The Soviet Union does not intervene in the 1956 Hungarian Rising.

[stjernkjempe]

It would work if there is a market system to redistribute resources and goods between the communes. Then it would be basically the same system as the west but whit different owner organization. I’m not joking as many large corporations basically are managed as planed command economies. Its efficient economics only not that competitive as the motivation to develop higher productivity and product comes from within the community and not from the need to maximize profit. On the good side thou it reduces negative externalities and actually define ownership more easily than corporations.

Freedom of trade and the freedom to establish a new cooperative are going to be some sticking points. Are the farmers going to have to sell their food at fixed prices? Do the miners have to sell their coal and ore for fixed prices? Can you start a new cooperative together to manufacture popular goods? Who is contributing whit the initial capital to gain machinery etc?

It’s better than planed command economy but free market economy is going to beat this type of economy. There is too much negotiations and to little room for entrepreneurs.

If it devolves into syndicalism it could work fine as a first stage away from planned command economy while the small reforms to open the market up for the new communes to establish themselves on the market, savings to accumulate in some form of bank system and finally for private corporations to establish.

There might be a glacial 90is domino effect where all this screeches out between 1956 to the 80is. If the military spending could be kept low or even abysmal and genuine investments in infrastructure is done there could be comparable living standard in east as in west. If there is trade and exchange of ideas that leads to true democracy I would go so far to say east Europe could be as well off as Italy as best and Spain as worst.

There is a lot of ifs in there.

 

[Johnrankins]

Every utopian dream sounds good in a twenty-word soundbite. In practice, dreams grind down.

Yep, in life their are real people who are greedy and lazy, complications like tornadoes, fires and hurricanes that you can't predict, technological and scientific breakthroughs that by definition you can't predict and trillions of calculations to make.

 

[King Midas]

Most of the 56'rs I knew had names ending in Y (old aristocracy). They talked of re-establishing the aristocratic system. I figured at the time it was probably a pipe dream, but I'll ask here, any chance of this?

 

[Sam R.]

Most of the 56'rs I knew had names ending in Y (old aristocracy). They talked of re-establishing the aristocratic system. I figured at the time it was probably a pipe dream, but I'll ask here, any chance of this?

There's a high chance of them being preventatively arrested by the MEFESZ student columns and given a choice of stopping anti-socialist organisation or leaving Hungary. See what MEFESZ did when the József Dudás group attacked the AVH headquarters.

yours,
Sam R.

 

[Johnrankins]

It would work if there is a market system to redistribute resources and goods between the communes. Then it would be basically the same system as the west but whit different owner organization. I’m not joking as many large corporations basically are managed as planed command economies.

Even Microsoft and Exxon are small compared to the entire US economy. Do you think Microsoft keeps track of the price of wheat, wood and plastic tables? Does Exxon keep track of the price of houses, sugar and wool? Neither of these companies keep track of most of the economy and plan for only their part of it. Microsoft might keep track of the price of electricity to figure out the impact of electric prices on software purchases due to having to buy more powerful computers being needed to run more powerful software using more electricity but it very well may not. It certainly isn't going to keep track of the price of wheat. Exxon is going to keep track of the price of various plastics to see how it impacts its various oil derived chemicals but it isn't going to keep track of housing prices. The problem with command economies is that the planners have to keep track of EVERYTHING.

 

[stjernkjempe]

Even Microsoft and Exxon are small compared to the entire US economy. Do you think Microsoft keeps track of the price of wheat, wood and plastic tables? Does Exxon keep track of the price of houses, sugar and wool? Neither of these companies keep track of most of the economy and plan for only their part of it. Microsoft might keep track of the price of electricity to figure out the impact of electric prices on software purchases due to having to buy more powerful computers being needed to run more powerful software using more electricity but it very well may not. It certainly isn't going to keep track of the price of wheat. Exxon is going to keep track of the price of various plastics to see how it impacts its various oil derived chemicals but it isn't going to keep track of housing prices. The problem with command economies is that the planners have to keep track of EVERYTHING.

What are you talking about now? Make some sense and come back. I’m talking about how worker councils and communes running factories and farms could make it work. That’s much smaller than EXXON or Microsoft. But the trusts and zaibatsus of the early 20 th century seemed to thrive happily in a competitive capitalist market economy and they kept track of all those little petty things as prices of tat for prices of tit to regulate markets as they saw fit. Strange how the “gospel of Alisa Zinovjevna Rosenbaum” seems to forget this.

Also I describe this as a step up from planned command economy and not as competitive as a free market economy. Read a whole post, think and then regurgitate the same old crap. The free market theory of economics is nothing but a simplistic utopian model. Reality is a bit more gritty and strange.

The problem in worker owned factories lays not in the micro economics utopian models but actually in business economics theories about self interested motivation to improve. How firms or production is organized is not as important as long as there is markets for them act on. If there is not and they have to negotiate fixed prices all the time there is going to be reforms (that’s my prediction) or back to planed economy and repressions.

