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Post by robeiae on Nov 15, 2018 17:17:45 GMT -5
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Post by Don on Nov 17, 2018 19:58:05 GMT -5
Which part is polemical, robeiae ? Is it the accurate, if somewhat brutally honest history of the USSR, the more-accurate-than-usual economics, or the dead-on logical analysis? It's a little simplistic, true, but what can you expect in 2,000 words? Besides, surely a polemic would have overstated the horrors of The Wall, rather than ignoring it completely. That mass murder was a direct result of socialist economic policy. I think it was very kind not to lay that at the feet of these regimes. They weren't shy about the Gulags, at least. The political climate would be drastically altered and society much richer and less contentious if most people read and understood those 2,000 words. To be fair, the Beemer vs. Trabant pictures were kinda snarky.
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Post by robeiae on Nov 17, 2018 20:26:37 GMT -5
(FYI, my intial link seems to have died, so I swapped it out for a different one; same piece, though)
In answer to your question, you answered it, yourself. It's brutal takedown of generalized communist actions and principles. But that doesn't make it wrong. I think it is--as you say--pretty accurate, given the length.
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Post by Don on Nov 17, 2018 20:42:02 GMT -5
Yeah, the world confuses me a lot.
Here's a simple definition of polemical.
"relating to or involving strongly critical, controversial, or disputatious writing or speech"
Okay, I get the critical part. But what about that article is controversial? That's what my questions addressed. And to continue the disection, why is it such a disputatious topic? Why do people get heated about facts in evidence, simple economics and logic? What is there to dispute?
The Enlightenment is truly over, attacked from both left and right now.
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Post by robeiae on Nov 18, 2018 9:08:25 GMT -5
Well, it's controversial insofar as there a shit ton of people out there whose response to the general characterizations would be "nuh-uh!," and would--as a matter of course--immediately bitch about the free pass (and cheer-leading) capitalism seems to be getting in the piece (which I think you and I would agree is missing the central point).
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Post by Don on Nov 18, 2018 9:54:34 GMT -5
I'm willing to consider any factual rebuttal. I haven't seen one yet.
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Post by Amadan on Nov 19, 2018 9:34:50 GMT -5
Well, how many people, especially in the US, would disagree with any of that? I mean, nowadays, even actual communists don't defend Stalin, aside from the fringe "tankie" crowd. So writing an article that says "The USSR really sucked at managing their economy" is hardly controversial to anyone. I imagine an actual socialist would argue that the failure of the USSR does not mean that socialism is doomed to failure, any more than the USA being infested with socialism and crony capitalism (according to Don) means that capitalism is doomed to failure.
But really, I am not sure where you were looking for disagreement from.
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Post by Don on Nov 20, 2018 6:58:10 GMT -5
Well, how many people, especially in the US, would disagree with any of that? I mean, nowadays, even actual communists don't defend Stalin, aside from the fringe "tankie" crowd. So writing an article that says "The USSR really sucked at managing their economy" is hardly controversial to anyone. I imagine an actual socialist would argue that the failure of the USSR does not mean that socialism is doomed to failure, any more than the USA being infested with socialism and crony capitalism (according to Don) means that capitalism is doomed to failure. But really, I am not sure where you were looking for disagreement from. ...and this is how it's done. 1)Start with a 2,000 word essay that explains in detail incentives, competition, profits, creative destruction, price signals, innovation, resource management and myriad other components of a functioning economy, notes the utter lack or forced distortion of any of these components in central planning, and gives several examples of countries that have eliminated these components from their economy and the dismal failures that are recorded in the history books from following this unscientific approach to economics. 2) Dismiss everything in the article with a strawman ("The USSR really sucked at managing their economy") that surely every right-thinking person agrees with. 3) Claim victory. "Well, how many people, especially in the US, would disagree with any of that?" Seriously? About 99.9% of the left and over 50% of the right would disagree with tons of that article. Profits are evil, don'tcha know, and price-fixing is important and not uneconomic when it's labor you're price-fixing, and the state SHOULD maintain it's monopoly on primary education and should establish a monopoly in healthcare, and Bernie says we have too many brands of toothpaste. And that's just off the top of my head. Did we read the same article? Rob did say he changed the link a while back.
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Post by Don on Nov 20, 2018 7:25:40 GMT -5
BTW, this ("The USSR really sucked at managing their economy") is not true. The Supreme Soviet was excellent at managing their economy. They even willingly put people to death to manage their economy. They erected vast fences and shot people for trying to escape from their economic hell.
What they sucked at was scientific thought. They believed they could replace critical self-organizing components of the economy with bureaucratic edict, and they did so. They then did everything up to and including killing citizens to keep that economy functioning. And it failed to function miserably. And as we can see in the US, those sectors of the economy most heavily under central planning are precisely those areas where the economy fails to function adequately. Of course, the solution to central planning failures is... more central planning.
The error is not one of execution, it's one of design, as the article rob posted makes abundantly clear.
