Forget the Soviet planning system, it was obsolete back in the day. (Read Red Plenty: the problems were political/ideological, not calculation.)
I worked on big company ERP and supply chain software for many years. For awhile, in a division of Mobil Oil. They had a staff of programmers who worked full-time on computing global oil futures.
Then think Walmart’s or even Apple’s global supply chain. Then think computerized stock and commodity trading. Then think Google’s infrastructure.
Do you really think the techniques do not exist to calculate whatever economic activity you want on a global level?
Every big corporation is a planned economy.
And the problem with prices as coordination signals is that require that people have money to buy. So you will never get good childcare or schools or health care in poor neighborhoods using price signals.
I think there is a dearth of imagination in these arguments. Demand signals propagate from point of sale through Walmart’s whole ecosystem. Almost stigmergic. How about demand signals from poor neighborhoods? Figure out a way to get them into the value network.
Then think, how would priorities get decided between the golden rule (who’s got the gold, makes the rules) (that is, demand signals with money attached) and demand signals from poor neighborhoods?
]]>Economic theory goes round in bloody circles, and no matter how many books i read on the subject, i still can’t figure out if I’m Austrian or Chicago, Smith, Keynes or Hayek.
In the end, it’s all largely an irrelevant unless and until a different operating system is employed to deal with the mess that’s been left by the money-men.
That will be a matter of trial and error rather than more theory which frankly is simply hot air and intellectual guff!
Hope i’m not offending anyone here!!!
By the way, thanks for the P@P network stuff, it always makes compelling reading.
MIke.
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