Without having read Mises or Hayek myself and only having a general grasp of their theory and of econ, was there anything they got right about the inefficiencies/implausibility of socialist economics? To what extent did the shortcomings of socialist countries’ economies have to do with what they predicted with the ECP?
Considering the successes of socialist countries I’m guessing the answer is “not really”, but I’m confused why they were wrong if that’s the case. What is it that the planners of China, USSR, etc did that basically allowed them to (seemingly) sidestep Mises’ and Hayek’s theory?
I’m aware that the calculation debate is pretty much solved in the 21st century with modern computing and data processing technology but I’m talking about the 20th century socialist countries and their shortcomings. I think Hayek acknowledged you could determine the supply/demand equilibrium mathematically instead of having to rely on markets and “invisible hand”, but he still found planning to be implausible. Was he wrong, and if so why? (In the context of 20th century socialist economics)
Also please recommend me any books/resources on socialist economics if you have any, thanks.
cybersyn gang
I slightly remember hearing at some point from an unknown source that the soviets were working on computational supply/demand problems but lacked the computing power for practical application. I’d love for someone who actually knows what they are talking about to provide a source lol
Red Plenty is a good popular intro. The Soviets actually made extensive use of Analogue computers in resource allocation, which until fairly recently worked a lot better for problems without exact solutions like massive parallel simultaneous equations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Kantorovich This guy is the man behind it. He’s the only Soviet Economist to win the Nobel Prize. (yes I know Nobel didnt make it shut up.)
He used a system called shadow pricing to assign backend resource values for goods without having an actual frontend price system. The problem was if employed piecemeal it quickly results in resource imbalance, it needs to be rolled out to a closed economy.
Peoples republic of walmart is a really fun and easy read on planning and the shortcomings of planning the the CCCP. If you want a really good deep dive into the socialist calculation debate and planning check out Towards a New Socialism by paul cockshott.
According to the book people’s republic of walmart it is a moot point because computes became hella smart, also there were bigger flaws that were never solved in the USSR like information overload at the top of the centralized network + shit data due to falsified reports from factories
That’s all I dare to say on this subject
Nah they lost of debate hard (to a market socialist of all things lol), which resulted in Hayek literally losing his mind, abandoning academia, and becoming a full time unhinged propagandist
