They’re “hard issues” because we don’t have a centrally planned economy, we have to rely on the market to provide solutions.
Through a combination of marshaling the forces of production to build a renewable infrastructure and strict fossil fuel rationing during the build-up phase I think we could get the crisis under control within 5 years.
Some of the issues stem from material and energy limitations regardless of human organisation structures. Fossil Fuels are stored sunlight over a long period of time that means that burning them has a high yield and that’s given us a very high EROI society (one where there’s an abundance of energy for purposes that aren’t basic functioning).
I recommend reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Tainter who discussing the energy limitations of society. Its before our understanding of energy limitations of technology and he’s by no means a leftist but it is still a good introductory text to it.
I’ve read Limits to Growth. I understand there are physical limits and that we can’t just grow our way through this crisis. Industrial civilization can not continue as it is.
But central planning would allow for us to transition to a lower energy society.
I agree but there’s a lot of detail about what activities a lower energy society precludes and my point is that energy intensive “AI” (mostly thinking about LLMs rather than targets applications of ML) probably aren’t part of it.
Deepseek showed that these chatbots can be run much more cheaply than they have been and it isn’t really necessary to build giga warehouses of servers. It might be possible to run them on even tighter hardware specifications too.
Of course, chatbots aren’t AI and the fact that they’re trying to use them as AI isn’t going to work out anyway lol
Yes its clear that the path of throwing more and more resource at LLMS to improve quality has been a lazy growth focused approach that we could do better if we actually try a design focussed approach.
For me though it comes back to the fact we are facing a polycrisis and most of our resource should be focused on looking for solutions to that and I’m not sure what problem* this technology solves yet alone what problem relating to the polycrisis.
*I realise what they are designed to solve is a capitalist problem. How can we avoid paying staff for service and creative type jobs to increase profit.
They’re “hard issues” because we don’t have a centrally planned economy, we have to rely on the market to provide solutions
As humans are very bad a predicting the future, centrally planned economies come with so many added problems that market based solutions are frequently more realistic.
What happens when you don’t like the product that the state is offering?
Petition the central planners to offer something else. Central planning can still be democratic.
What about independent artists and creators?
Well without the need to sell their art they could create whatever they want without fear of it being unmarketable. An artist could just create without needing to sell it to anyone.
Figuring out what things people will like is next to impossible.
Businesses do this all the time! They do market research to find out what people want, they monitor current events and customer demands and social media. There’s no reason a central planner can’t do the same.
Not going to work unless the government has somehow unlimited resources. Otherwise why would they spend money and resources on something they don’t know how popular would it be?
What reward do those independent creators receive in exchange of doing their art? Do they just work for free?
And sometimes they succeed and other times they don’t. In a planned economy you’d essentially be stuck with whatever the government monopoly has decided to manufacture and you won’t have any other choice.
Not going to work unless the government has somehow unlimited resources. Otherwise why would they spend money and resources on something they don’t know how popular would it be?
Why wouldn’t they know how popular it would be? They can see popular demand and social media and trends, the same as any privately owned company does when they do market research.
They can still do test products to see if new products are popular too, just like private companies do today.
What reward do those independent creators receive in exchange of doing their art? Do they just work for free?
Do you think people only create art when they can get paid for it? It’s the exact opposite! Without the need to be paid, they can make whatever art they want. Creating art is its own reward, they can still express themselves and share it with the public.
And sometimes they succeed and other times they don’t. In a planned economy you’d essentially be stuck with whatever the government monopoly has decided to manufacture and you won’t have any other choice.
That’s only the case if the central planners need to ration. Surely you can imagine a planned economy that offers choices.
It’s not like everyone needs to wear burlap and drinks Soylent.
Because historically this has been ineffective. Nobody knew Harry Potter or hunger games would become so popular. Nobody could have predicted Godzilla movies would make such a comeback. That’s why you need more than one creator or entity to produce such things
In their own personal projects of course. But if you want a musician to do music for your project or you want to use an artist for something, they’ll inevitably ask for something in exchange.
