The Official Youtubers Thread

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by jwb

I would more or less agree with me.

Very open-minded of you.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

https://youtu.be/W6QAqU2KpaY

here Chomsky makes more or less the same argument

maybe you can't wrap your head around it, but there is a more nuanced idea here about soviet socialism

more nuanced lol

He just compared it to slavery. In that analogy the argument he's making actually articulates exactly why the ends don't justify the means. Basically you can point to any society that saw growth and justify their genocidal policies. He's saying that's not appropriate to do for capitalism so once again why would it be appropriate for socialism? If anyone is missing the point here it's you.

And actually some of the rhetoric he gave there was pretty dishonest as well... The idea that the only threat the west saw in the soviet system was it's rapid growth... That's utterly false lol. I guess chomsky is full of **** too.

[jwb]

That's specifically the question chomsky was responding to lol

[jwb]

And you said that's not the point.. my question is what is your point? You don't seem to have one.

Are you just pointing out they grew fast under the 5 year plan as a piece of pointless trivia or does that fact actually have some implications regarding the efficacy of planned economies? If you want to argue that then you simply have to take the consequences of those policies into account. There's no way around it. Either you bite the bullet and say the ends justify the means or you accept that that method of rapid industrialization is not particularly useful or desirable if we're trying to construct a working alternative to the capitalist mode of production. It's really that simple.

[jwb]

lol

You keep saying "more nuanced" yet thus far you've provided very little detail or nuance to any of your arguments. It's starting to feel like you don't even really understand the topic in question you are just repeating talking points you heard from people you assume to be smart.

When people say planned economies don't work they are usually referring to the calculation problem which is basically a concept that refers to the inevitable misallocation of resources that happens when a centralized state power tries to step in and replace the market structure of supply and demand through centralized mechanisms. A clear example of said misallocation of resources would be the massive artificially caused famines that resulted from policies like the 5 year plan.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

some government policies certainly have unintended consequences

once you know the consequences they are not longer unintended. We know the consequences of soviet style rapid industrialization.

...the nuance is in the prevalence of government planning in markets everywhere for the very reason that they're effective

another vague statement

Give me a specific example of said govt planning

[jwb]

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that though none of it (except maybe the WW2 example) actually rises to the level of an actual planned economy.

Again, having the government intervene with regulations or having them fund infrastructure, research etc is not a planned economy. It's a capitalist economy with a government that extracts tax revenue to fund initiatives that are better dealt with by the govt than by private enterprise.

That's a mixed economy. But it's a mixed economy that relies primarily on markets to raise the revenue that gets taxed in the first place. That's basically the only form of capitalism that has ever really existed on a broad scale.

The idea of completely unhinged markets with no govt intervention is just as theoretical as marx's communist vision. It doesn't exist in practice and I don't even think it's desirable. I'm not a libertarian. I prefer mixed economies.

I don't think any of this actually adds nuance to the efficacy of the 5 year plan and similar policies. Those policies went so far in the direction of govt control that they essentially destroyed or nearly destroyed the market infrastructure that they were extracting the resources from in the first place. They didn't invent a new method of farming, they simply seized the crop yields as property of the state and used them to buy industrial machinery from western capitalist countries.

So whether you wanna say it "worked" is actually tricky. It worked in the sense of industrialization and ramping up the productions of armaments on an industrial scale. It worked as far as the war effort is involved and, given the entirely dire circumstances the soviets were in you could even say it made good strategic sense, but that's once again biting the bullet on genocide which you don't want to do. You keep saying that's a separate question but it's not. You can't have the success without the consequences. Doesn't work that way.

But also, the soviets and even the chinese were in a particular situation which doesn't really apply to most of the rest of the world. Here in the west we have no use for a plan to rapidly industrialize through collective agriculture. Our agricultural sector is like you said hardly self sufficient and if anything we're deindustrializing as we outsource more and more manufacturing over seas. So we have no use for a soviet style 5 year plan, ethical questions aside.

The developing world also would probably be better served through gradual industrialization rather than attempts at rapid industrialization which will starve so many people. They don't have the same desperate need to industrialize quickly that the soviets did. So once again I really don't see much insight or utility in the rapid growth the ussr underwent. It just seems like a vague talking point that makes communism sound successful without having any actual pragmatic application

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

the developed world would often benefit from heavy centralized economic measures...that the US simply won't allow

such as?

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

the US is an open society in that this is all public record now

soviet socialism was feared by the gov for the very reason that by some metrics it could be seen as a success, a model for how to break from Western dominance

Quite simply untrue lol

The soviets were seen as a threat ideologically because they opposed capitalism but also just geopolitically they were the only other major power left standing after ww2. It's very likely that the us and russia would've entered a cold war style standoff even if russia was capitalist. It's extremely naive to think the us only fears rivals based on their economic philosophy. Since the collapse of the soviet union the us and nato have continued the same basic "containment" tactics that we associate with the cold war. And since China has liberalized large aspects of their economy we only continue to have increasing tensions with them as their economy and geopolitical status rises.

[Plankton]

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