Coordination in an economically fragmented world

I asked this once before in a thread and no one answered so I'm raising the question openly. I'm taking for granted that a socialized world will retain divisions of 'economic areas', as Mises puts it, meaning different parts of the world naturally equipped, inclined and communised to produce different things, because of scattered resources, culture, language barriers, whatever. Basically, a global division of labor. That being so, and taking into account the inevitable disparity in productivity, who/what agency authorizes the flow of produce from more productive economic areas to less productive areas? Is it that there is a 'united communes', in the style of the UN, event every week/month/some time-frame where representatives share output data and input requirements? This appears to me to be the (only) democratic way to manage a fragmented global economy not reliant on price signals ( ala capitalism ). I suppose what I'm getting at is Economic Calculation on a global scale. But I'm trying to make the 'problem' less abstract. All that being said, please correct me if my premises are wrong or my conclusions don't flow from my premises.

I think that there will be NO ONE who control the flow of products, services etc. but instead everyone will independently control their needs.

Sounds far fetched?

Well, swarm intelligence has worked in nature and may work in human, in fact it has.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence

I remember some "tribes" in Africa and else that have no "leaders" so to speak an they got along just fine, until they were destroyed by colonizing powers. Why no leaders? Well when the colonizing powers asked about who was the "leader" they simply looked at each other and choose someone who was NOT a leader in the european sense: so a decentralized society.

Also note the desciption of the "Indians" when Columbus discovered America:

"They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality"

.......

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...."

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

Same could be said of some "natives" around the world.

Ants, termites, and other social creatures, besides humans,also have no leaders, yet they are able to have complex societies and build complex structures and even manage defense and wage war.{I'm not suggesting we wage war, however, hopefully, war will be abolished;)} (For example certain species of ants will, at times, invade termite nests (and other ant nests) and highly specialized termite soldier types (as side note* in some termite species there are no soldiers but do have other defensive behaviors) will rush out to battle the invaders, all without a "leader" or even a "general":ohmy:)

Also there are leaderless resistance movements throughout history which are more or less sucessful depending on the movement in question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance

And it is all decentralized.

By having each persons individually control their needs and desires and acting responsibilily one can have a modern society work through mutual aid and voluntary activity, without the intervention of any government or controlling body.

You confuse two Marxist phases of socialism.

In the first one economic calculation isn't needed. Free cooperatives can work with supply and demand and prices as present capitalist enterprises. The only difference is a property of them. In socialism they're owned by workers.
In second phase, there is such abundance of goods and such automation that work is done by small percentage of people. The money become obsolete.

I'll take xxxxxx666666's anarchist-style approach as the *furthest-right* that a post-capitalist society should go -- it might be seen as a starting point, to 'start from scratch', once the proletariat has overthrown the world's bourgeoisie.

*Structurally* it might be seen this way:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

http://s6.postimage.org/ccfl07uy5/Mu...Consumptiv.jpg


My own critique, though, is that there would be no impetus *inherent* in this decentralized method towards *generalizing* social production -- I could easily see this kind of patchwork layout persisting for *centuries*, in a relatively low-level mode of technological development and usage.

Another hazard of decentralization is that it could easily backslide away from free-access direct distribution, into commodity-type implicit valuations based on final outputs, for exchanges. (In other words, a once-liberated-labor would increasingly be seen, and valuated, according to *what it produces*, for the sake of exchanges with other, similar communal-type localities. This would be tantamount to market socialism and would continue to backslide from there into full-blown commodity production.)

I think we should also keep in mind the *historical momentum* coming out of a world revolution, one that is presumably vanguardist and centralized / coordinated enough to defeat the bourgeoisie in its entirety. This 'vanguard legacy', if you will, would probably lend much to the post-revolution era in the way of a centralized / coordinated mass industrial production, for the common good.

Also:


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

http://s6.postimage.org/jy0ua35yl/7_...m_Transiti.jpg

I think the problem with "antism" is that ants are drones robotically controlled by the pheromones of their queen.

The observations about natives are interesting though. Why do you think they were so caviler with their possessions? Because they had no concept of private property?

I'm not assuming or confusing any phase of socialism. I'm asking about coordination of a globally fragmented economy. No matter how great the 'abundance', divisions of labor are still relevant.