How would they decide what gets produced and what doesn’t? Which clothing brands get funding and which ones don’t? Which authors receive money for their books and which ones don’t? Which YouTubers and streamers? Inevitably you’ll have a shortage of products because trends change easily and it’ll take time for the central government to adapt.
Are you really this poorly educated in economics that you do not get that for profit businesses and nation states function under completely different realities?
Last I checked, businesses and nations exist in the same reality and follow the same physical laws.
They function under entirely different realities when it comes to economics. If you need this explained to you then you shouldn’t be making definitive statements about anything related to economics in any regard. Microeconomics and macroeconomics exist for a reason.
Below is a link to MIT’s open coursework providing free classes on specific subjects. You might consider looking into intro micro and macro.
They’re trying to strip the wiring from the walls. They’re not even running like a business, they’re running it like VC.
Let’s not pretend they’re trying to centrally plan anything. The doggy department hates central planning. They just tell ChatGPT to come up with things to cut
This is a strawman. Centrally planned does not mean immutable, and markets are no more able to predict the future than anyone else. What it does allow is the disregard of the only quantity markets are capable of maximizing, profit.
This is not a strawman. Im not constructing a false point to argue against while ignoring their claims. Im in fact discussing them directly.
Markets don’t need to predict the future as the market responds naturally more quickly than central planning can adjust for errors or unexpected aspects of the plan. one of the major points of failure for central planned economies is the lack of responsiveness. A centally planned economy would not avoid environmental catastrophe as the Soviets were responsible for several with profit motives.
Markets respond only to profit changes, and even then they are far from perfect. It’s simply an economist fiction that they are uniquely good at adaptation, one proof being the utter failure of markets to handle the global catastrophe climate change is going to cause.
Markets respond to the needs of the market. Historically speaking this works much faster in market based economies than centrally planned economies because market economies don’t require prestidigitation to function correctly.
No one claims market economies are perfect just that they function better than planned ones at our current technological levels.
Central planned economies have resulted in devastated ecology as well. Industrialized economies are the real cause not the economy running them.
Markets find the need of a market and respond to it only when there is profit. It is completely uninterested in other needs, this is why externalities are a problem.
I don’t hold it to the standard of perfect, but markets are simply not effectively dealing with the realities of climate change.
Industrialization is definitely an issue, the larger issue is that with economies exclusively driven by markets, even when every knowledgeable person on the matter is aware of an issue like climate change, markets need to be fought and bent against their very nature to deal with the fact that it’s less profitable to take care of the environment.
Markets find the need of a market and respond to it only when there is profit. It is completely uninterested in other needs, this is why externalities are a problem.
Externalities exist in all systems. Im not sure why you are mentioning them in this case given they are not unique.
The reality is markets respond much more rapidly and accurately than planned economies can. This might change if AI becomes a reality but right now planned economies will continue to be less efficient.
I don’t hold it to the standard of perfect, but markets are simply not effectively dealing with the realities of climate change.
That is true for planned economies as well.
Industrialization is definitely an issue, the larger issue is that with economies exclusively driven by markets, even when every knowledgeable person on the matter is aware of an issue like climate change, markets need to be fought and bent against their very nature to deal with the fact that it’s less profitable to take care of the environment
Not really and again it isn’t as if environmentalism has been the focus of the Marxist states IRL either. The USSR was devastating to their environment.
Externalities exist in all systems. Im not sure why you are mentioning them in this case given they are not unique.
I bring them up because they demonstrate my point. Externalities need to be taxed because profit is the only need markets respond to, which was my point.
The reality is markets respond much more rapidly and accurately than planned economies can. This might change if AI becomes a reality but right now planned economies will continue to be less efficient.
Only using a contorted definition of efficiency that favors markets, namely maximizing GDP. It does not speak to the efficiency of throwing away food, cutting up old clothes, letting people die from curable illness, or to reiterate the point, making the only planet we’ve ever seen sustain life unsuitable for us because it’s simply impossible to convince market economies to seek anything other than profit.
Not really and again it isn’t as if environmentalism has been the focus of the Marxist states IRL either. The USSR was devastating to their environment.
