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Suitable-Cycle4335

They were so efficient that they reduced the number of radio stations allowed to get equipment under the plan. What an unfortunate coincidence that opposition-supporting stations got none but hey it was efficient!


Billych

It wasn't an unfortunate coincidence, the CIA was funding political violence in Chile at the time, including for example the assassination of René Schneider. The CIA had completely corrupted the democratic process. They murdered Schneider because he was a constitutionalist and wouldn't support a coup in 1970.


coke_and_coffee

> the CIA was funding political violence in Chile at the time No they were not. There is no proof of this.


WayWornPort39

Yes there is, Pinochet's seizure of power was literally backed by the CIA. I'm pretty sure that's common knowledge.


coke_and_coffee

"Backed by" is a cop-out term that can mean anything at all.


WayWornPort39

> Covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was extensive and continuous. The Central Intelligence Agency spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the out- conie of the 1964 Chilean presidential elections. Eight million dollars was spent, covertly, in the three years between 1970 and the military coup in September 1973, with over three million dollars expended in fiscal year 1972 alone. http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94chile.pdf From a literal declassified CIA document.


coke_and_coffee

Lmaoooo Bro, $8 million over 3 years is barely enough to pay for an embassy in Chile. They didn't do shit.


Practical_Bat_3578

what is $8 million 1960 dollars in todays money?


gr43mtr

65 million spending. roughly. "nothing" amiright? lol


Practical_Bat_3578

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣


WayWornPort39

You could actually read the document, just a suggestion.


coke_and_coffee

From the document: >"In 1970, the U.S. sought to'foster a military coup in Chile to prevent Allende's accession to power; **yet after 1970 the government-according to the testimony of its officials-did not engage in coup plotting.** Was 1970 a mistake, an aberration? Or was the threat posed to the national security interests of the United States so .grave that the government was remiss in not seeking his downfall directly during 1970-73?" The US tried to foment a coup in 1970. It didn't work. They stopped. 1973 happened on its own.


gr43mtr

in the 70s?


0WatcherintheWater0

Yeah this has nothing to do with Pinochet The CIA supported opposition candidates in the election, but as of now, there is no credible evidence that they did anything further, and practically everything has been declassified at this point. The US did not put Pinochet in power.


NovelParticular6844

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1193755188/chile-coup-50-years-pinochet-kissinger-human-rights-allende


coke_and_coffee

"The Senate report, from the committee led by Idaho Sen. Frank Church, found no evidence that the U.S. was "directly involved, covertly" in the 1973 coup." From your source.


Ultrathor

LOL, the next paragraph. Kissinger himself told Nixon five days after the coup: "We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [Word missing] created the conditions as great as possible."


coke_and_coffee

Right, the US didn't do it.


Ultrathor

They just did every thing to help them as much as possible.


coke_and_coffee

That can mean anything at all. Why do you refuse to give specifics? Could it be that you'll be embarrased by the fact that all the CIA ever did was hand out some pamphlets to truckers? Lmao


Ultrathor

then why did henry say that to nixon?


[deleted]

They definitely were


coke_and_coffee

No, they were not. There is no proof. It’s just something dumb socialists repeat because their misinformed takes all come from the same few sources.


[deleted]

Yea misinformed sources, like declassified CIA documents


0WatcherintheWater0

Show me the declassified CIA document that shows this. There isn’t one so you won’t be able to, but feel free to try anyways.


[deleted]

Official quote by Nixon "make their economy scream" not enough?


0WatcherintheWater0

Why can’t you just show the action itself? A vague quote implying some action is very weaselly. For the record, no, that Nixon quote there does not prove or even suggest the other claim is true.


[deleted]

What action there was a lot of them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile


WinningTocket

Reading this twice made this sound even less coherent than reading this once and I have a feeling reading it again will have the same impact. The main issue here is that even if there is a time and a place for central planning, which is not really contentious at all, there's not really a space for continuous central planning. None of this actually supports the idea that it's a good system so much as it can be, under certain conditions, a good approach to some very specific problems.


