[gtsop]

While the reasoning I believe to be utterly littered with weak arguments, I agree with the final conclusion/question of the author.

But what the author isn't clearly saying is that he is describing a free market opposed to a planned economy, even if he doesn't specificly say that, that's the implication of the final question.

And I am all for planned economy. I want to cooperate with my human fellows, not compete to crush them. In this day and age it is obsurd not to this. The technology is there, we just need to use it the right way. I know many will do a knee-jerk reaction to this statement and start spitting out the old anti-soviet economy arguments about planned economy, I'm bracing.

If you want competition then accept the social outcomes. Wanting to equalize competition through regulation is exactly like banning war crimes. When war is raging all kinds of war crimes will be commited.

[defwepthrowaway]

I'll disagree. But fundamentally the problem of a centrally planned economy is whether or not you agree with the plan.

I worked in the defense industry, specifically on weapons meant for export. At the time, I was considered a subject matter expert. Something that eventually got me selected to travel to a foreign nation that had purchased an update to that weapon we sold them.

This country had an active internal conflict at the time, and the soldiers I was training had used the previous iteration of that weapons system. Prior to flying out my peers had forewarned me about was that these young men loved to try to horrify us soft westerners. I was no exception of course. For me, when we were relaxing over dinner, one of the soldiers felt it was my turn. Showed me photographs of a family of corpses corpses. 5 adults. 4 children, the youngest I guess being an infant and the oldest I think was probably no older then 8 or 9 years old. A multi generational household, all civilian, all unarmed. And here he was telling me in unabashed gruesome detail about how had murdered them during a patrol, and speaking as if he had brought justice to an ancient crime. Using that older iteration of weapons I had helped create.

But I had my marching orders. No actions or words that could potentially lead to an incident. Whatever I felt got buried by black humor and a few tips on how they could do it more efficiently in the future. Later on I heard my callousness had earned modicum of respect.

Knowing what I just told you know, would you feel comfortable in your planned economy if you were ordered to join my team and work on improving that same weapon to the best of your ability? Would you say that it is the right way to use the technology we are building? Knowing who it was going to go to?

[queenkjuul]

We have a planned economy, just one planned by capitalists.

It doesn't seem to matter whether an individual works for the weapons manufacturers, they're going to build them with my tax dollars and sell them to monsters whether i like it or not

[r14c]

We already have a planned economy in a lot of ways anyway. We just don't have much collective control over who governs those levers. Particularly when it comes to resource allocation. VC might look like a free market approach on the surface, but it gives huge power to shape the economy to unaccountable un elected randos who likely "come from money" with a lot of skeletons in their closets. Even if they don't, having that kind if power with essentially no checks is a recipe for disaster.

We don't have to copy the Soviets exactly, but it's foolish to pretend like their system didn't work. Sure they killed and imprisioned people, but we do the same on at least the same scale. Socialism at least in principle isn't specifically aiming for that outcome. Whatever we're doing here kinda does. Our country would crumble if the war machine ever stopped. Changing our approach to anything is just too expensive to consider and dissent can't be tolerated for the same reason. What options do we really have?

Surely we can do better

[an_0bserver]

An economy is only free if left uncontrolled. IMO emergence of "cartels" and colluding entities (including politicians), have destroyed the notion of truly free markets.

[esseph]

"humans"

Your complaint is actually about humans.

As long as we have humans we will have people that seek to cultivate and maintain power at all costs.

[XorNot]

Technically the market economy we live in is designed to function by containing a whole lot of smaller planned economies (businesses).

[xxs]

> to be utterly littered with weak arguments

It's just AI generated, which is a shame to end up at the top of the site.

[acheron]

> And I am all for planned economy. In this day and age it is obsurd not to this.

"Well, did it work for those people?"

"No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but... but it might work for us."

[gtsop]

This classic reductionist argument is so trivial it could havr been automatically posted by an LLM.

The majority of those people say they regreted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not sure where your fantasy facts of "did not work" come from.