[Can_Not]

That's weird, I got the opposite conclusion. I would have thought this happened because China choose to drift back to free markets instead of improving their central planning. The government demanded a larger market for graduations, and the colleges were free to increase their prices. Is that not econ 101 supply and demand? Now the graduates are on the market and whoever wants to hire can pay at a lower market price, and they're even free to not hire if there's extra candidates. Under a good central planning, anyone who really wants a job could be planned a state sponsered job. It doesn't have to be a fake office job or a bureaucratic layer job like in large US corporations, there's actually plenty of science and engineering research that could be worked on, and China has the man power to challenge research in the US. Interestingly enough, a lot of science and research in the US is state sponsered. If it weren't, I wonder if that talent would be employed, working at Starbucks, or building a new Electron MVP to 'disrupt' one stagnant market to replace it with even more stagnant, monthly rental SaaS.

[supreme_sublime]

>I would have thought this happened because China choose to drift back to free markets instead of improving their central planning.

What would "improving their central planning" mean? Force people to study certain subjects? Force people to teach for free?

Throwing government money into a market definitely disrupts it. Perhaps it doesn't make it not "free" but it causes distortions that likely would not have come about from the market alone.

>Is that not econ 101 supply and demand?

Yes, it is. That means that these aren't simply forces that can be wished away by a central government with an agenda. They are things that come about naturally.

>Under a good central planning, anyone who really wants a job could be planned a state sponsered job.

"Good central planning" is an oxymoron if you ask me. In order to guarantee that people have jobs, you have to take away people's free will to make sure they can perform the functions you as a central planner desire. They cannot study what they want, you will essentially have to plan people's entire lives for them. This is all assuming that people are interchangeable cogs and you are able to predict that people will be good at the tasks you wish for them to perform.

>Interestingly enough, a lot of science and research in the US is state sponsered. If it weren't, I wonder if that talent would be employed

Who knows? The money used to fund their research would not have been taken and would have been spent how the person who paid the taxes saw fit. It is difficult to find exact numbers on research spending of government vs private industry. The top 20 companies spend almost $200 billion on R&D [0] this is about 1/5th of the US federal government total discretionary budget, which includes military spending. [1]

Point being, I think it is pretty safe to say that private R&D spending dwarfs public spending. The large corporations that are often maligned are the best institutions to do risky R&D as they have lots of resources and experience in their problem domain. Of course they don't always do so, but if they don't a competitor will.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/265645/ranking-of-the-20... [1] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

[Can_Not]

> What would "improving their central planning" mean? Force people to study certain subjects? Force people to teach for free?

That's an unfair misrepresentation of central planning, using the phrase "force people to" to imply some kind of slavery unique to central planning. Maybe the Chinese government will choose to use it's state monopoly on violence to coerce people into unwanted job, but it's not like you don't need a garbage crew in both economic systems. Central planning can be used to make funding available for high priority items. You can technically force people at gunpoint into specific degree paths and occupations, but more likely you'll make the jobs exist and make sure potential engineers aren't trapped at the bottom of the economy.

> Yes, it is. That means that these aren't simply forces that can be wished away by a central government with an agenda. They are things that come about naturally.

There are tons of examples in science where designed and engineered systems outperform natural systems. No amount of "natural horses" can compete with modern trains, space shuttles, bus systems, race cars, etc.. And there are things science hasn't discovered how to optimize yet, so we do end up still using horses from time to time, despite cars being ubiquitous in modern society.

> "Good central planning" is an oxymoron if you ask me. In order to guarantee that people have jobs, you have to take away people's free will to make sure they can perform the functions you as a central planner desire. They cannot study what they want, you will essentially have to plan people's entire lives for them. This is all assuming that people are interchangeable cogs and you are able to predict that people will be good at the tasks you wish for them to perform.

This is a pretty flawed argument against central planning. You do not have to plan people's entire lives. Outside of religion and perhaps some SciFi novel about AI, I've never heard of any central planning theories having a plan for people's entire lives. What happens is that people naturally pick what they want to do, and some people don't really pick anything coherent. You make plans based on where you currently are, what resources you estimate you will have next year, and where you are looking to go. You iterate each planning cycle based on successes and failures. This is not much different than how large corporations do their planning. Most notable difference is that "success" will be measured in something much more valuable to society than private profits. Another aspect of a good central plan is that you can't plan for everything. There are people who are naturally motivated to do something useful, so it may be optimal to give them a team and see if future planning cycles can benefit from the team's output.

The alternative to this is that you have writers and artists wasting their talents serving coffee at starbucks. You have people who didn't study what they want because only STEM jobs are going to be above minimum wage for sure in the next 20 years. You have a system that looks at the bottom half of the economy and says "I have no plan for you.". How many teams are building redundant clones of candy crush? How many teams are seeking to innovate for the sake of seeking new rents rather than for innovation itself? How many teams are focusing on getting consumers to buy fake/misleading products? How many teams are trying to market dangerous, unhealthy, and/or addictive high margin items to children? How many "free markets" have rational actors that depend on information asymmetry for the majority of their consensual arrangements? These issues are rampant epidemics under capitalism. Entrepreneurs are a slave to profit motives and the people are not free. Only the free market is free.

> Point being, I think it is pretty safe to say that private R&D spending dwarfs public spending. The large corporations that are often maligned are the best institutions to do risky R&D as they have lots of resources and experience in their problem domain. Of course they don't always do so, but if they don't a competitor will.

Looking at your sources, $200 billion in private R&D is less than the 1.1 trillion in public spending. I don't think it would be accurate or meaningful to say there is a significant difference.

[tekknik]

Dude the gov can’t even get healthcare right, now reread your MASSIVE essay comment here and find all the problems with a gov managing this many moving parts and people. Nobody will go for this because we all know it will fail, reguardless of how “better planned systems are”

[Can_Not]

The United States is currently the laughing stock of the first world when it comes to who gets healthcare right. You're saying that after seeing the way republicans set out to intentionally sabotage the 2008-2016 president's entire career (including healthcare reforms), people are going to want to follow the republican plan of doing the complete opposite of what is working with great success for the rest of the modern first world?