Wrong!:mad: They may "hand over decisions to their colony" so to speak (and in most species, queen don't "robotically" control the workers; the workers control themselves as a giant colony or superorganism[for your information, drones are usually used to refer to male ants] while all the queen does is lay eggs) but individual (worker) ants can make their own decisions, more or less, see below:

“People usually think of ants as sort of stupid, that they can't really compare options, or that they don't have good cognition,” said Sasaki. “But actually, individual ants can compare options, and that's why they, too, experience cognitive overload – a well-documented phenomenon in human beings.” (emphasis mine;))

https://asunews.asu.edu/20120921_ants_decisionmaking

"The term "queen" is not particularly apt, as the queen ant has very little control over the colony as a whole. She has no known authority or decision-making control; instead her sole function is to reproduce. Therefore the queen is best understood as the reproductive element of a colony rather than a leader. Once a colony is established, the worker ants meet the queen's needs such as giving her food and disposing of her waste. Because ant social structure is very complex and individual ants are relatively simple, an ant colony can be thought of as a single organism, and the individual ants as cells or limbs of the organism, as the individuals can rarely survive on their own."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_ant


Yes, because they live in a anarchist (or semi anarchist) society where everyone cares for one another and there is an abundance (at least seemly abundance) of resources available, and no concept of private property as you've said.:)

Surely that kind of information could be uploaded as and when onto some kind of live database that's globally accessible via the internet? That way as soon as a hopper of freshly mined ore in Kazakhstan crosses the threshold of a mine and into a truck for transport, that fact could be registered on-site for record-keeping purposes and added to the database for the world to know. Well, I don't know for a fact that such a system could be so granular, but it certainly seems technologically possible even today.

Control of the output and input could thus be localised, while at the same time information awareness could be global and (almost?) total.

I suppose the meetings could be kept for less frequent eventualities that require a personal touch, as it were. Perhaps things like space programs and major infrastructural projects and so on.

ooh ooh ooh hand up I read something interesting about this recently, there were a couple of articles in some reading I did last month about what happened when Europeans made contact with the Amerindians and all the confusion over property (the Europeans having very strong ideas about it (nine tenths of the law and all that) and the natives having, well, none.) There were several big bust-ups in jamestown over apparent thefts of tools by natives - who had in fact come to view the settlers as allies (or at least as large, inconveniently helpless babies with really rad steel tools) and thus assumed that the settlers' property was now also their property (they had, after all, shared their most important resorce, maize, with the settlers which would have been regarded as a fairly significant offer of friendship)

The articles in question are:

1 - : Martin H. Quitt, ‘Trade and Acculturation at Jamestown, 1607 in '1609: The Limits of Understanding’, William and Mary Quarterly number 52 (1995)

2 - David Harris Sacks, ‘The True Temper of Empire: Dominion, Friendship and Exchange in the English Atlantic, c. 1575 - 1625’ in Renaissance Studies number 26 (2012)

I take this back, studies show that even when there is not an abundance of resources, people can still be generous. (Like with the natives mentioned here)

Study: Poor Are More Charitable Than The Wealthy
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=129068241

"Huge charity commitments often get headlines — like the ones Bill Gates and Warren Buffett collected for convincing 40 billionaires to donate at least half of their fortunes. But Paul Piff, a psychology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, tells host Guy Raz about his studies, which show that poor people are actually more charitable than the rich."

..........................

And I think this is the most important, to quote from the above source:

"So it's really compassionate feelings that exist among the lower class that's seen to provoke these higher levels of altruism and generosity toward other people."

Not as relevant, as you assume that in the future almost all works will be done by machines regardless the political system dominating the earth. When scarcity of majority of products is non-existent, then money will become obsolete but distribution of goods will work on earlier found as best rules.

There is no distribution problem, per se, in the capitalist community. That is because goods are produced because they are needed, or perceived to be needed, somewhere by someone. As such, distribution, including transport, is part of the production and its calculations. So, in the capitalist community, those Kazaki iron ore workers could sell that ore to whomever is willing to pay the most so as to maximise their profit.

However, in the socialist community, distribution seems to be the vital problem. Goods need to shipped to where they are most needed, without use of profit in such calculations.
So, in the socialist community, when those Kazakh iron ore workers emerge with their product, they can't just ship it where THEY wish to do so, based upon THEIR criteria; it has to be shipped to whereever the greatest "need" as determined by... (well thats part the debate). Shipping that product also becomes a separate decision, since iron ore is not the only things which needs shipping, and the shippers also need to be allocated.

A, decentralised socialist vision does not seem realistic.

This is objectively false and cannot be taken as a general tendency across the capitalist (global) economy. Simply put, the capitalist system is anarchic and scattered by its nature. Food in point A is thrown away while people go hungry in point B doesn't make much sense, does it? That is the inherent problem (namely underproduction and overproduction) of production for profit, as opposed to production for use, that plagues the capitalist economy. As technical progress has chugged on, the severity of this problem has changed however the logic of said problem remains constant.


Why not? It sounds like the most realistic form of planning as decision-making is localized leading to accurate input from economic agents.

While I agree with this point objectively, my stance is to the *left* of it (regarding decentralization), while yours is from the right.



