[logicalmonster]

Pointing out the corruption inherent when power is available is always a valuable thing, but socialism arguably would be suboptimal even if you make the impossible assumption that all humans are saints who are genuinely seeking the best possible outcome for their fellow man.

The Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises wrote an essay in 1920 called "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" which made the argument that without market pricing, rational economic calculation is impossible. To give an example: say that you had a plot of land to develop in a hypothetical city and wanted to do the best possible thing for the people with zero corruption. How can you know if building a hospital, a school, a factory, a mine, a shopping mall, new housing, a public park, a museum, or a farm is the best possible thing for the people? Those are all things that some people might see a need for. Without market pricing, you have no way of truly knowing what is valued more and what's the best use of a limited resource. Even if you democratically tried to decide in a genuinely fair way with informed citizens, there's no way to actually determine what is more valuable under a socialist system.

To give the other point of view, this is somewhat of a debate and this idea has been challenged in various ways, see the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_calculation_debate

Personally I think the best argument against the calculation problem is that you can say that socialism merely tends to be inefficient compared to capitalism. However, I'd make the followup point that the system we have now is arguably not capitalism, but state corporatism. Winners/Losers in the marketplace tend to be determined more by lobbyists, lawyers, and corrupt politicians rather than through genuine open competition.

[kaba0]

I am absolutely not knowledgeable enough on the problem, but other than a company calculating a crude price for e.g. a hospital — that will generally over or undervalue it by a lot (like I don’t even know how many public tenders are won by a company in Hungary, only to increase the price 10-100 folds and the promised timeframe by 3-10 times. This way legitimate companies with more correct pricing loose at the tender already, while these corrupt ones can do this indefinitely leeching on our money (and our stupidity to vote for this corrupt party yet over again))

In a very idealistic system they can may know the availability of concrete, of this specific tool, etc. And we can’t ever know whether an alternative building in its place would have been better — like that doesn’t happen under capitalism either.

[sharemywin]

but market pricing is skewed if Bill Gates decides to turn the whole city into a giant statue of him don't see how that's the best use for that plot of land.

[Mikeb85]

Hypothetically, socialism could solve the problem of allocation of resources by throwing enough smart people at the problem.

To me the corruption potential (which has been realized everytime socialism has been implemented) is the main argument against.

[logicalmonster]

> socialism could solve the problem of allocation of resources by throwing enough smart people at the problem

As I interpret the calculation problem, the unfortunate reality is that this isn't a case where you just have some complicated math problems that you could throw enough geniuses and computers at and could somehow come pretty close to solving. The problem according to this idea is that without market pricing, there's no basis for comparison even theoretically possible. In light of many competing societal needs, you have no clue if you're directing too many resources to produce orange juice or not directing enough resources to build tools. Resources are misallocated in a complex world and everything eventually grinds down.

I believe that one strategy the Soviet system tried in part to deal with the calculation problem was actually acquiring shopping catalogues from the West to try and use their market pricing as a calculation system.

One thing I think that Star Trek gets right is that socialism might work to produce a near-utopia if you have technology that produces near infinite matter and energy for close to free.