Computer Aided Economic Planning

[hiac]

Well, I think about AI in economical plannical. I wonder, why there is no computer aided planning. Let me explain it shortly,

1. there are supercomputers which are built for scientific calculations. This machines are super fast like making 10 to power 15 FLOPS. But end-users computers are also quite fast like 10 to power 9 FLOPS, cf.
wikipedia about FLOPS. It is a enormous power used to have nice desktop which looks like my bathroom or to use very expensive word processor to right letters.

So we do not need supercomputers, PC connected are powerful enough to calculate problems.

2. Yet, I have not heard about using computers in economic planning. You see, there is sufficient calculating power, there are IT programmers, economists and statistical data that could be background for economic planning.

By economic planning I understand solving equation between demand of people and supply from factories. There are other aspects like demand of luxuries or supplying shoes or storing goods.

Now we have capitalistic "blind hand of market", it is obvious meaning of chaotic and inefficient solution for economic planning.

3. New economic planning, which could help to plan supply high enough for next year demand or quick respond to demand for ice creams, could be provided with help of Artificial Intelligence. Yet there is none of them.

4. I find this computer aided economic planning (CADEP) or AI based economic planning interesting because of:
- it is hard proof where money goes, that capitalists steal jobs
- it is proper usage our now useless computers (GUI, please)
- it is hard proof that socialist/communist economy is better than capitalistic, it could prove that it is possible to make world place where everyone gets according to hers/his needs and gives according to hers/his abilities.
- it is possible answer for question who is, maybe indirectly, responsible for blocking singularity ? See wikipedia about technological singularity.

What do you think?

[RedWorker]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

[Creative Destruction]

corporations actually make models which they use to forecast and plan production activity. it's actually used on wall street in order to trade on stock futures (making bets on future production, basically, such as oil and what not.) that may not be our kind of economic planning, but it's a kind of economic planning and it's pretty integral to the way the system works today.

as a side note:


- it is possible answer for question who is, maybe indirectly, responsible for blocking singularity ? See wikipedia about technological singularity.

why anyone would want to see this come to pass is beyond me.

[tuwix]

What do you think?

The Venus Project, and the Zeitgeist Movement has the same idea. :) http://tzmpolska.org/

[Rafiq]

corporations actually make models which they use to forecast and plan production activity. it's actually used on wall street in order to trade on stock futures (making bets on future production, basically, such as oil and what not.) that may not be our kind of economic planning, but it's a kind of economic planning and it's pretty integral to the way the system works today.


For precisely this reason, it could be arguable that the "material", or to be more concise, technocratic foundations for a planned economy already exist within capitalism, most especially since the second world war. This capitalism, our capitalism, is an almost historically conscious capitalism. Lenin said: The socialization of labor, which is advancing ever more rapidly in thousands of forms and has manifested itself very strikingly, during the half-century since the death of Marx, in the growth of large-scale production, capitalist cartels, syndicates and trusts, as well as in the gigantic increase in the dimensions and power of finance capital, provides the principal material foundation for the inevitable advent of socialism. It is remarkable that this was written as early as 1914, because this is precisely what had been characteristic of the capitalism emerging in the inter-war, and later post-war period. To be clear, this doesn't mean much on a political level, and it certainly doesn't entail that the socialization of labor, "naturally" culminates itself into Socialism as Feudalism did into capitalism. If anything is clear, it's that since neoliberalism we know the creative, and destructive ways this "managed" capitalism worms its way out of crises, and at the expense of the working people and even the overall well being of the global economy, protracts the hegemony of the global capitalist class. Which means that the socialization of labor, and the power of the bourgeoisie are not inversely, but directly proportional as the socialization of labor occurs only insofar as it feeds the hunger of capital. What this means is that a 21st century Communism can have a definite, unique political context previously unimaginable as a result of the previous antagonisms of uneven development. Communism derives from capitalism, and it is made possible not only by class antagonism but through the antagonism formed between the commons and private property through the socialization of labor - the increased global economic coordination between various nation states, the rise of powerful trans-national monopolies and cartels create problems (like the environmental crises) which are in common, which effect us all, but can't be solved through the forces of the market or the barriers of the nation state, all of which the global capitalist totality is dependent upon. Capitalism creates trans-national problems, and insists upon the retention of the nation state, capitalism creates problems in common but is built upon relations of private property. This is why Communism, politically, is possible beyond being an abstraction.

Of course, 20th century Communism in practice was never wrought out from the engine of world capitalism but its neglected, and abused marginal offspring.