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Post by Amadan on Nov 20, 2018 9:38:27 GMT -5
"Well, how many people, especially in the US, would disagree with any of that?" Seriously? About 99.9% of the left and over 50% of the right would disagree with tons of that article. Profits are evil, don'tcha know, and price-fixing is important and not uneconomic when it's labor you're price-fixing, and the state SHOULD maintain it's monopoly on primary education and should establish a monopoly in healthcare, and Bernie says we have too many brands of toothpaste. And that's just off the top of my head. Did we read the same article? Rob did say he changed the link a while back. Yes, I did read the article. I do not think that 99.9% of the left and over 50% of the right would agree that profits are evil and price-fixing is important. Speaking of "this is how it's done," what I notice is that you jumped from Tupy's very common-sense observations, that a state-run dictatorship that micromanages every aspect of the economy does things terribly, to your usual ranting about "state monopolies on primary education" and warfleblibbering about whatever pull-quote you can grab from Bernie Sanders. Nowhere did I see Marian Tupy complaining about state-run schools. (In fact, one thing that communist countries have usually done pretty well is churn out highly educated proletariat.) This is how it's done, this is how you do it - refuse to acknowledge that economic models are not a binary, where you choose either "Communist dictatorship" or "Unregulated free market with no stinkin' gummint to tell meat-packers what they can put in their sausages." And then attack straw men, as if minimum wage laws are indistinguishable from Marxist labor practices, as if the existence of the EPA means we live under a dictatorship where no business is allowed to thrive or innovate, as if K-12 public schools have destroyed the American mind. You. Are. Being. Dishonest. BTW, this ("The USSR really sucked at managing their economy") is not true. The Supreme Soviet was excellent at managing their economy. They even willingly put people to death to manage their economy. They erected vast fences and shot people for trying to escape from their economic hell. What they sucked at was scientific thought. They believed they could replace critical self-organizing components of the economy with bureaucratic edict, and they did so. They then did everything up to and including killing citizens to keep that economy functioning. And it failed to function miserably. And as we can see in the US, those sectors of the economy most heavily under central planning are precisely those areas where the economy fails to function adequately. Of course, the solution to central planning failures is... more central planning. The error is not one of execution, it's one of design, as the article rob posted makes abundantly clear. The two are not mutually exclusive, and you're wrong - the Supreme Soviet was terrible at managing their economy. One of the big revelations, when the Soviet Union fell and their books were opened, is that the West learned that it had vastly overestimated the Soviet GNP. We thought their economy, mismanaged as it was, was comparable to ours. In fact, when you removed the smoke and mirrors, their economy was, IIRC, about about the size of Spain's. Which is why they crashed so hard once the USSR collapsed, and set the stage for the rise of oligarchs and autocrats and why so many Russians today still think they had it better under the USSR (because in terms of standard of living, many of them did). I am not arguing that communism could work on a large scale, because you know perfectly well I do not. But you are conflating a whole multitude of problems and shoving them all under the catch-all label "communism" - i.e., everything that is not your preferred model is "communism." Ironically, you sound just like all the leftists who apply the screeching label "Fascist!" to everything non-SJW.
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Post by Don on Nov 20, 2018 9:45:17 GMT -5
Actually, the term I use is central planning. I don't care if it's socialist or fascist in nature, it's unscientific claptrap based on belief in the face of overwhelming evidence that it always results in crippling an economy or the sector of the economy to which it is applied.
And yeah, I'd guess those percentages regarding price-fixing are accurate. Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high.
As for the USSR's economy, believe it or not there were people who knew it was a paper tiger, dependent on US grain shipments to keep its population in check. We were feeding that paper tiger to keep the Cold War going as long as possible. As soon as it collapsed, the War on Terror conveniently re-employed the military-industrial complex.
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Post by Amadan on Nov 20, 2018 9:49:56 GMT -5
And yeah, I'd guess those percentages regarding price-fixing are accurate. Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high. Claiming that people who support minimum-wage laws are also in favor of central planners deciding when you can turn on your heat in the winter is dishonest, Don. I know you see even a little bit of "central planning" as being like a little bit of shit in a stew, but for most people, that is not how the world works. In fact, for pretty much the entire world, that is not how the world works. That's an interesting conspiracy theory, but it's another subject.
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Post by robeiae on Nov 20, 2018 15:50:26 GMT -5
Just to note that the smoke and mirrors aspect of the Soviet economy was propped up not just by the Soviets themselves, but also by useful idiots in the US and elsewhere--especially in academia--through the 50's and 60's, idiots who took the Soviets at their word when it came economic numbers. Some even went to the Soviet Union to witness its economic marvel firsthand. What a great time that must have been to be alive...
That is all, carry on.
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Post by Don on Nov 21, 2018 5:04:31 GMT -5
And yeah, I'd guess those percentages regarding price-fixing are accurate. Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high. Claiming that people who support minimum-wage laws are also in favor of central planners deciding when you can turn on your heat in the winter is dishonest, Don. I know you see even a little bit of "central planning" as being like a little bit of shit in a stew, but for most people, that is not how the world works. In fact, for pretty much the entire world, that is not how the world works. That's an interesting conspiracy theory, but it's another subject. Once again, words in my mouth. "Claiming that people who support minimum-wage laws are also in favor of central planners deciding when you can turn on your heat in the winter" are not my words. What I said was "Minimum-wage laws are price fixing, but the support for them is ridiculously high," which you strawmanned into your version, then accused me of being dishonest for the statement. If you're going to condemn me for my words, please use my words to do so. Thanks. Who's being dishonest here? And as rob pointed out, the Paper Tiger USSR was hardly a conspiracy theory. Guess you missed those articles too, back in the day.
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Post by Don on Nov 21, 2018 5:31:44 GMT -5
Just to note that the smoke and mirrors aspect of the Soviet economy was propped up not just by the Soviets themselves, but also by useful idiots in the US and elsewhere--especially in academia--through the 50's and 60's, idiots who took the Soviets at their word when it came economic numbers. Some even went to the Soviet Union to witness its economic marvel firsthand. What a great time that must have been to be alive... That is all, carry on. Heinlein and his wife went in 1960 and wrote firsthand about the smoke and mirrors.
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