Agreed, the USSR was also going through rapid industrialization. The difference is market economies have an absolute global hegemon, and still cannot meaningfully address the reality of climate change because it would effect profits.
They’re “hard issues” because we don’t have a centrally planned economy, we have to rely on the market to provide solutions.
Through a combination of marshaling the forces of production to build a renewable infrastructure and strict fossil fuel rationing during the build-up phase I think we could get the crisis under control within 5 years.
… I’ll admit that’s just vibes, though.
I get the sentiment and I wish it were true.
Some of the issues stem from material and energy limitations regardless of human organisation structures. Fossil Fuels are stored sunlight over a long period of time that means that burning them has a high yield and that’s given us a very high EROI society (one where there’s an abundance of energy for purposes that aren’t basic functioning).
I recommend reading The Collapse of Complex Societies by Tainter who discussing the energy limitations of society. Its before our understanding of energy limitations of technology and he’s by no means a leftist but it is still a good introductory text to it.
I’ve read Limits to Growth. I understand there are physical limits and that we can’t just grow our way through this crisis. Industrial civilization can not continue as it is.
But central planning would allow for us to transition to a lower energy society.
I agree but there’s a lot of detail about what activities a lower energy society precludes and my point is that energy intensive “AI” (mostly thinking about LLMs rather than targets applications of ML) probably aren’t part of it.
Deepseek showed that these chatbots can be run much more cheaply than they have been and it isn’t really necessary to build giga warehouses of servers. It might be possible to run them on even tighter hardware specifications too.
Of course, chatbots aren’t AI and the fact that they’re trying to use them as AI isn’t going to work out anyway lol
Yes its clear that the path of throwing more and more resource at LLMS to improve quality has been a lazy growth focused approach that we could do better if we actually try a design focussed approach.
For me though it comes back to the fact we are facing a polycrisis and most of our resource should be focused on looking for solutions to that and I’m not sure what problem* this technology solves yet alone what problem relating to the polycrisis.
*I realise what they are designed to solve is a capitalist problem. How can we avoid paying staff for service and creative type jobs to increase profit.
As humans are very bad a predicting the future, centrally planned economies come with so many added problems that market based solutions are frequently more realistic.
Every corporation is centrally planned.
I recommend reading The People’s Republic of Walmart. Businesses have figured out central planning, there’s no reason it can’t be done for nations.
Corporations are run very differently from countries.
What happens when you don’t like the product that the state is offering?
What about independent artists and creators?
Figuring out what things people will like is next to impossible.
Petition the central planners to offer something else. Central planning can still be democratic.
Well without the need to sell their art they could create whatever they want without fear of it being unmarketable. An artist could just create without needing to sell it to anyone.
Businesses do this all the time! They do market research to find out what people want, they monitor current events and customer demands and social media. There’s no reason a central planner can’t do the same.
Not going to work unless the government has somehow unlimited resources. Otherwise why would they spend money and resources on something they don’t know how popular would it be?
What reward do those independent creators receive in exchange of doing their art? Do they just work for free?
And sometimes they succeed and other times they don’t. In a planned economy you’d essentially be stuck with whatever the government monopoly has decided to manufacture and you won’t have any other choice.
Why wouldn’t they know how popular it would be? They can see popular demand and social media and trends, the same as any privately owned company does when they do market research.
They can still do test products to see if new products are popular too, just like private companies do today.
Do you think people only create art when they can get paid for it? It’s the exact opposite! Without the need to be paid, they can make whatever art they want. Creating art is its own reward, they can still express themselves and share it with the public.
That’s only the case if the central planners need to ration. Surely you can imagine a planned economy that offers choices.
It’s not like everyone needs to wear burlap and drinks Soylent.
Because historically this has been ineffective. Nobody knew Harry Potter or hunger games would become so popular. Nobody could have predicted Godzilla movies would make such a comeback. That’s why you need more than one creator or entity to produce such things
In their own personal projects of course. But if you want a musician to do music for your project or you want to use an artist for something, they’ll inevitably ask for something in exchange.