You're framing this question in such a way as to make it sound *unresolved* and *problematic* -- certainly, whether the layout was decentralized or more-centralized, there would be some mode of *cooperation* and *coordination* between the liberated iron ore workers and the larger public. Politically and logistically there's no issue here.

Reading what Columbus said I wonder if in a Communist society we should still keep a World military to defend us against possible Alien invasion so we don't end up like those natives.

I might as well plug this in for reference for reactionaries and such: predicting the future is against the Marxist method. I can't tell you how many pairs of shoes will be distributed per person in a Communist world or whether you'll eat filet mignon for lunch. What I can tell you is how capitalist society is structured, and a detailed analysis of history and social relations.

There's no crystal-ball in Marx's method. In fact, this is specifically why Marx took the time to completely annihilate Owen and Fourier -- they drew up a dream society in their minds. Marxism is based on interpreting the physical world and the implications the material has on society.

The note I responded to was a response to a post about the problem of distribution in the socialist community. A proposed solution was completely anarchical and incompatible with socialism.

As far as the note regarding capitalism: It completely misses the point and dodges the issue. The issue is production. The proposal by Noxion flunks on both production and distribution, as well as good socialist approach.

The entire claim of Marxism is that capitalism will collapse due to its alleged contradictions. It is absolutely an attempt at reading a crystal ball.

What it does not do, is, as was explained, to predict how many pair of shoes might be produced ext.
Of course, nobody is asking for such an explanation.

I think this subject has been discussed several times before, but regarding different things.

I don't think widespread globalization is possible. Technically, every continent is able to sustain itself, IF the resources it actually produces is returned to populace that creates them. For ones that are not able to produce a certain amount of a certain necessary product, it may derive from the surpluses of its neighbors. It is unrealistic, and frankly unnecessary to transport goods across the Earth because, "this city in China don't want no rice, they want dates from Mesopotamia!"

If we provide underdeveloped areas with the agricultural technology and methodologies to efficiently make their own off their land, we won't have to mix our goods around as much.

You have a great difficulty to understand a difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Marxism occupies mainly macroeconomics and you ask the question about microeconomics and you are surprised that you don't get any answer... If you understand the difference, you won't even expect such answers. :)

You have no business engaging in a critique of possible implementations of socialism, since you're far from being a socialist yourself.

While this *is* an OI forum it doesn't mean that you should go ahead and take potshots at 'internal' socialist-type proposals -- *especially* since all you do is use crude dismissiveness without addressing any actual points or substance.

I, for one, don't welcome your vapid negative assertions.

For the sake of an expedient politics this line is perfectly acceptable -- *of course* underdeveloped areas are a priority, and those in a post-capitalist world shouldn't be shipping food around needlessly.

But *you're* turning this into a *principle* -- that people's *wants* regarding food should be ignored, regardless. Regardless of what? Regardless of whatever technologies may be developed in such a future that would make such global transportation a triviality.

Given the right kind of automation, energy supplies, and popular will, intercontinental shipping might very well become labor-*free*, thus eliminating such an action from political concern virtually altogether.

How is this a problem or, to rephrase the question, how is this an insoluble problem. It strikes me that a (relatively) decentralised socialist economy is eminently realistic and indeed the optimum form of problem solving available to humanity today


We already have the technlogy to underpin a global self-regulating system of stock control. This can monitor the rate at which goods of every conceviable kind are being taken up and thus provide a useful electronic map so to speak of the global pattern of human need to guide production units everywhere in the organisation of their production schedules. Obviously the question of shipping would be governed - all things being equal - by the principle of minimising unnesscary transport costs - like the kind of "coals-to-newscastle" type phenomena that we occasionally see around us in contemporary capitalism which is not a very sensible or efficient way of doing things


The differnent localities and regions will be part of a global socialist community and of course there will be discussion and decisions made at every level - local regional and global - about the prioritisation of human needs where specific inputs are in short supply and therefore need to be alllocated in a way that reflects these priorities. All of this very do-able in such society and will impact upon the normal interactions of supply and demand as mediated via the stock control system


What is blatantly NOT do-able is trying to get capitalism to fashion its distribution system in such a manner to ensure goods are "shipped to whereever the greatest "need" exists. Capitalism is simply not geared to directly respond to human needs as such. Human needs of necessity fall under its radar; they are entirely incidental to its primary motive which is to realise profits through market sales. If you dont have the necessary purchasing power to obtain what you need in capitalism your needs go unfulfilled. Its as simple as that.

Its laughable that some people here still invoke the utterly discredited Misesian Calculation Argument. Capitalism is arguably the most grotesquely inefficient system that has ever existed in human history. On the hand it has built up the technological potential to produce enough for all; on the other it systematically squanders this potential on a massive and every increasingly scale.

