[Animats]

Today, Wal-Mart runs a centralized economy bigger than Soviet consumer production in the 1970s. It's all run out of Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart is so centralized that the thermostats in the stores are controlled from Bentonville. Purchasing is centralized in Bentonville. Store managers don't determine what they sell.

The Soviet GOSPLAN planning cycle was just too slow. They had an annual planning cycle and a monthly information cycle. Wal-Mart has a weekly planning cycle and a daily information cycle.

China has a national 5-year plan. Here's an analysis of the last 5-year plan (2011-2015) by a US consulting firm.[1]

[1] http://www.kpmg.com/CN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublicat...

[dragonwriter]

> Today, Wal-Mart runs a centralized economy bigger than Soviet consumer production in the 1970s.

No, it doesn't. It runs a business enterprise spread through a number of economies that is bigger than Soviet consumer production in the 1970s, which is perhaps a mildly interesting factoid but not particularly significant in assessing planned economies, since most of the markets in which it operates are not planned economies, and, in any case, even for any that are, WalMart isn't doing the planning.

[DanielBMarkham]

Wal-Mart doe not run a centralized economy. It runs a business that buys items for one price in one location, then sells them at another price in another.

Running an economy is a political affair. People can decide not to go to Wal-Mart; they cannot as easily decide not to be a citizen.

Quite frankly, a large majority of the horrors of the 20th century were due to folks thinking "Oh, I understand where we went wrong this last time with our centralized planning. This time will be much better!" There's a ton of reasons for this -- enough to put in a book. Or several books. And those books are out there if you are interested in them.

A related question is this: can you run just a simple store like Wal-Mart through a technocracy? You probably can to a certain degree, then it falls apart. The more you can automate, of course, the less actual value you are creating. Software continues to eat the world.

But no, feedback cycle time is not the issue. Not even close.

[Detrus]

Yea the overall economy makes decisions on what to manufacture. Do you make a bunch of entertaining fluff or focus on essentials? Wal-mart merely optimizes the supply chain of fluff.

As far as markets vs centralization, it was always this way. There was never a purely capitalist or communist society that lasted long and supported a large population. The argument was always the implementation and balance of centralization and privatization.

Starting from scratch in a radically different system is too disruptive, even if the final result would have been better. A lot has to do with culture, as people say you can write Java in any language. You have to change an existing system very slowly.

[wmf]

Presumably much of the information in Wal-Mart's daily cycle is feedback from the market in which Wal-Mart participates. Would central planning work as well in a "closed" system?

[hollerith]

Your analogy would be less misleading if Walmart employed armed guards that prevented people from leaving Walmart's property / territory.