this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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I believe that the critique of centralization is not based in reality because I've read about what centralization has achieved in USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and even within private enterprises like Walmart or Amazon. You too could spend the time to educate yourself on the subject because all this information is publicly available.
Meanwhile, not sure what obfuscation has to do with central planning. Centralization is about delegation, which is necessary for organizing any non trivial task as explained in a very accessible way here https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Very fast response time, cool.
The only source you've provided so far is a hand-wave at a collection of governments - and multiple companies that have been explicitly known for being terrible for the worker - and an argument of theory from Marx in 1872. you've made a claim that central planning achieved these things, please actually cite the sources you've read.
When you have people who specialize in politics working in a office space dictating what industrial workers do on the ground, the game of telephone often makes the higher ups make decisions that are actively counter-productive to progress and efficiency. As a factory worker who's safety standards and work procedures are dictated by people who don't even step onto the floor, this is a constant issue.
As an alternative, I think a centralized group helping formulate a general goal with success criteria, then leaving the rest of the planning to the actual workforces, is better for the worker and can actually end up more efficient in the right conditions.
EDIT:Modified the first part to make it clear that I mean Walmart and Amazon have been notoriously bad to their workforces, and that I'm not commenting on the countries.
I don't see you providing any sources of your own, nor are you actually addressing what the source says.
Again, we can compare the speed of development of USSR to decentralized capitalist systems to see that central planning works just fine.
Feel free to provide an example of this working at scale.
You're correct, so far I've mainly laid out just personal theory and anecdote. I will hunt down some sources and would appreciate it if you do the same. You've now had 4 comments to do so and still have abstained from doing so.
I am gonna have to come back to this, since I have work coming up. I will edit this when I can and will DM you when I've come back to it.
Sure, let's take a look at what a centrally planned system in USSR achieved.
Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:
USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:
USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:
Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:
USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:
USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:
In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:
GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:
The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:
USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox
Furthermore, we can take a look at some scientific studies about USSR.
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possible:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
I look forward to you providing the sources that help support your position.
This is what I was looking for! Thank you. You can get more mileage out of this work by linking this comment in the future.
Currently on break, I've decided to just form the comment I've been formulating into a blog post which I'll link when I've finished. I appreciate the patience.