For instance, most work in capitalist society performs no socially useful role whatsoever. its is simply undertaken to service the systemic needs of capitalism itself. Think of all the occupations related directly or indirectly to handling money, for example. All of this will go completely in a socialist society - thus more than doubling the amount of labour and resources available for socially useful production at a stroke.

Even when capitalism does manage to produce useful things, its utterly inefficient and irrational nature prevents such things being used in a sensible fashion. So in Spain, for example, where I live there was a report recently published in one of the papers here (El Pais I think) on a comprehensive housing survey which showed that there are a total of apprpximately 6 million housing units in the contry that are empty at this point time. This while more and more people are lving rough on the streets or have to put up with woefully substandard accommodation


The irony of calling a socialist society "unrealistic" while defending this chaotic, utterly irrational and completely inefficient system of market capitalism, could hardly be keener

It's a logical claim, using reasoning, as opposed to a speculative claim.

That note was in response to a proposed socialist solution.


However, yet again-- stock control would simply tell Kazakh iron ore (and other producers) what was needed last week. It would not be helpful as to whether their current labor to produce iron ore was worth it, and would also be inefficient for distribution for that reason.

One would think that avoiding all "unnecessary" costs in all facets of production would be an objective (including whether those Kazakh iron ore workers should even be producing iron ore).

The only way to distinguish between necessary and unnecessary costs is to have a system and practices which clearly accounts for costs across all aspects of production. Simply having less "cost" in some facet of production, like shipping, is not - necessarily- proof of achieving that objective.
As a general rule, it would seem "necessary" cost would be cost where the benefits outweigh those costs. So the objective of production would be where the benefits outweigh the costs. This is otherwise known as "profit."
Production in the socialist system would still need to be for profit.




And as above-- the decisions would need to be made with the idea of what is "profitable" versus what is not profitable.

*My own* response / take on this would be to say "Ehhhhh, *any* group of liberated laborers can risk a mere week of labor" -- if there is no way around this 1-week lag of updated information.

So that means the worst case is that the need for iron ore suddenly vanishes from one week to the next, the workers keep working for the new week, and a week's worth of iron ore is the result and just sits around for the time being.

This is hardly problematic, especially since demand for iron ore could very well pick up again, and then there'd be a pre-existing surplus on which to draw from.

In some present-day estimations of socialist implementations this kind of material-surplus 'buffer' is *called-for* as a regular part of necessary logistics -- it's always better to have a little extra on hand than to be anally retentive about sticking to the numbers, and then run-out of material. (We know this ourselves from our own daily experiences with household goods, for example.)



Again you have to resort to your tired 'financial-numbers-only' mantra, when the world already runs on far-more *qualitative* reports -- journalism.

Socialism would cut out finance *entirely*, to instead use journalism-type information about all matters, for its political economy.



Socialism would be *simpler* -- with all productive assets and natural resources fully collectivized, the only remaining material 'cost' would be that of liberated labor. Liberated labor would be an entirely voluntary *service* disconnected from any kind of commodity production -- it would be for the public good altogether.

Once again - no system can exactly predict future demand. The point is to have an adequate buffer of stock to accommodate any unexpected upturn in demand. A self regulating system of stock control allows you to do this. By extrapolating from past trends we can be reasonably sure, allowing for a margin of error what future demand for a particular item will be. And if we have underestimated or overestimated well then so be it. The system by its very nature is self-correcting and the information will get back to the productiuon units one way or another.

Ive challenged you before to come up with some other alternative to a self regulating system of stock control that would be even remotely comparable in terms of its efficacy. Once again your refusasl to come up with anything ex[poses your argument to be hollow to the core. A self regulating system of stock control is not perfect but it is by far the best system available for anticipating future demand


Well, of course, this would completely rule out capitalism as a system capable of clearly accounting for "costs across all aspects of production". Market capitalism is arguably the most grotesquely inefficient system that has have ever existed, as I explained. Most work carried on under capitalism is totally unnecessary as far as meeting the needs of human beings is concerned. Such work is only necessary to the maintenance of the system itself. But the system itself cannot distinguish between these necessary and unnecessary costs. To use an anthropomorphism, it can suddently decide that it can dispense with banks for examples. even though banks contribute absolutely nothing to human wellbeing but only parasitically leech off production. Banks are however essential to capitalism



No there will be no profit and no need for profit in socialism either. Profit is not a measure of the difference between what you vaguely call "benefits" and "costs" but rather of the difference between revenues/sales and financial outgoings. Whose "benefits" anyway? What benefit is it to the worker to have her wages cut for example though it would certainly profit the capitalist to do so? The so called economic calculation problem raised by von Mises is a pseudo problem, a complete sleight of hand. It assimilates the general idea of costs to monetary cost: only by putting a price tag on things can you accurately measure costs goes the argument. But how would you know?


