Is there any real difference between . . .

[Trausti]

How is it based on central planning? You think the government hands out business plans to the top corporations? More than half of government spending is on social welfare and that doesn't generate any money. The government depends on the private sector for taxes. I wouldn't even say it's a layered cake with government on top and private sector on the bottom. It' more of a marble cake all mixed together. All manner of powerful interests have their own plans and their own agendas.

How it works is through the defense department and the military industrial complex.

Take something like computers.

The government does ALL the grunt work. It does all the necessary basic research and development. Once something marketable is possible the private sector takes over.

Call it what you want, but that is not the so-called free market at work. It is government planning at work.

The government invests in some basic research and development and the private sector refines and expands it for profit. You bet. And the private sector on its own invests and researches in a technology and the government uses it for its own purposes (radio, transistor, insulin shots, smart phones). You bet. It's a good system and we all benefit. It's not central planning, though.

 

[NobleSavage]

How is it based on central planning? You think the government hands out business plans to the top corporations? More than half of government spending is on social welfare and that doesn't generate any money. The government depends on the private sector for taxes. I wouldn't even say it's a layered cake with government on top and private sector on the bottom. It' more of a marble cake all mixed together. All manner of powerful interests have their own plans and their own agendas.

How it works is through the defense department and the military industrial complex.

Take something like computers.

The government does ALL the grunt work. It does all the necessary basic research and development. Once something marketable is possible the private sector takes over.

Call it what you want, but that is not the so-called free market at work. It is government planning at work.

That is straight up bullshit. I had this argument before and dug up the studies on R&D spending and it was about 50/50.

 

[NobleSavage]

I gotta get some work done. I'll do my best to get back and play.

 

[Trausti]

Eh, just compare Russia today with the Soviet Union of 30 years ago. An oligarchy is far from ideal, but the store shelves are full and the people enjoy a measure of economic liberty. But why this comparison?

Why not compare the communist Yugoslavia with the current remnants?

Poor comparison. Not sure how much oligarchy plays a role in that area of the world; whereas oligarchy is a conspicuous feature of post-soviet Russia. But Slovenia and Croatia are doing quite well.

 

[untermensche]

How it works is through the defense department and the military industrial complex.

Take something like computers.

The government does ALL the grunt work. It does all the necessary basic research and development. Once something marketable is possible the private sector takes over.

Call it what you want, but that is not the so-called free market at work. It is government planning at work.

The government invests in some basic research and development and the private sector refines and expands it for profit. You bet. And the private sector on its own invests and researches in a technology and the government uses it for its own purposes (radio, transistor, insulin shots, smart phones). You bet. It's a good system and we all benefit. It's not central planning, though.

Just take one of your examples, the transistor.

It wasn't invented in Bell labs but it was improved and made marketable there.

But why did Bell labs exist?

Because the government granted AT&T a monopoly.

At the bottom we find government planning and control.

 

[ksen]

anyways . . . so what's the difference between the government centrally planning the economy and a very small group of families having the power of concentrated wealth to control the economy?

 

[untermensche]

anyways . . . so what's the difference between the government centrally planning the economy and a very small group of families having the power of concentrated wealth to control the economy?

Again, it all depends on the level of democratic control over that government.

Unfortunately the same small group of families that dominates the US economy also controls the government.

The question is; Is oligarchy preferable to democracy?

 

[untermensche]

How it works is through the defense department and the military industrial complex.

Take something like computers.

The government does ALL the grunt work. It does all the necessary basic research and development. Once something marketable is possible the private sector takes over.

Call it what you want, but that is not the so-called free market at work. It is government planning at work.

That is straight up bullshit. I had this argument before and dug up the studies on R&D spending and it was about 50/50.

R&D can only be done in the private sector if there is something marketable to make the money necessary for R&D.

The government provides something marketable and then of course the private sector can use that to make money to do it's own R&D.

 

[laughing dog]

Why not compare the communist Yugoslavia with the current remnants?