 

[stjernkjempe]

Yep, in life their are real people who are greedy and lazy, complications like tornadoes, fires and hurricanes that you can't predict, technological and scientific breakthroughs that by definition you can't predict and trillions of calculations to make.

Tornadoes are unforeseen when they happen but there is a statistical average of them in the same area so you could make a reserve (or insurances if you want to call it that). Market economies don't play whit insurances unless people wants to be risk averse and then there is a whole sleeve of market failures making a lot of inefficient economics.

If people were greedy and lazy we would be all be stealing form each other instead of trying to build communities. There is other traits human posses that the knee jerk reaction out of enlightenment (seriously homo economics is an enlightenment construct).

Scientific breakthrough is predictable as hell if you keep some attention on the scientific community. There is no ftl engines being kluged together in someones basement. Software breakthroughs in someones garage were all making existing technology more commercial.

Trillions calculations is easy if you know statistics and math. Its not the calculations that are the problem its getting correct and unbiased information. That human behave irrational and instinctive. That we want things we don't need (oh shiny) and need things we don't enjoy (like education, training, strict diets). This really messes whit planed economy but it don't make us better as a spices to let it run rampant.

 

[King Midas]

There's a high chance of them being preventatively arrested by the MEFESZ student columns and given a choice of stopping anti-socialist organisation or leaving Hungary. See what MEFESZ did when the József Dudás group attacked the AVH headquarters.

yours,
Sam R.

Kurz

I'll look at the topic.

 

[LHB]

Also I describe this as a step up from planned command economy and not as competitive as a free market economy. Read a whole post, think and then regurgitate the same old crap. The free market theory of economics is nothing but a simplistic utopian model. Reality is a bit more gritty and strange.

The problem in worker owned factories lays not in the micro economics utopian models but actually in business economics theories about self interested motivation to improve. How firms or production is organized is not as important as long as there is markets for them act on. If there is not and they have to negotiate fixed prices all the time there is going to be reforms (that’s my prediction) or back to planed economy and repressions.

That I think is more a sticking point of the differences between the objectives of a socialist economy vs a capitalist one. Capitalism is definitely better at producing huge amounts of stuff; the rub is that producing huge amounts of stuff for the benefit of a small number of people isn't a terribly effective system for meeting people's needs. A workers' council system, assuming it is set by genuine negotiations between factories, farms, shops, etc and not by a top-down command economy, would not outproduce capitalism. This is because there is no desire to; the point of any socialist system is to meet human needs as the first priority and a workers' council system would be oriented towards producing enough stuff to meet the needs and desires of the workers. No individual worker would be as prosperous than any capitalist but every worker would, on average, be much more prosperous than the average workers in a capitalist economy.

 

[Johnrankins]

Tornadoes are unforeseen when they happen but there is a statistical average of them in the same area so you could make a reserve (or insurances if you want to call it that). Market economies don't play whit insurances unless people wants to be risk averse and then there is a whole sleeve of market failures making a lot of inefficient economics.

If people were greedy and lazy we would be all be stealing form each other instead of trying to build communities. There is other traits human posses that the knee jerk reaction out of enlightenment (seriously homo economics is an enlightenment construct).

Scientific breakthrough is predictable as hell if you keep some attention on the scientific community. There is no ftl engines being kluged together in someones basement. Software breakthroughs in someones garage were all making existing technology more commercial.

Trillions calculations is easy if you know statistics and math. Its not the calculations that are the problem its getting correct and unbiased information. That human behave irrational and instinctive. That we want things we don't need (oh shiny) and need things we don't enjoy (like education, training, strict diets). This really messes whit planed economy but it don't make us better as a spices to let it run rampant.

Last time I checked Market Economies had insurance and many if not most factories have some stock on hand in case of increased demand. More to the point Socialist governments tend to have one big plant. If that one plant burns down you are totally out of luck. If there is even an oligopoly there are a few plants you can rely on.

Unlike YOU I don't think of the world as simple. I never said that the ONLY thing that humans have is greed and laziness but it is part of the human condition. How many people do you know passed up a raise or willingly took a pay cut? How many people do you know are willing to give up a paid vacation? How many willingly and knowingly overpay their taxes?


Small incremental changes are SOMEWHAT predictable but they aren't nearly as predictable as you seem to think. My brother is an engineer and knows a lot of engineers and would just about die laughing if you told him this. To have setbacks and unpredictable breakthroughs are NORMAL in engineering. If they could predict exactly what would work they would be doing it already. True paradigm shifting breakthroughs are totally unpredictable. Do you know if and when we will have significant amount of fusion energy or room temperature superconductors? How about truly sophisticated humanoid robots that can do any menial task a human can do? All of these things would have unpredictable effects on the world economy because before they are actually done we won't know the unit costs, what infrastructure it needs and probably hundreds of other things.

Trillions of calculations are NOT simple when they come from millions of sources all of which are inaccurate to varying degrees. There are things such as data floods, data uncertainty and data inaccuracy to muck things up.