To say that only a system of market pricing takes account of costs as we understand these to mean in a capitalist society i.e. costs measured in money terms - is, of course, based on a complete tautology. It amounts to saying only under a system of market prices can we ascertain the market prices of things. To stand even a remote chance of sounding convincing what the economic calculation arguments needs to show is that prices adequately reflects costs in some other, substantive physical sense.

However, to say that prices reflect costs in this substantive physical sense is to assume a correspondence between these two things and in order to determine whether such a correspondence existed you would first have to measure costs independently of market prices to see if market prices did indeed adequately reflect such costs. But in doing that you would have contradicted precisely that the economic calculation argument claim - that costs cannot be readily accounted for except through market prices

In either case the result is the same : the complete collapse of the economic calculation argument

Its not the laborers who run the risk-- its the people who want the product.

Obviously, this is a principle which cannot merely be limited to one industry; its community wide. It means that goods that are not needed at a particular time can be produced ahead of goods that are needed at that particular time.
Ultimately, it means it doesn't matter much if production matches demand.

An argument in favor of overproduction...
And again, when items are produced that are not needed, it means goods are not produced which are needed.



Iron ore produced to build the hospital is at the done so at the cost of not using that ore to build a bridge,
This is true in the socialist community as well.

yes-- there are no crystal balls.
Having a "buffer of stock" simply means goods that were not needed at that time were produced.
It also means that goods that were needed were not produced at that time.
Production is not tied to demand, to need-- remember socialism is about "production for need."

"reasonably sure"? Socialism condemns overproduction and underproduction as a feature of capitalism which it intends to eradicate. Now we are left with "reasonably sure" that socialism will produce needed goods to do this "one way or the other"?



It doesn't anticipate future demands. It simply ratifies past ones.
Prices are the best way to anticipate future demand.



The owners of the concern, mainly. The consumers of goods and services who had their needs met as well.

It doesn't always benefit the capitalist to cut wages. Maybe the industry is in decline. The capitalist doesn't benefit by that.
Furthermore, keeping labor tied up in failing industries doesn't benefit the community either.





How does comparing a random price edict against a market price prove or disprove anything?

Yes there are no crystal balls but is this the best that you can do - just repeating the obvious? I asked you to provide an alternative but clearly you have none in mind. A self regulating system of stock control is in fact by far the most reliable method available. Even capitalism depends upon it. Try to imagine how a modern supermarket could function without it.

Yes, by definition a buffer of stock means some goods that are produced are not immediately consumed. What of it? They are still needed to accommodate unexpected surges in demand, disasters etc. But that doesn't nullify the basic principle of production for need , does it now?



The crucial difference that you completely ignore is that while in socialism there may well the occasional overshoot situation this will be instantly self correcting . Where goods are oversupplied (or under supplied) this information will be immeidately communicated back toi the production units via the self regulating system of stock control.

In capitalism we face a quite different set of factors with the intervention of market forces. Over production in one or other sector of the economy has ramifications which feed back and excerbate the original situation precisely because demand takes the form of market demand and production is motivated by profit. When this happens workers are laid off thus reducing demand for consumer goods in other sectors while the demand for capital goods from other sectors of the economy is likewise cut back. These other sectors of the economy are therenby affected and they in turn lay off workers and so on and so forth. This is what is called the disproportionality theory of crises which is the primary Marxian explanation for the capitalist trade cycle




You come out with this knee jerk statements without thinking. If prices are the best way to anticipate future demand how come you have such a thing as a capitalist recesssion? If capitalists enterprises are so savvy about future demand. how come they periodically overproduce for the markets in which they operate with dire conseuqneces all round?



So you are admitting here that the concepts of benefits and costs are not socially neutral but have specific meanings that are tied to the economic susyem in which they are operational. The profit system does not in other words enable us to make decisions in which the "benefits" supposedly outweigh the "costs" in some generalised sense. "Benefits" are what specifically benefit the capitalist class in the context of capitalism. And since the interests of workers are diametrically opposed to the capitalists this means that capitalism does not operate for the benefit of the workers but rather of capital. What capitalism regards as a cost - our wages - the capitalist benefits by cutting or holding down as far as possible

It might not always benefit the capitalist to cut wages is true enough. A shortage of certain skills might bid up the price of such skills. However, as a generalisation, as you yourself concede, it remains true that capital necessarily has to exert a downward pressure on wage levels. Competition demands it.

