“The contradictions this arrangement generates demand not a return to pre-monopoly conditions, but a rationalization of central planning itself, along with a resolution of its own contingent contradictions.”
Central planning was and will always be carried out by irrational creatures called men, who are also fallen and greedy.
No AI isn’t the answer either, not that anyone would accept any centrally planned answer.
Moreover you don’t understand America is a Federation from the Iroquois to the Internet and all arrangements in between such as our current Federalist Federation in America.
This isn’t practical in a metropole Capitol nation like Russia or France, never mind America where it’s impossible- by our nature and our Constitution.
I'm still writing the second and third installments, but in them, I am reaching for a federated central planning model consistent with the strengths of the US system and our states' regional quirks. I don't advocate central planning in the vein of the Soviet Union or China because we are neither, nor is our current development of central planning under modern capitalist conditions the same firmament under which their command and SEZ models developed. Rather than negating federalism, I actually want to expand it into the economic sphere more fully, I just don't believe that that expansion can take place under the present regime.
And when I say "expanding federalism," I don't just mean expanding the federal government into the economic sphere, I mean delineating specific responsibilities/powers/checks on power between various institutions so that the economy can be centrally planned while also maintaining enough friction that the kind of number-fudging and embezzlement endemic in existing command models is less likely to occur.
I am firm in my belief that attempting to reimplement an earlier competitive market will ultimately lead to monopolization again, even if a reactionary revolution managed to completely reset market relations and dismantle existing monopolies.
Mittelstand, as we are currently seeing with Germany's prolonged political economic crisis, is still vulnerable to private equity and global capital. It was and in many cases remains coherent, rational, and generative, but is subject to many of the same pressures that destroyed American manufacturing and will eventually damage Chinese manufacturing. A transition to an alternative economic system is still necessary for a Mittelstand-like ecosystem to remain solvent.
I agree; however, those innovations were left on the shelf for two primary reasons:
1. The technologies may have been too difficult to scale relative to the utility they could have generated at the time.
2. More commonly, they were shelved because the utility they were attempting to extract was not usefulness and rational industrial design but extractive profit. Consider the Kodak example; Kodak developed the first digital camera in-house in the 1970s but sat on it because film sales kept them in business. When the patent lapsed, new competition in that industrial market was able to scale the technology, Kodak lost their market dominance, and they went bankrupt. Now they trade primarily in nostalgia and artistic niches. Prioritizing exchange-value over use-value held technology back and killed their business.
With regard to 1. I can foresee a theoretical centrally-planned use-value-based economy withholding new innovations from use if the new technology threatened to upend the economic order, e.g., by requiring massive retooling/reskilling/recalculation of inputs/outputs. Adoption of such a socially disruptive new technology may take substantially more time to implement than in the existing anarchic market model, or may be shelved indefinitely if the information is siloed somehow. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, though, since technology is supposed to serve humanity, and if a breakthrough doesn't do so, then it makes sense to slow down its adoption or throttle it completely. It doesn't make sense to force its adoption fully and react to its ramifications later, as we do today when we discover novel ways to create fictitious capital, or reengineer our social bonds around generating new fictitious capital. I am by no means degrowth, very much the opposite, but it is something to consider. We still haven't experienced all of the biological and evolutionary consequences of industrialization. What we have developed, though, has the potential to end humanity if not carefully safeguarded, and experience has shown that those safeguards are let down from time to time for a variety of reasons, many of them stemming directly from the effects of market dynamics. I don't believe central planning solves all of these effects, but there are areas which could be better rationalized such that those destructive tendencies are not as likely to be let loose.
“The contradictions this arrangement generates demand not a return to pre-monopoly conditions, but a rationalization of central planning itself, along with a resolution of its own contingent contradictions.”
Central planning was and will always be carried out by irrational creatures called men, who are also fallen and greedy.
No AI isn’t the answer either, not that anyone would accept any centrally planned answer.
Moreover you don’t understand America is a Federation from the Iroquois to the Internet and all arrangements in between such as our current Federalist Federation in America.
This isn’t practical in a metropole Capitol nation like Russia or France, never mind America where it’s impossible- by our nature and our Constitution.
I'm still writing the second and third installments, but in them, I am reaching for a federated central planning model consistent with the strengths of the US system and our states' regional quirks. I don't advocate central planning in the vein of the Soviet Union or China because we are neither, nor is our current development of central planning under modern capitalist conditions the same firmament under which their command and SEZ models developed. Rather than negating federalism, I actually want to expand it into the economic sphere more fully, I just don't believe that that expansion can take place under the present regime.
And when I say "expanding federalism," I don't just mean expanding the federal government into the economic sphere, I mean delineating specific responsibilities/powers/checks on power between various institutions so that the economy can be centrally planned while also maintaining enough friction that the kind of number-fudging and embezzlement endemic in existing command models is less likely to occur.
“the competitive market can never be reinstated.”
Dear. If it takes Civil War it will be.
I am firm in my belief that attempting to reimplement an earlier competitive market will ultimately lead to monopolization again, even if a reactionary revolution managed to completely reset market relations and dismantle existing monopolies.
Author- what about Germany’s Mittelstand way? Or the same effect for different reasons in the Italian Piedmont Industrial region?
Do not overlook the possibilities inherent in a Federated system- like Germany, or America.
Possible solutions<<
Mittelstand, as we are currently seeing with Germany's prolonged political economic crisis, is still vulnerable to private equity and global capital. It was and in many cases remains coherent, rational, and generative, but is subject to many of the same pressures that destroyed American manufacturing and will eventually damage Chinese manufacturing. A transition to an alternative economic system is still necessary for a Mittelstand-like ecosystem to remain solvent.
Sorry we’re decapitating Venezuela… get back to you later
Bell Labs left a lot of excellent designs on the shelf for a long time, innovation that gathers dust is an evil.
I agree; however, those innovations were left on the shelf for two primary reasons:
1. The technologies may have been too difficult to scale relative to the utility they could have generated at the time.
2. More commonly, they were shelved because the utility they were attempting to extract was not usefulness and rational industrial design but extractive profit. Consider the Kodak example; Kodak developed the first digital camera in-house in the 1970s but sat on it because film sales kept them in business. When the patent lapsed, new competition in that industrial market was able to scale the technology, Kodak lost their market dominance, and they went bankrupt. Now they trade primarily in nostalgia and artistic niches. Prioritizing exchange-value over use-value held technology back and killed their business.
With regard to 1. I can foresee a theoretical centrally-planned use-value-based economy withholding new innovations from use if the new technology threatened to upend the economic order, e.g., by requiring massive retooling/reskilling/recalculation of inputs/outputs. Adoption of such a socially disruptive new technology may take substantially more time to implement than in the existing anarchic market model, or may be shelved indefinitely if the information is siloed somehow. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, though, since technology is supposed to serve humanity, and if a breakthrough doesn't do so, then it makes sense to slow down its adoption or throttle it completely. It doesn't make sense to force its adoption fully and react to its ramifications later, as we do today when we discover novel ways to create fictitious capital, or reengineer our social bonds around generating new fictitious capital. I am by no means degrowth, very much the opposite, but it is something to consider. We still haven't experienced all of the biological and evolutionary consequences of industrialization. What we have developed, though, has the potential to end humanity if not carefully safeguarded, and experience has shown that those safeguards are let down from time to time for a variety of reasons, many of them stemming directly from the effects of market dynamics. I don't believe central planning solves all of these effects, but there are areas which could be better rationalized such that those destructive tendencies are not as likely to be let loose.