centralized vs decentralized

[gla22]

Can you guys give me a rundown of the advantages of a centralized or a decentralized society/economy. Anarchism seems to favor the decentralized where as various types of communism favors the centralized. I am really torn on this and I would like to hear some evaluation and opinions.


Thanks.

[BIG BROTHER]

You'll find my answer rather simple and short, but a centralized system is more useful for large scale projects as things are easier to organize. The donwpart is that it can also lead to burocrazitation.

[mikelepore]

It's many questions, not one. You can have different answers for administration, resource allocation, product distribution, etc. I would like the resource allocations to operate every industry to be centralized (the product inventory of the whole world pays to build and maintain the facility). I would like most of the management tasks to be decentralized to the local department level, or, in the case of neighborhood services, decentralized to the community level --unless central administration has a specific reason to override (example: if some local farmers don't stop using a dangerous pesticide, a higher authority can tell them that it's required to make that change.) Product distribution is best centralized or decentralized depending on what the particular product is -- a telecommunications satellite: centrally planned use by everyone; baskets of tomatoes: local use.

[The Feral Underclass]

You'll find my answer rather simple and short, but a centralized system is more useful for large scale projects as things are easier to organize. The donwpart is that it can also lead to burocrazitation.

That's a bit of a dodgy premise. For what reason is centralisation "better for large scale projects"?

[NoArch]

That's a bit of a dodgy premise. For what reason is centralisation "better for large scale projects"?
Coercion.:closedeyes:

A group of people with dedication to completing a large scale project will get it done. They will work out what is needed to be done, decide who is best for each role and the job will be done.

The People's Pyramid will stand much longer than the Pharoah's.:cool:

[mikelepore]

Large scale projects are more likely to involve binary yes/no decisions. You can't both construct a bridge and also not construct the bridge. It has to be one or the other. It's inevitable that someone will be outvoted and therefore disappointed. It will affect the environment of many people. Many people will use it. Many people will need to pour their effort into it. But with small projects we each can do our own thing -- I can grow apples and you can grow olives. So large projects are more suitable to large population groups, and small projects are more suitable to small populations.

[The Feral Underclass]

Large scale projects are more likely to involve binary yes/no decisions. You can't both construct a bridge and also not construct the bridge. It has to be one or the other. It's inevitable that someone will be outvoted and therefore disappointed. It will affect the environment of many people. Many people will use it. Many people will need to pour their effort into it. But with small projects we each can do our own thing -- I can grow apples and you can grow olives. So large projects are more suitable to large population groups, and small projects are more suitable to small populations.

That doesn't answer question.

[black magick hustla]

That's a bit of a dodgy premise. For what reason is centralisation "better for large scale projects"?

Decentralization requires more discussions and debates. Centralization can also bring inefficiency, but some aspects are better centralized than others not. For example, I would argue an airport would run much better if it is centralized under some sort of elected committee, rather than having "direct democracy" where all workers would have to fully participate in decision making. For one, it would take a lot of time, and the other reason is that it would be goddamn boring and people, including me, would rather be fucking or drinking than discussing in the work place

[BobKKKindle$]

Representative democracy can be seen as a form of centralization, as this form of democracy shifts power to elected officials, who make decisions on the behalf of the community. Representative democracy can be an effective system of management, as it is not always practical for the entire populace to be consulted every time a decision must be made - there are some issues which people will simply not want to attend to because they are not seen as sufficiently interesting. For example, in the management of workplaces, it will be beneficial to elect people to take care of minor technical issues which can be quickly resolved - a general assembly vote would only be required for major decisions, such as changes in the way production is organised.

However, it is important to ensure that the people who have been elected to positions of power can be recalled - the absence of an effective recall mechanism will result in a lack of initiative, because officials may be able to retain a post for a long period of time without the threat of being replaced.

[Kropotesta]

Decentralization requires more discussions and debates.
Thus coming up with a contributory result. I see nothing wrong with that.
Federalism FTW

[mikelepore]

That doesn't answer question.

Why not? Do you think each local neighborhood could have its own moon rocket launching pad? It makes sense to have a very small number, and have humanity share in their use and their administration. To determine whether any task should be centralized or decentralized, ask how many people would use it, how many people are affected by it, how many people would need to support it.

[black magick hustla]

Yeah well i dont want to stay in the workplace extra hours discussing stuff that i dont really know or care about. i am sure there are people better at that than me.

[Kropotesta]

Yeah well i dont want to stay in the workplace extra hours discussing stuff that i dont really know or care about.
Well participation obviously won't be forced.

i am sure there are people better at that than me.
OK, however no-one knows your opinions better than yourself.

[Psy]

That's a bit of a dodgy premise. For what reason is centralisation "better for large scale projects"?

Lets take the example of a project to built a bullet train from Vancouver (Canada) to Buenos Aries (Argentina) with stops along the way in major cities, to link Latin America to North America.

So how do we decide were to lay down the track, what cities to stop at?

A decentralized body would led to people fighting over their personal concerns with little care of the big picture ie "I don't want the track in my town as we are too small for it stop thus we will see none of benefits while having the track and power lines in our community."

And "It has to go through Austin Texas instead of LA because Texas pwnz California, I mean who wants to go to LA anyway?"

With a central body, while you still have town hall meetings on the subject, the project doesn't stall over endless debates. The central body can simply focus on getting permission from the communities they need for their plan and ignore communities that are outside the coverage of the plan.

[gla22]

I think we need both, a centralized state with some power however it should not be able to infringe on the local decisions reached by consensus in the anarchistic way of thinking. I am a communist in this way in the fact I think there needs to be a small centralized state, mainly because I believe certain natural resources, minerals oil ect. should be divided equally among the whole country, not just one small community. This requires some form of centralization. I think that claiming that there can be no centralized organization is in some ways primitivism.

[mikelepore]

I believe the major centrality question is how the output of one industry should become the input of another industry; for example, how should the metal from a refinery become a raw material fed into a plant that makes refrigerators. ("Intermediate products", in the vocabulary of today's capitalist economists.) There are two broad categories of answers. One way is to have the all such plants be departments of the same global organization, so there is a direct transfer from one department to another, no invoicing, the same as any shop sending parts to a room down the hall even though the destination may be very remote. The other way is to have separate industries be separate financial entities, each having a financial balance sheet, each having positive income and negative outgo relative to itself, buying its resources and selling its products. I prefer the first method because the second method preserves most of the faults of traditional capitalism _even if workplaces were run not-for-profit_. In other words, "stop polluting but also cut local costs", "safety comes first, but also cut local costs", etc., are contradictory sets of criteria. Instead, it has to be: stop polluting, and safety comes first, because there's no conceivable reason not to do so, when this shop doesn't have to pay for the improvements to the tooling, when the whole world makes the resource allocations. The conclusion is that much of the administration can be decentralized, but resource allocation must be centralized. It's either that or it's just another form of capitalism. Perhaps there may be minor exceptions -- I can't argue effectively that every little lemonade stand must be collectively owned by the entire human race. For the things that we all recognize as the industries and social services, I think the need is clear. There must be one global organization for production and distribution, and all industries must be departments of it. This degree of centralization sounds discomforting to some people, but those who don't like the sound of it should reflect on what's wrong with today's capitalism: each social problem it creates can be traced to the fact that various facilities are financially independent, with a competitive marketplace as their interface.