Furthermore , it is a spurious argument to invoke that "keeping labor tied up in failing industries doesn't benefit the community either.". This ignores the simple fact that in practice capitalism does not a take a society wide viewpoint. It is a system of endemic competition. Certain industries may be "failing" in capitalist terms but how is meant to be in their interests that they go under?





Read again what I wrote. In order to prove that only a system of market prices can enables us to make efficient production decisions we have to define what we mean by the latter. If efficiency is defined solely in terms of market efficiency then what you are claiming is a tautlogy. If by efficiency you mean in some generalised substantive sense whereby you weigh up the real benefits against the real costs, then, in order to prove that the market process captures these real benefits and real costs you have to measure them against prices to see if the two correspond. But you cannot do that without actually measuring these real costs/benefits on their own extra=market terms.


In other words, the so called economic calculation argument is exposed as a completely empty argument based entirely on circular reasoning

We're both getting caught up in unknown -- and unknowable -- specifics about the logistics of iron ore production in a post-capitalist context.

We don't know whether information about consumer demands would be on a 1-week lag, or would be instantaneously available for new production cycles. Given today's existing communications technology I would think it would be the latter, and this whole point of discussion would be irrelevant anyway.




Not *unplanned* overproduction, though, as is endemic to the market system -- let's just call it a 'rational buffer'.



Okay, sure -- fair point.

So if mass demand was particularly pressing with production being lacking, perhaps the liberated laborers would make a rational decision to forgo production for the 'buffers' of all goods, for the time being, in favor of fulfilling outstanding demand.




Yeah, sure, but that's just objective reality -- either labor, assets, and resources are being used soundly, or they're not.

Iron ore... clocks.... tiddly-winks. Its the same principle.


Its not just a question of knowing how much of something is needed. Is knowing how much of something which is needed versus something else which is also needed.



This will always be the case. The workers in a particular line of production will be overproducing their product, or trying to overproduce their product, under the theory that they are contributing to the well-being of the community. The logic of the system dictates they are behaving rationally.

But they aren't because there is no connection between their production and the production of other goods. When faced with shortages of other products, each line of production needs a way to determine to what extent, if at all, their overproduction is the source of the problem. Simply cutting back is no answer because those goods are still needed.



And using such resources for goods that are not needed is not a sound use of such resources.

And if interests, styles, tastes ect. change? Or is the theory 'gotta take what we give ya?'
Blackberry produced a bunch of phones last year. Nobody wanted them. They are sitting in a warehouse somewhere. People bought Apple or Android.

Capitalism says that Blackberry wasted a lot of resources. Socialism seems to suggest they didn't as the phones can be used later.



Why would it matter? You have explained that socialism considers that overproduction is 'good.' So what is to correct?

You seem to think that, in the socialist system, a "self-correcting decision" to cut back production on "something" has no impact, or OUGHT NOT have an impact, on production at that "something" and other industries connected to it.



Like as has been said-- there are no crystal balls.
The claim isn't that capitalism is perfect.
The claim is that it is better than socialism.


A benefit is something that is generally and a cost is something which is generally negative. There is nothing neutral about it. The question becomes is how to measure whether a particular economic action is will result in positive end, and to what extent there are negatives along the way.

The socialist system does that also-- the idea of overproduction is that it is beneficial to society, and the costs, the negative, are less.

Yes it does-- because it shows a clear statement of fact. There is no fudging, no vagueness. How do you know if "costs" in production are unnecessary? Measure by profit. How do those Kazakh iron ore ore workers know how much ore to mine? Profit.

Once the concession is made that production, even in the socialist system, has to be governed by the pursuit of profit, then one has to examine to what extent socialism can actually produce in such a fashion.

However, if the claim is that socialism will never produce "for profit" then its a claim that socialism has no interest in determining whether its production benefits anyone.

Production demands it. Look-- if the objective of production is that the benefits of that production outweighs the costs, then costs need to be kept as low as possible. If ten people can do the work of twenty, why would any rational system insist upon the latter?

It is true that capitalists make the worse defenders of capitalism.
And there is indeed no altruism involved.

Obviously it is not in Blackberry's interest to go bankrupt and out of business. But these guys sunk resources into a product which nobody wanted. It means that those resources were wasted. There was economic damage to the community. Now, the damage didn't shake the very foundations of civilization. But they are removed from the scene so they cannot cause further damage, by wasting still more resources. Others now have the opportunity to use resources that might have gone to Blackberry and will hopefully will not squander them.
As a result, the whole community benefits.
What happens when resources are wasted in the socialist system? Nothing, it seems, because there is no clear way of determining whether they have been wasted (its "buffer stock").







Sorry-- I am just not seeing how comparing an arbitrary dictat against a market price proves anything.

Agreed.




Okay.



