Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.
Planned economies do work. Using the USSR as an example, they achieved tremendous economic growth surpassing the vast majority of capitalist economies, all while under intense sanctions and invasion.
The USSR and other socialist economies have been some of the most rapidly developing countries in history.
Lemmy itself is not a product of capitalism, either, FOSS can be used by capitalism but largely sits outside that.
They do, to a certain extent. Once an economy begins to grow more and more complex, the intensity of calculations needed increases proportionally (edit: proportional may not be the right word here).
A large part of the USSR’s workforce was dedicated to economic planning at the time of its collapse, and it was projected to reach 50% by the 2000s.
They intended to solve this with computers, but there’s reasons this wouldn’t have worked:
A: Economic calculation involves NP-Hard problems, where the complexity can increase out of nowhere.
If you needed to perform 1600 calculations one day, next week the number needed could jump to 36000. (NP-Hard problems are also common in route determination programs used by delivery apps to devise optimum routes. If you increase the number of locations from 10 to 11, the computations needed to calculate an optimum route increases staggeringly, and it keeps getting worse the more complex you make it.)
B: Making the economy more complex makes the calculations needed more-than-exponentially extra intensive and numerous. If you introduce computers into the mix, more people are free to do other things and make the economy even more complex. It’s a really fast vicious cycle that doesn’t end well.
And in all of this, I haven’t even mentioned the corruption involved in bureaucracy
This is generally not true, the Economic Calculation Problem is a made-up excuse, same with the idea that 50% of the USSR’s economy would be dedicated to planning. Administration and planning is important, but it isn’t the kind of thing that overwhelms the economy. Megacorporations like Walmart and Amazon already employ economic planning over price signals to great effect, and socialist economies are still rapidly advancing, especially China, even though it relies heavily on central planning.
Corruption happens in capitalism, too, it isn’t something especially worse in socialism.