how would that not be true for a machine? Either the problem is NP hard or it isn't, regardless of what entity is trying to solve it.
It's not an ideological position - I don't think that P=NP and I don't think that the Church-Turing hypothesis is false so I don't think that markets can solve NP problems efficiently and thus I don't think markets are efficient.
NP-hard problems can be approximated. You get the machine to approximate a solution that is better than what the market could do or thereabouts.
NP-hard problems can be approximated. You get the machine to approximate a solution that is better than what the market could do or thereabouts.
Why can't the market approximate NP problems at least as good as a central planning entity?
Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. I don't think we can know without real world trials. But planning, whether central or not, has the crucial advantage that it is much more flexible. Beyond that, we don't even need to go fully into one extreme.
The fact that it has to aproximate at all however completely invalidates Hayek's argument, which is why it is worthless - his assumptions beg the question.
That being said, given the ability of incredibly rudimentary paper-and-pen, low tech planning systems where planning is basically a very difficult computer science problem to get within a third to a half of what markets can do, I think there is a solid shot that planning can outperform markets in the majority of industries, though perhaps for smaller industries a flexible hybrid will be more useful.
The fact that it has to aproximate at all however completely invalidates Hayek's argument, which is why it is worthless - his assumptions beg the question.
That being said, given the ability of incredibly rudimentary paper-and-pen, low tech planning systems where planning is basically a very difficult computer science problem to get within a third to a half of what markets can do, I think there is a solid shot that planning can outperform markets in the majority of industries, though perhaps for smaller industries a flexible hybrid will be more useful.
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I suspect that if project cybersyn had succeeded, it would have eventually joined human central planners with statistical models, and then replaced the planners with ML once it became powerful enough (probably in the last few decades).
As far as I'm aware, the soviet system was bureaucratic rather than computerised, so they wouldn't have benefited as readily.
As far as I'm aware, the soviet system was bureaucratic rather than computerised, so they wouldn't have benefited as readily.
I suggest you read Red Plenty (if you don't know it already) for a really fascinating explanation of how planned economy worked.
See also this: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Red_Plenty_Platforms for a discussion on this topic.
See also this: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Red_Plenty_Platforms for a discussion on this topic.
I've actually done some deep thinking on this topic, and I've come to a conclusion on the topic of the efficiency of central economies vs decentralized (market) economies, that is, a market is a network where the task of resource allocation is distributed dynamically to nodes best suited to make those decisions, the network is constantly reorganized to maintain low latency information channels, and the computational load is also spread to all the nodes, whereas a central economy has latency to the computational node(s) (government agencies and bureaucracies) and also reduced computational power (people making financial decisions with their minds). As a result, market economies will always result in more efficient and therefore more prosperous societies than centrally planned economies.
AI can change this, if it is sufficiently powerful enough to perform the computations needed for resource allocation, has the necessary information input (it can never have all of it but there's probably some place where it gets close enough), has low latency feeds for that information, and has very efficient distribution algorithms. That would basically need to create a system redundant to the economy itself, and redundant to a system that there's no worry about disappearing unless the humans for which resources are being managed disappear, so it seems pointless anyway. Also there's the problem of turning humanity into a cold machine and taking agency from every individual.
AI can change this, if it is sufficiently powerful enough to perform the computations needed for resource allocation, has the necessary information input (it can never have all of it but there's probably some place where it gets close enough), has low latency feeds for that information, and has very efficient distribution algorithms. That would basically need to create a system redundant to the economy itself, and redundant to a system that there's no worry about disappearing unless the humans for which resources are being managed disappear, so it seems pointless anyway. Also there's the problem of turning humanity into a cold machine and taking agency from every individual.
> and therefore more prosperous
In sum, perhaps. But how much more prosperous, and to what end is that prosperity used? If prosperity were expressed in terms of apples, what's more beneficial for humanity: 80 apples in a shed that the owner won't let anyone touch and 20 for everyone else, or just 50 apples spread around? What about 80 apples?
There's a point in scarcity where inefficiency is the enemy to conquer, certainly. But there's another point where perfectly maximizing how many apples get put in sheds isn't winning a useful battle.
Where those points are, where we sit in relation, how do you convince people to pick apples in the first place, etc. are interesting questions. But without us being in a pretty specific spot for how hard apples are to come by, absolutely maximizing for prosperity across a population is not necessarily maximizing real utility for the population.
In sum, perhaps. But how much more prosperous, and to what end is that prosperity used? If prosperity were expressed in terms of apples, what's more beneficial for humanity: 80 apples in a shed that the owner won't let anyone touch and 20 for everyone else, or just 50 apples spread around? What about 80 apples?
There's a point in scarcity where inefficiency is the enemy to conquer, certainly. But there's another point where perfectly maximizing how many apples get put in sheds isn't winning a useful battle.
Where those points are, where we sit in relation, how do you convince people to pick apples in the first place, etc. are interesting questions. But without us being in a pretty specific spot for how hard apples are to come by, absolutely maximizing for prosperity across a population is not necessarily maximizing real utility for the population.
All those distribution problems are resolved optimally by the distributed system.
Optimally does not mean perfectly of course but there's no reason to believe that an artificially enforced system can distribute resources more efficiently than the naturally emerging system of markets.
Optimally does not mean perfectly of course but there's no reason to believe that an artificially enforced system can distribute resources more efficiently than the naturally emerging system of markets.
They tried computer-assisted central planning and it mostly failed because of data quality. There were a lot of incentives to lie and not a lot of reasons to be honest.