How would they decide what gets produced and what doesn’t? Which clothing brands get funding and which ones don’t? Which authors receive money for their books and which ones don’t? Which YouTubers and streamers? Inevitably you’ll have a shortage of products because trends change easily and it’ll take time for the central government to adapt.
No, they are not and how a business functions amd how a national economy function are incredibly different.
Walmart isn’t a federation, it’s very centrally planned. It’s also larger than a lot of nations.
The only thing missing is a military.
Are you really this poorly educated in economics that you do not get that for profit businesses and nation states function under completely different realities?
Last I checked, businesses and nations exist in the same reality and follow the same physical laws.
Central planning works and you have been lied to by those same businesses that don’t want to be nationalized.
They function under entirely different realities when it comes to economics. If you need this explained to you then you shouldn’t be making definitive statements about anything related to economics in any regard. Microeconomics and macroeconomics exist for a reason.
Below is a link to MIT’s open coursework providing free classes on specific subjects. You might consider looking into intro micro and macro.
https://ocw.mit.edu/
I literally recommend a specific book, do you think I’m so fucking stupid that I dont know what economics is? 😒
Related: MIT’s pooled investments returned 8.9 percent last year and its endowment stands at $24.6 billion.
Yes, because it’s so great that they’re trying to run the nation like a business right now.
They’re trying to strip the wiring from the walls. They’re not even running like a business, they’re running it like VC.
Let’s not pretend they’re trying to centrally plan anything. The doggy department hates central planning. They just tell ChatGPT to come up with things to cut
This is a strawman. Centrally planned does not mean immutable, and markets are no more able to predict the future than anyone else. What it does allow is the disregard of the only quantity markets are capable of maximizing, profit.
This is not a strawman. Im not constructing a false point to argue against while ignoring their claims. Im in fact discussing them directly.
Markets don’t need to predict the future as the market responds naturally more quickly than central planning can adjust for errors or unexpected aspects of the plan. one of the major points of failure for central planned economies is the lack of responsiveness. A centally planned economy would not avoid environmental catastrophe as the Soviets were responsible for several with profit motives.
Markets respond only to profit changes, and even then they are far from perfect. It’s simply an economist fiction that they are uniquely good at adaptation, one proof being the utter failure of markets to handle the global catastrophe climate change is going to cause.
Markets respond to the needs of the market. Historically speaking this works much faster in market based economies than centrally planned economies because market economies don’t require prestidigitation to function correctly.
No one claims market economies are perfect just that they function better than planned ones at our current technological levels.
Central planned economies have resulted in devastated ecology as well. Industrialized economies are the real cause not the economy running them.
Markets find the need of a market and respond to it only when there is profit. It is completely uninterested in other needs, this is why externalities are a problem.
I don’t hold it to the standard of perfect, but markets are simply not effectively dealing with the realities of climate change.
Industrialization is definitely an issue, the larger issue is that with economies exclusively driven by markets, even when every knowledgeable person on the matter is aware of an issue like climate change, markets need to be fought and bent against their very nature to deal with the fact that it’s less profitable to take care of the environment.
Externalities exist in all systems. Im not sure why you are mentioning them in this case given they are not unique.
The reality is markets respond much more rapidly and accurately than planned economies can. This might change if AI becomes a reality but right now planned economies will continue to be less efficient.
That is true for planned economies as well.
Not really and again it isn’t as if environmentalism has been the focus of the Marxist states IRL either. The USSR was devastating to their environment.
I bring them up because they demonstrate my point. Externalities need to be taxed because profit is the only need markets respond to, which was my point.
Only using a contorted definition of efficiency that favors markets, namely maximizing GDP. It does not speak to the efficiency of throwing away food, cutting up old clothes, letting people die from curable illness, or to reiterate the point, making the only planet we’ve ever seen sustain life unsuitable for us because it’s simply impossible to convince market economies to seek anything other than profit.
Agreed, the USSR was also going through rapid industrialization. The difference is market economies have an absolute global hegemon, and still cannot meaningfully address the reality of climate change because it would effect profits.