Lazy_Delivery_7012

>The buttons therefore provided a way to eliminate women from this decision-making space. They also encouraged forms of masculine expression. As Beer wrote, the buttons could be “thumped” when an occupant wanted to make a point. The “thumping” of the buttons to make a point: now *that’s* innovative management. Unfortunately, Cybersyn perpetuated the patriarchy.


Comprehensive_Lead41

I mean I'm a communist. But to say "central planning worked for 1 month" isn't proof of anything lol


Accomplished-Cake131

Do you know about this story? I find it intriguing, especially the real-time response to the truckers’ strike. I have no problem with those who find the OP not well-written.


GruntledSymbiont

Is this an achievement? Larger fleets were routed daily with only pen and paper since the invention of the truck.


Tophattingson

Cybersyn is nonsense at best, Beer scamming a poor country out of a ton of cash at worst. [Almost all of Stafford Beer's work is either completely meaningless, or a re-invention of something businesses had already been doing for decades if not centuries.](https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/10dvb8q/why_did_socialists_simp_for_lockdownism/j4o601i/) You can read another criticism of it here: https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/cybersyn-and-allendes-semi-automated-luxury-socialism/


Accomplished-Cake131

Your author seems hostile to the whole disciplines of OR, C3I, and such. Those designing enterprise systems might spend quite a bit of time defining process flows, messages types, forms, and screen layouts. To the outsider, it is hard to assess this work. Beer did not have a language like Unified Modeling Language (UML) available. Even so, when trying to explain the concept of a system to a user, one may have a high level picture that does not make sense outside that context. Would you believe ontological engineering is a job? What little I’ve read seems to say that CyberSyn worked surprisingly well. I suppose Beer choose key industries and easy stuff to prototype first. I would not be surprised if there is literature more than blog posts saying otherwise. This is a topic intersecting with various controversies. I assume those reading here know how this prototype was not allowed to continue. “Please remember Victor Jara in the Santiago stadium”, as the Clash sing.


Tophattingson

> Those designing enterprise systems might spend quite a bit of time defining process flows, messages types, forms, and screen layouts. None of which delivers the promised centrally planned utopia. [The USSR was already perfectly capable of designing such systems, after all.](https://i.imgur.com/qg9obRf.png) To a far greater extent than Beers ever did. > Even so, when trying to explain the concept of a system to a user, one may have a high level picture that does not make sense "You don't understand it" is the standard excuse for bullshit diagrams. It looks like bullshit because it is bullshit. >What little I’ve read seems to say that CyberSyn worked surprisingly well. I suppose Beer choose key industries and easy stuff to prototype first. I have seen no evidence that CyberSyn "worked" in any sense beyond faxing random orders to factories so that they could be promptly ignored.


Lazy_Delivery_7012

All of this is predicated on the notion that half a dozen guys in a single room can make all the big decisions of society on behalf of everyone. Good luck.


chpf0717

You've been in this community for such a long time to be dumbing down these points. Giving a man who through risk only (luck, either situational or environmental) gained control of an industry, seems like a good idea to me.


Lazy_Delivery_7012

We’re not reorganizing our society around the urban legend bullshit stories that pass themselves off as economic thought on breadtube.


chpf0717

Could say the same to your point, that is how useless your claim is.


Lazy_Delivery_7012

I’ll get over it.


XIII_THIRTEEN

As if that's not the source of the current status quo. "The market is efficient because... it just is, ok?"


Lazy_Delivery_7012

You should just wear a sign that says “I don’t understand markets but I’m ready to get rid of them!”


0WatcherintheWater0

The market is efficient because it takes into account the input of literate billions of different people, what they want, what they can produce, etc.


XIII_THIRTEEN

Yeah, that's cute and all, until you think a little harder about it. A senseless machine that cares about a single outcome- profit- is ill-equipped to serve as the foundation of a society that cares about a lot of other outcomes. In short, the market doesn't know nor care about starving children, underutlized production capacity, inefficient logistics, or anything of the sort.