When my grandma was in last class of school they were sent to help force farmers to use publicly funded artificial fertilizers. Farmers didn't wanted to because "their fathers didn't used them and it was fine". So communists had school kids with some physical workers deliver fertilizers to farmers and gather the data (how big area, how much fertilizer, what was the yield, etc.) And if somebody didn't wanted to take it they were supposed to call the militia on them.
Of course nobody at the ground level actually had any reason to gather the real data, check it, do the expected work or bother militia. So it was all a big exercise in faking data and passing it higher up :)
That was how most communist initiatives worked in Poland :)
I don't think technology would fix anything.
When my grandma was in last class of school they were sent to help force farmers to use publicly funded artificial fertilizers. Farmers didn't wanted to because "their fathers didn't used them and it was fine". So communists had school kids with some physical workers deliver fertilizers to farmers and gather the data (how big area, how much fertilizer, what was the yield, etc.) And if somebody didn't wanted to take it they were supposed to call the militia on them.
Of course nobody at the ground level actually had any reason to gather the real data, check it, do the expected work or bother militia. So it was all a big exercise in faking data and passing it higher up :)
That was how most communist initiatives worked in Poland :)
I don't think technology would fix anything.
They actually never even tried.
The computer planning system that was suggested, GAS, in the 50s, included an internet that would automatically gather/collect and send data. The most that was ever done was to apply the algorithm manually to a few industries and see if it outperformed manual planning (it did).
The planners weren't stupid. They were aware of the data quality issues. That's why they basically wanted to build the internet in the 1950s to avoid that. Even Lenin knew this well hence the NEP.
The issue is that this threatened the bureaucrats so they invented problems to stick to the old ways of doing things that were easier to fraud.
The computer planning system that was suggested, GAS, in the 50s, included an internet that would automatically gather/collect and send data. The most that was ever done was to apply the algorithm manually to a few industries and see if it outperformed manual planning (it did).
The planners weren't stupid. They were aware of the data quality issues. That's why they basically wanted to build the internet in the 1950s to avoid that. Even Lenin knew this well hence the NEP.
The issue is that this threatened the bureaucrats so they invented problems to stick to the old ways of doing things that were easier to fraud.
I'm talking Poland specifically not USSR and there was some real computerization done by ZETO and CEOI from 60s. Poland had a few homegrown computer architectures and also since 70s had access to western IT industry (for example it used IBM mainframes pretty much as they were released).
For example PESEL system was designed then (each citizen gets assigned a number on birth, it encodes sex, date of birth, serial number from batch [so it doesn't need to be synchronized constantly], and a checksum so it's easy to find mistakes). And every database in country used that PESEL as "business id".
At first protein-based calculators were executing this algorithm but it was computerized and it's used to this day and works pretty well (even if there are some gotchas from the times when people were calculating them manually).
For example PESEL system was designed then (each citizen gets assigned a number on birth, it encodes sex, date of birth, serial number from batch [so it doesn't need to be synchronized constantly], and a checksum so it's easy to find mistakes). And every database in country used that PESEL as "business id".
At first protein-based calculators were executing this algorithm but it was computerized and it's used to this day and works pretty well (even if there are some gotchas from the times when people were calculating them manually).
I'm talking about computerization of the planning process. I don't think PESEL counts. As far as I remember Poland didn't computerize any input/output economic tables or forecast consumption from purchase data or anything of the sort that was proposed in the 50s.
There was a little of that too, for example SIZ, SPIS and CENPLAN. They were introduced partially and never functioned as designed of course, after all it was a communist country :)
If you can read Polish here are some references:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:H9O7Cs...
https://bcpw.bg.pw.edu.pl/Content/1720/PDF/16atibz_krajowy.p...
If you can read Polish here are some references:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:H9O7Cs...
https://bcpw.bg.pw.edu.pl/Content/1720/PDF/16atibz_krajowy.p...
Yes, they were introduced partially as experiments. As far as I'm aware though there was never an automated input/output calculation which is the real step #1 of cybernetic planning.
Exactly, the bureaucrat caste became a wall against an efficient and democratic socialist planning, just as Trotsky predicted. They blocked the soviet cyberneticians plans and when the USSR collapsed they became capitalist themselves by seizing the state assets. The problem wasn't socialism but the stalinist bureaucracy. This article is on the point:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-soviets-invented-the-internet...
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-soviets-invented-the-internet...
Yes, governments always fudge data to fit a narrative. The Covid pandemic has been a shameful example of that, worldwide.
They tried to use computers to set prices and plan production, but they failed anyway.
Adam Curtis had a documentary abouth this: https://youtu.be/h3gwyHNo7MI?t=1484
Adam Curtis had a documentary abouth this: https://youtu.be/h3gwyHNo7MI?t=1484
There was never an automated price selection and planning system, no. It was done by hand on manually generated data in a handful of industries.
It wouldn't even need AI for massive benefit. Simply automating and authenticating data about which factory is producing what using what inputs would have been absolutely massive.
IMO capitalism and communism would meet with big data driven AI, it would benefit both: for capitalism algorithms would eliminate wastes, and drive cost down, so that the supply need not to far exceed demand; for communism central planning would actually work, you don't need market to adjust supply and demand. In the end these two system would work in a very similar way.
WalMart is very centrally planned. More than the USSR was at peak. By the 1980s, WalMart required UPC bar codes on everything, and a different bar code on cartons and cases. Headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas did purchasing and distribution control for the entire WalMart economy. They had central planning at a level Gosplan could only dream of.
Amazon, of course, has taken that even further.