Okay, except that 'overproducing' isn't quite the right word here, since it tends to recall the present-day systemic 'overproduction' of capitalism -- perhaps a 'planned surplus' would be a better term to use for the *post*-capitalist context.



You have no grounds on which to make this assertion -- the whole *premise* of socialism is that there's an active political economy, through which there *would* be connections of communication and coordination up and down all supply chains.



Okay, fair enough -- this, then, is an argument for *centralization*, since the greater the scope of information-sharing and coordination, the greater the scale of cooperation is that can be realized, for economies of scale and overall efficiency.



Sure -- I can appreciate this point.

(Internal note: This is a valid argument against any simplistic per-item 'rationing' approach.)




Yes.

Once again, yes, overproduction of some goods is indeed theoretically possible in socialism as in capitalism. You cannot precisely predict the future pattern of demand under any system. The difference however lies in the consequences - and magnitude - of such overproduction. In capitalism, overproduction has ripple affects resulting from the intervention of market forces which make it inherently a vastly more serious problem than in socialism. So, for instance, one sector of industry that has overproduced in relation to its markets has to lay off its workers and cut back on its demand for capital goods from other sectors that , in turn, have to lay off workers who thenhave less cash to buy goods from the first sector and so on and so forth - thus dragging the system in a downward spiral into recession. In socialism this sort of thing cannot happen. If too much of a particular good has been produced it is not going to affect the demand for other goods since demand in socialism takes a direct and unmediated form completely unrelated to "purchasing power" (which ceases to exist in socialism)



You are not thinking too clearly here. This has been explained to you umpteen times but still you seem to want to ignore anyone else's arguments when they are presented to you. In socialism, of course it will make sense to produce not just what is immediately demanded but also a buffer stock to allow for future fluctutations in demand. To explain in more simple terms. You want a Blackberry. But the factory in socialism is not going to produce a Blackbery specifically for you, will it now? . No, it will produce a number of Blackberries which will be delivered to the distribution store and to which you as a member of a socialist society will have free access . The "buffer" is precisely that numbers of blackberries sitting on the shelves in the distribution store waiting to be taken. Depending on the rate at which they are taken up, more may be ordered from the factory. Perhaps in the past this amounted to 10 Blackberrries per week. Let us say Blackberries go out of fashion, well, then what will happen is that the people running the store will reduce their weekly order to say 5. This is what is meant by "self correcting". A buffer stock might be thought of as a case of "overproduction" (in the sense that the goods are not immediately taken) but actually it is only by having goods available in the storre and subject to monitoring in the first place that we can sensibly determine the rate of depletion of stock which is a key indicator of demand and so match this with a sensible rate of stock replenishment

I didnt say that. Of course if too much of a particular good is produced and the distribution centre reduces the weekly order for the good in question this will impact, not just on the factory producing the good , but also on other factories producing inputs for the factory in question, But this is a supply side impact. I made it quite clear that it is not going to affect the demand for other final goods - which is the basic point. If people cut back on Blackberries this does not mean in socialism that the producers of Blackberries will be less able to demand other goods. In capitalism, however, it does. Workers laid laid off at the factory producing blackberries have less money to spend and that affects their ability to demand other goods





It is not "better than socialism" . To the contrary, it is demonstrably the case that the problem of overproduction in capitalism is vastly more severe than it could ever be under socialism precisely because of the form which demand takes under capitalism i.e. effective demand backed up by purchasing power. This is what underwrites, or gives rise to, the capitalist trade cycle as I explained.

You have totally missed the point as usual. Im the one who is actually arguing that the concept of "benefit" is not neutral but socially conditioned and value laden. You are the one who is arguing otherwise. What benefits the capitalists may be a disbenefit to the worker (so it "benefits" the capitalist that her wages bill should be cut but it "benefits" the workers that their wages should contrarwise be increased). You are the one who is trying to foist on us a pseudo-universal pseufo-technical criterion of "benefits" and "costs" when it has been explained to you that this criterion is only applicable to the system you strive vainly to defend

Again, absolute nonsense. You are simply evading the argument. Profit simply measures the benefits accruing to the capitalist from any investment decision made under capitalism; it is a meangless concept under socialism. You whole argument is thus based on a tautology and you cannot seem to see it. You also dont seem to understand what is meant by "costs" since it appears to me that you are conflating accounting costs with opportunity costs. In socialism , production units will of course be concerned with the latter. If two end uses, X and Y , require 4 units and 6 units of particular input Z respectively when there are only 8 units of Z then in socialism we can precisely calculate the opportunity costs of producing 4 units of X in terms of the shortfall of units of Y this would entail. Whether we fully produce the amount of units of X that the population desires , knowing the opportunity costs this involves, is a matter of priorities. You cannot attach to a cardinal fiugure to this and a defy anyone to try to do this. You can only rank priorities ie place them along an ordinal scale and Ive already already explained to you how the ranking of priorities will impact on allocation decisions.