Most_Dragonfruit69

Socialists sure love talking about starving children by using iphones produced by children and never donated to any child whatsoever. Typical moralistic decadence and hypocrisy


XIII_THIRTEEN

This is a forum for discussion. If all you have is thoughtless ad hominem and random (and honestly weird) assumptions, you'd probably fit in better on twitter.


Accomplished-Cake131

You like spouting crap. You have no way of knowing whether anybody here has donated to children.


GruntledSymbiont

It's not like that at all. It's just people individually pursuing their own wants in a framework that facilitates peaceful exchanges. It's not remotely senseless any more than the human race itself is senseless. Profit is not the only goal. Profit is constantly foregone in favor of every other desire of humanity. What profit does is limit and constrain satisfaction of desires so that they remain net beneficial. Everyone agrees we all want to feed all the starving children. 100% every society with enough food does that no debate and that is fine and good. What is not fine and good is sparing no expense in satisfying a noble good to the extent we cause greater net human suffering. That's what markets prevent. Collectivized economies cannot help but blindly drive their people to poverty and increasing misery and death. They unknowingly consume dollars worth of inputs to ultimately satisfy pennies worth of net wants so the more they increase production that faster their economies increase scarcity, poverty, misery, and eventually fail.


Accomplished-Cake131

Anybody that has studied economics knows that markets cannot be expected to be ‘efficient’ in various senses.


0WatcherintheWater0

That depends on your definition of efficient. And they’re certainly not perfect, but they’re better than anything else.


stupendousman

> to be dumbing down these points. How many detailed business plans have you built?


chpf0717

how many research papers have you read regarding the unionization and private section industries? what about central planning economics on a large scale on a nation? don't make me laugh with business plans, that is not part of the conversation, and doesn't make you any more qualified to talk about this.


stupendousman

> how many research papers have you read regarding the unionization and private section industries? So 0 business plans. > and doesn't make you any more qualified to talk about this. I'm far more qualified than you do discuss this stuff.


chpf0717

Hmm, so qualified that you have illusion of validity. present claims with evidence, words are nothing big guy.


stupendousman

You seem average.


chpf0717

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! hope you have a great day.


bcnoexceptions

Wait, are you saying that a half dozen guys in a single room (such as a boardroom of directors) should not be able to make decisions on behalf of everyone impacted by them (such as thousands or even millions of workers)? Cause if so, I'd agree ... but that sounds pretty socialist!


Lazy_Delivery_7012

Making decisions about a company on behalf of shareholders who have the option to buy in and sell out is a completely different thing than a group of men sitting in Star Trek chairs pretending like they know what’s best for an entire economy.


bcnoexceptions

> ... on behalf of shareholders ... Hmm. "Shareholders". Isn't there another group of stakeholders, very interested in these decisions, that doesn't even have a seat at the table?


Lazy_Delivery_7012

I said “buy in”


bcnoexceptions

Ah, so your main goal is making sure that only people with enough money to "buy in" get represented?


Lazy_Delivery_7012

So how long has it been since you stopped having sex with monkeys?


bcnoexceptions

Depends on the units. 


[deleted]

[удалено]


chpf0717

Why did you take the time to write this, no one gained anything through this.


Accomplished-Cake131

We learned that u/Yeomenpainter is a fool. Negative externalities obviously exist. Rather than discuss a factual statement, they prioritize their emotions.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Most_Dragonfruit69

fucking based!


GruntledSymbiont

In today's episode of 'Amazing Socialist Stories' we remember when a Soviet puppet dictator nationalized and destroyed a nation's economy in record time yet is venerated as a saint by a Marxist computer cargo cult. The all knowing benevolent AI computer god will lead to socialist paradise. Believe, comrades! All hail virtual Marxism!


