Boomers: The Evil Generation!
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
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I suppose you're too young to remember its successes in the Depression and the Second World War
It is an interesting breakdown of nationalizing some things and being a major first customer for others.
We also have to factor in technological leaps at the time. It's not easy to do, but there is a lot of useful information in the pre-war and peri-war economic data
If you ever come across a good lecture on this topic please, please, absolutely remember to bring it to my attention. There is a lot to unpack in that entire story that is super useful in my opinion
Lexicus
Deity
Yes I know, but you asked
So I was just suggesting that we were ALL too young to remember. You must learn to be more specific.
I was just riffing on the implication that only clueless kids who don't know any better could possibly have a different opinion.
The real point here is that planning is essentially an inevitability in a complex modern economy. The question is in whose benefit planning takes place. Corporations plan the economy notionally for the benefit of their shareholders. The Communist Parties in China and the USSR planned the economy notionally for the benefit of all, but in practice often for the benefit of a connected elite. Democratic governments have planned in the interests of all their citizens from time to time.
To characterize Soviet central planning as a "failure" when it transformed the Soviet state from an agrarian backwater to an industrial superpower capable of resisting the Nazi invasion within about ten years is...strange, tbh. And postwar Soviet planning was surely riddled with corruption and inefficiency, yet the supposedly spontaneous market order that replaced that planning has resulted in a catastrophic collapse in living standards for people living in the countries that once made up the Soviet Union. So I think it is hard to argue that Soviet economic planning was a "failure" or at least, that it was more of a failure than the neoliberal 'shock therapy' alternative that was actually implemented.
Of course, this may beg a question. I am using the welfare of all people in the country as the measure of "success", but other people may feel the welfare of corporate shareholders is more important than the welfare of the population at large.
I'm not using economic growth as a measure of success, I'm using winning the war as a measure of success. Americans take government inefficiency as an article of faith and fail to realize that on an objective, resource-based view, the period when the federal government assumed near-total control of the economy, and coordinated virtually all economic activity with the goal of defeating the Axis, was actually the most "efficient" period in the entire history of the country. That is for example the only time in US history that we've had genuine full employment.
Industries nationalised in the UK after the war tended to keep exactly the same managers and be run in the same way (including how they treated workers) as before they were nationalised. I have little to no faith in state control as a way of socialising the economy.
Lexicus
Deity
Someone posted this article here a while back and I thought it was really interesting.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...ide-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team
I suggest folks read it again. I think it contains a lot of information that can serve as a useful counterweight to this "governments don't know how to do stuff" idea.
For example:
or
This is very true, which is why I'm in favor of policies that do involve actual government planning being administered at the local level while being funded at the federal level.
So you're indifferent to efforts to privatize the NHS
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ok, understand what you did mean now
This is of the utmost importance
My baby boomer youth, the whole period I was at primary and secundary school, the unemployment rate here in NL was on average 1.7%.
A lot of interference of the government as well.
The idea of not being able to get a job was not there. Everybody worked.
It feels good and it delivers economy growth. Both.
Lexicus
Deity
I agree completely. I think full employment policy ought to be the number one priority of every liberal, leftist, progressive, or whatever in the United States (and elsewhere of course, but you know what I mean).
A great post about it imo:
Lexicus
Deity
....and as if on cue, The Baffler puts out a piece on exactly this subject.
https://thebaffler.com/latest/stick...JHlhjnpeFug5UAS8eLJ0g1MxkgrbAXP6oOYWZ6DAq9yTQ
The opening sentences:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/stick...JHlhjnpeFug5UAS8eLJ0g1MxkgrbAXP6oOYWZ6DAq9yTQ
The opening sentences:
Lexicus
Deity
So you're indifferent to efforts to privatize the NHS
No, but the NHS continues to be a far from model employer.
However public services like education and healthcare are different to industry. They've always benefited from greater public support and taken unfair advantage of the dedication of their employees
All to often the industries nationalised were in a poor state prior to nationalisation like the railways and the car industry. They were then starved of investment or used as cash cows. They never managed to inspire a sense of being the peoples or the workers in the general public or their employees. Both Labour and Conservatives showed little sense of having any vision or long term plan. I'd rather see worker representation & ownership schemes in existing companies and improving the legal and tax status of cooperatives so that they aren't at a disadvantage compared to limited and public companies.
Lexicus
Deity
Fair enough. I suppose for me the issue with nationalizing companies or industries is not how they treat their employees but rather how the industry interacts with the rest of the economy. I view nationalization as a tool that mainly works not to democratize the workings of a particular industry or firm but to stop monopolists from extorting everyone else.
For example I favor limited nationalization of banking in the US (basically, I would like to see a public entity handle the payments system and allow for every American to have a checking account without having to pay for it) not because I think the employees would necessarily be treated better by a public entity but because I think carrying out those functions of banking for private profit is unfair to everyone else who has to do business with a bank.
That isn't to say I don't care about the employment relations/working conditions stuff but it just isn't really what I'm thinking about when the subject of nationalization comes up. I favor workplace democracy and "management by consent of the managed" in pretty much every case.
Also in that article the increasing power of AI software able to do more complicated planning.
Reliable forecasting, leading to rewarding planning is key to allocate resources. People and money.
Do be aware it is a top-down machine, only much better "informed" in an systematic way.
This AI will generate a real change... for bigger companies... and ease transfer from private to the govt as (partial) shareholder and civil servants as top-managers. And those top managers will be measurable in their performance.
A. Long way to go
B. most of the current growth of jobs and innovation is coming from SME. In-company in new techs NOT top-down. Interactions with other companies unpredictable (the synergy potential for productivity, growth and higher value)
C. big companies are often in a maturing phase, consolidating phase, buy their innovation by buying SME with the right perks, and pushing out labor all the time. Better (ERP) info systems in place, better known market, more predictability.
I do not think that B. is easily managed by a civil servant culture even helped by AI planning. Much too complex, unpredictable, volatile, etc, etc.
B. needs flanking support and flanking strategy from a government.
B. is often much much better functioning than big companies.... because it is not planned the Bezos way !
The structural limitation, disadvantage is access to a wider market & capital for expanding fast of bigger impact innovations and better trade secrets
The US relied massively on capital and infrastructure built by capital via contracting in both cases. Especially Ford, GM, and Kaiser. But maybe you count contracting as central planning. But by my reading that's a contradiction of the spirit of your point.I suppose you're too young to remember its successes in the Depression and the Second World War
We try and deal with monopolies and cartels via the law, not that it always works.
I'd agree that theres a good case for treating personal banking and mortgages as a public service. I'd say there is for natural monopolies like power and water too.
I think that democratic governments are bad at (and getting worse at) any sort of long term planning not that UK and US business seems any better at that either. Education and the health service seem to be in a state of continual reform and reorganisation here in the UK. Some of the ideas might actually have been good (although I'm sceptical about most of them) but we've usually embarked on the next round of reform before anybody could tell because politicians want quick results.
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