And despite the corrupt character[,] AES brought forth massive progress in all fields of society. Free education up to university for everyone who didn’t slack at school. Millions of emancipated people learned to read for the first time ever. Massive scientific progress. Access to culture for millions. Making things like theatre, operas, ballet, cinema and chess accessible (and affordable !) for the masses. Making sure everyone had a place to work, sleep, smth to eat and clean water. Giving women the right to work, vote, choose whom or even if to marry, to go through life unveiled and just generally choose their own lives.(but this is one of the errors again. Patriarchal social structures were still kept and social conservatism took hold, which is why women rarely if ever had the rly high positions and were barred from the military f.e.) Making sure every child had a place at a crib or kindergarten. Making good quality healthcare accessible to all free of charge. Including vaccinating even the furthest regions, that had never even seen a doctor before.
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TL;DR: dismissing state socialism [and thus planned economies] as “something that didn’t work for the people” is disingenuous and disregards the fact that it did work and that, despite its flaws, it worked for hundreds of millions of people.
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And all that without exploitation that is required for capitalism to get even close to that (e.g. China rn). Historically centrally planned economies struggled at larger scales (which is why decencralizing/devolving into regions might have been a good remedy). But they excelled at creation of industry or rather primitive capital accumulation but without all the horrible effects capitalism had at those stages.
Computers at our advancement lvl change all that or rather make them even more feasible
I’m glad you agree that they didn’t work well at larger scales, and I’m open to trying newer, computerized versions in narrow cases. The more experiments the better to find an improved economic system. But in general I think you are massively overstating their benefits. Yes, economic planning works alright for some things. Utilities where competition basically can’t exist can’t have markets, so some level of planning is needed there, although there are still market forces at play to some extent. But they also had catastrophic failures in food provision in particular that market food distribution usually didn’t have. And large, centralized economies are vulnerable to seizure by centralized power structures, who then turn them to their own ends.
But even ignoring those issues, a lot of this is just the same argument apologists for capitalism use. “Life got better and it was all thanks to our ideology!” A lot of this is conflated with general technological progress and other social changes, and the fact that human welfare was shockingly low in the economies that preceded modern ones. Being better than despotic feudalism isn’t too impressive in my book.
And all that without exploitation that is required for capitalism to get even close to that
without all the horrible effects capitalism had at those stages
Looking at history I don’t see much difference. Both systems centralized wealth and goods into fewer hands at the expensive of those that lacked political power, often with horrific consequences. Both destroyed the environment as they industrialized, and continue to do so. We need to do better if humans are going to survive long-term.
From an older comment of mine:
And all that without exploitation that is required for capitalism to get even close to that (e.g. China rn). Historically centrally planned economies struggled at larger scales (which is why decencralizing/devolving into regions might have been a good remedy). But they excelled at creation of industry or rather primitive capital accumulation but without all the horrible effects capitalism had at those stages.
Computers at our advancement lvl change all that or rather make them even more feasible
I’m glad you agree that they didn’t work well at larger scales, and I’m open to trying newer, computerized versions in narrow cases. The more experiments the better to find an improved economic system. But in general I think you are massively overstating their benefits. Yes, economic planning works alright for some things. Utilities where competition basically can’t exist can’t have markets, so some level of planning is needed there, although there are still market forces at play to some extent. But they also had catastrophic failures in food provision in particular that market food distribution usually didn’t have. And large, centralized economies are vulnerable to seizure by centralized power structures, who then turn them to their own ends.
But even ignoring those issues, a lot of this is just the same argument apologists for capitalism use. “Life got better and it was all thanks to our ideology!” A lot of this is conflated with general technological progress and other social changes, and the fact that human welfare was shockingly low in the economies that preceded modern ones. Being better than despotic feudalism isn’t too impressive in my book.
Looking at history I don’t see much difference. Both systems centralized wealth and goods into fewer hands at the expensive of those that lacked political power, often with horrific consequences. Both destroyed the environment as they industrialized, and continue to do so. We need to do better if humans are going to survive long-term.