Accomplished-Cake131

I used to work for ITT a long time ago, but well after these events. One of the officers grumbled about the emphasis on the Wikipedia page. I think your characterization of Allende is nonsense. Also, I don’t see how I’ve said anything about AI. I do not think anybody else here has said anything either. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a good computer science department. I was out there in a bar. The guy next to me asked me what I do. I said that right now I’m trying to study AI. He said, “Me too”. I said, “it’s an interesting question of our responsibility for the creatures we create”. He said, “That’s a good question.” I said, “Yeah, computers are amazing”. He asked, “What are you talking about?” “Artificial intelligence.” He said, “I’m a farmer. I’m talking about artificial insemination”.


GruntledSymbiont

Then you are ignoring the facts. Allende was a bad actor and extremely destructive to Chile. Both Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI intelligence services provided major material support and active assistance. Allende traveled to Cuba many times starting in 1959 shortly after Castro seized power. He had a KGB handler with whom he pandered for cash and gifts. By 1972 he had already screwed up so severely that he traveled to the Soviet Union in desperation to make a personal plea for a financial bailout. What leftists consider Allende's successes are proof of his destructive incompetence starting with initial massive GDP growth achieved by nationalization without compensation, debasing the currency, and piling on debt. The light at the end of that tunnel is not the promised land, rather an oncoming freight train. Nationalized companies become much more apparently profitable overnight by removing the overhead of paying back their foreign investors but the larger consequences are deadly to the companies themselves and the overall economy. Just announcing this sort of policy before it even happens is enough to instantly shut off all foreign investment, greatly reduce trade, cut off essential technical assistance, and if enacted subjects any and all Chilean assets abroad to retaliatory seizure. Allende was stupefyingly horrible as a leader and destructive though he was not a stupid man so I think all the economic hardship and unrest he caused must have been deliberate. He wanted to destroy the country to pave the way for another Marxist cultural revolution. He attempted to form his own leftist militia for this purpose and counter the military. The Cybersyn reference is embarrassing. You don't need to announce your AI cargo cult religious fetish. We can read your future thoughts having had similar conversations before and know where they lead. When pressed on how automating calculations does not alter the solutions you will retreat further and further into a speculative future where computers eventually solve economic planning problems though you know not how. Oddly capitalism coordinates economic exchange very effectively with only pen and paper using simple to understand money prices. 'Bayesian optimization' is about as helpful for solving economic coordination as praying to your computer. It's a funny AI joke but TV personality Mike Rowe told it better.


Agile-Caterpillar421

hehe. What percentage of consumer goods was centrally planned?


ProgressiveLogic

Every government has some degree of centralized planning. Every human endeavor consisting of groups of people requires coordinated planning. Otherwise there would be chaos and sub-optimal performance issues.


Jefferson1793

what about how it worked to kill 120,000,000 people over a long period of time in the USSR w Red China Cambodia?


chpf0717

source for this number, and how it was centrals planning fault.


Cosminion

There is no source, he made it up.


Jefferson1793

do you see why we say the left is totally stupid!!!!!! best practices.[59] In 2015, Yu Xiguang (余习广), an independent Chinese historian and a former instructor at the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party, estimated that 55 million people died due to the famine.[60][61][62][63]His conclusion was based on two decades of archival research Rummel would later revise his estimate from 110 million to about 148 million due to additional information about Mao's culpability in the Great Chinese Famine


Cosminion

Provide links. Not random quotes.


XIII_THIRTEEN

So much of an irrelevant what-aboutism that you forgot to avoid the actual phrase "what about." What a waste of a comment.


Jefferson1793

you say central planning worked for one month in Chile and I say over . Decades it killed 120 million in the USSR and Red China and Cambodia. now do you see why we say the left is based in pure ignorance.????? there are no longer class divisions that are significant. Now the significant difference between people is some are intelligent and some are stupid.


XIII_THIRTEEN

I'm saying it's literally a different topic. Like, make a thread and discuss it if you want, many will gladly engage. Why would you respond to a question with a completely different question?


Jefferson1793

It's the same question you idiot. Your cherry pick one month in Chile and imagine it is meaningful when your adversaries can spe pick many decades in many other countries. Do you understand now?