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A comment on I was a useful idiot for capitalism. Parent comment

Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by hnfong on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @05:13AM (#34078790)
btw, Yuval Noah Harari repeatedly warned that advances in informatics and AI might actually solve the problem of central planning. The Soviets tried to do central planning without the means to transfer and process information cheaply. They didn't even have Excel (or Lotus 1-2-3 for that matter). If they failed only because the tools weren't good enough, it might be due for a comeback especially when AI systems could now plausibly take over those roles...
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Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by meheleventyone on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @05:36AM (#34078937)
Why is it a warning, wouldn’t it be a good thing if we could more efficiently allocate resources than the current system? And aren’t most corporations centrally planned economies on the inside?
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Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by Ieghaehia9 on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @06:04AM (#34079103)
It's a warning if it isn't accompanied by great democratization, because the planned economy concentrates a lot of power in the hands of the planners.

Some proponents of planned economy (e.g. Cottrell) suggest that elected democracy should be replaced by sortition for just that reason. Or perhaps there are technical ways to make planning less centralized, say some kind of federated system with freely available real-time production data, where a new producer can decide what group of existing producers to join.

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Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by hnbad on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @07:30AM (#34079817)
Incidentally, Cybersyn[0] promised to achieve that goal of automating central planning. Of course we never found out if it would have worked out as the system was destroyed during as part of the heavily US-backed coup replacing socialist Allende with the fascist Pinochet[1].

There are legitimate concerns surrounding the level of surveillance and automation necessary for such a system but they seem hollow from the present sociopolitical context where surveillance and automated decision making is normalized as part of the capitalist system rather than an aspirationally socialist one.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

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Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by zozbot234 on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @08:28AM (#34080435)
Amazon is the new Cybersyn - and Walmart was it before Amazon. What do you think they're using all those hyperscale datacenters for? Central planning, that's what. (Except that if you don't like Amazon or Walmart's plans, you can just shop elsewhere. The plan for Cybersyn was that it would be your robot overlord - no alternatives allowed.)
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Re:I was a useful idiot for capitalism by KptMarchewa on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @08:23AM (#34080378)
>If they failed only because the tools weren't good enough

Anyone who claims that hasn't observed Soviet Union or Russia long enough. The failure was 99% due to "human element" not due to sophistication or not of some planning element.

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