This is ridiculous, Are you seriously trying to peddle the argument here that if you dont produce for profit you cannot know whether your productive efforts benefit anyone? For the vast majority of human existence there was no profit motivated production. You trying to tell us that people had no interest in determining whether such non-profit motivated production benefitted them? Even under capitalism just over half of all work - productive activity - takes a non monetary form. Do charity workers have no interest in determining whether their work benefits anyone? Do you, when you when you work on your garden allotment or when you paint your house, not appreciate the benefits you directly derive from your own labour without any thought of profit? Come off it. You cant be serious as John McEnroe was fond of saying

It is ironic that you of all people should be talking about a "rational"system when it has been pointed out to you that that in the formal sector of the capitalist economy, most occupations contribute absolutely nothing to human welfare and wellbeing but exist only to serve the systemic needs of capitalism irtself, to oil the wheels of commerce etc. You make it sound like capitalism is some super-rational super-efficient way of organising production but in fact the very opposite is true. Capitalism is the most grotesquely inefficient system that has ever existed in human history as I keep on pointing it In socialism all these unnecessary and socially useless occupations - implicated in running the capitalist economy - from banking to insurance to tax collection and a thousand and one other money-related occupations - will simply disappear - meaning that socialism will be able to produce in real terms what capitalism produces but with a fraction of the workforce. Or to put it diifferently, in socialism we can more than double the actual output of socially useful wealth with the same number of hours be worked today under capitalism

.

It doesn't matter what it is called-- what matters is its substance.





I am certain there will lines of communications open.
What are they communicating? Overproduce there, cut back here, steady as it goes over yonder? What is the basis- the knowledge, the logic-- behind issuing these communications?

Of course its a problem under socialism as well- and the same problem as exists under capitalism. Overproduction of one good means those resources were not available in production for another good.

I think what you mean to suggest is that in a socialist system the consequence of overproduction will not be shutdowns, layoffs ect. Workers will either work less, or be assigned to work elsewhere, or some such arrangements. But that is an entirely different issue, of how to mitigate errors in judgement of production and its impact upon society.

The problem still exists-- goods were produced that were not needed ahead of goods that were needed. Which means demand is not being properly met for other needed goods. There is no way to get around this.


Its not one particular item here. Its all items produced.


People can demand all they want. The question becomes satisfying that demand. Cellphones use glass. Glass can be used in may things. A million cellphones produced but not consumed means that glass is wasted, as other items which need glass, and for which there is demand, are not being produced.



Why, in the socialist system, stop producing anything if "benefits" or "cost" has no bearing on its decisions? Of course it has to make those decisions- it has to decide whether certain production at certain levels is of benefit to itself. I understand that you are all tied up over calling it "profit" but okay- call it what you will. Its the same concept- its the same end objective.



Profit is also the term used for benefits accruing the workers in a socialist community.



No. I am saying that you can't know whether that production has been beneficial for society.

I am quite certain the buggy makers enjoyed their jobs. So too the typewriter folks. No doubt those cellphone workers enjoyed their days. But you have indicated that there is no problem telling them they have to cut back on what they enjoy doing to producing five units when their efforts do not benefit the community.



It matters not that socialism will get rid of bankers and tax collectors, if overall production declines.
And in socialism, it will.

Sure, except that one's choice of wording tends to confer a certain *connotation*.



I'd rather not have to argue over tangential issues of semantics with you since this is supposed to be about *politics* -- it sounds like you're not contending my choice of the term 'planned surplus'.


---




Sure -- as you already know, I developed a model of a post-capitalist political economy that can address these kinds of concerns. Here are two excerpts that speak most directly to your question:

You're -- unfortunately -- operating under the assumption that there would be a *dire*, pressing need for *all* goods *all* the time, and also that liberated-production was either *just keeping up* with demand, or was falling short of demand.

This, incidentally, highlights the problem that is common to this topic of discussion -- it's (too) easy to *over-generalize* in this domain, when in fact the entire range is / would be millions, or even billions, of different resources, products, and parts.

So while bottlenecks in any part of any supply chain is a *possibility*, it is certainly not a *certainty* -- as you're making it out to be. Once again we can't know these kinds of specifics because we aren't there.

My assumption is that when people want and need things that they be available.

My assumption is that if if an objective of production is for "pre-planned surplus" of certain goods, that comes at a cost, which would carried by not producing goods that needed then and now.

Yes-- however the principle would be the same across these billions of different resources.

There are always "bottlenecks" in production. A bottleneck can occur in the production of wine because the glass for the bottles was distributed to the window makers so as to create a "pre-planned surplus" of windows.