this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
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That is a big leap from slide 2 to slide 3. As Broton33 says, one central authority will never have perfect information across the entire market and thus will not "maximally optimize each supply/demand connection".
Centralized planning has been tried many, many times in the past 100+ years and it has failed miserably every time. Computers and the Internet won't make it work any better, if tried again in the 21st century, either.
Why not? The internet seems like the ideal technology for more efficient production and distribution. It doesn't even seem like a difficult problem absent the obstructions of capitalism. Not to mention the current system is literally destroying the planet...
Venezuela has access to the internet for their 21st century experiment with socialism and it hasn't turned out very well.
Emails and Web Browsing work almost instantly around the world, but solid economic data that a central planning agency needs to use to make decisions takes time to gather. This it the core of what Broton33 talks about when he mentions the "lack of perfect information". As an example, US businesses make extensive use of the internet, yet despite this, the US Government routinely has to revise the economic data it gathers, months and sometime years after the original surveys. Gathering accurate and timely data is hard. Gathering all the information you need is impossible. If you want to learn more, then do a Google search using the terms "Economics Perfect Information".
As to destroying the planet, yes things are getting warmer, but the free market and the profit motive is also producing technologies that will help cool the planet.