Poor comparison. Not sure how much oligarchy plays a role in that area of the world; whereas oligarchy is a conspicuous feature of post-soviet Russia. But Slovenia and Croatia are doing quite well.

You forgot Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia. And whether or not Croatia is doing well is a matter of opinion. Certainly all the ethnically cleansed victims are not. And all of those republics are oligarchial in nature.

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I think there are so many dimensions to the OP question that there is no definitive answer.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The US gov. budget is what 3-4 trillion and the GDP is 16 trillion? I'm thinking, no, it's not centrally planned.

It is based on central planning and wouldn't exist without it.

No capitalist economy has ever had much success without massive central planning.

I guess you're defining the word 'capitalism' broadly to include such things as Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism. I usually use it only to describe the Free Market, and use words such as Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism to describe Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism.

 

[untermensche]

It is based on central planning and wouldn't exist without it.

No capitalist economy has ever had much success without massive central planning.

I guess you're defining the word 'capitalism' broadly to include such things as Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism. I usually use it only to describe the Free Market, and use words such as Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism to describe Monetarism, Keynesianism, Supply-Side Economics, Demand-Side Economics, Welfarism, and Corporatism.

So you use it to describe something that has never existed. Something you just know is great.

Good for you.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So you use it as an umbrella term to mean everything. That means "capitalism" is defined as "economic system".

So, is the capitalism you support socialism?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

an economy centrally planned by the government and an economy essentially run by a few families that control most of the wealth?

Yes.

The problem with oligarchs is that they are so filthy rich, that they have no reason to really strive for efficiency, so economies in oligarchies tend to suck. Ukraine for example. But a government, even if centrally planned, still in principle have at least the motivation to always do better. In practise though central planning is so abysmal that the results might be indistinguishable from an oligarchy.

A central economy is basically an oligarchy of one.

The more competition in the economy the better the economy.

 

[Jayjay]

The government invests in some basic research and development and the private sector refines and expands it for profit. You bet. And the private sector on its own invests and researches in a technology and the government uses it for its own purposes (radio, transistor, insulin shots, smart phones). You bet. It's a good system and we all benefit. It's not central planning, though.

Just take one of your examples, the transistor.

It wasn't invented in Bell labs but it was improved and made marketable there.

But why did Bell labs exist?

Because the government granted AT&T a monopoly.

At the bottom we find government planning and control.

It's not an example of planning, unless you think the government made AT&T a monopoly so that they would invent the transistor. It's not central planning, to give money and let them decide what to do with it... that would be decentralized planning.

 

[ksen]

I think there are so many dimensions to the OP question that there is no definitive answer.

You're probably right. I think what I was trying to get at is why do the people who rant against government "control" in the economy seem to have no problem with oligarchical "control" of the economy. Seems to me that for a truly free market to work wealth would need to be spread around more so that the power that comes with wealth accumulation doesn't concentrate into too few hands.

 

[Trausti]

Poor comparison. Not sure how much oligarchy plays a role in that area of the world; whereas oligarchy is a conspicuous feature of post-soviet Russia. But Slovenia and Croatia are doing quite well.

You forgot Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia. And whether or not Croatia is doing well is a matter of opinion. Certainly all the ethnically cleansed victims are not. And all of those republics are oligarchial in nature.

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I think there are so many dimensions to the OP question that there is no definitive answer.

The issues in Bosnia, Serbia, and Macedonia are ethnic not from oligarchy. And I don't know how you determined that Slovenia and Croatia suffer from oligarchy. There's nothing on the Google (in contrast to Russia). Elaborate?

 

[Trausti]

anyways . . . so what's the difference between the government centrally planning the economy and a very small group of families having the power of concentrated wealth to control the economy?

Again, it all depends on the level of democratic control over that government.

Unfortunately the same small group of families that dominates the US economy also controls the government.

The question is; Is oligarchy preferable to democracy?

So those families are preventing you from starting a business? The Waltons put a horse head on your pillow, did they?

 

[fromderinside]

I think there are so many dimensions to the OP question that there is no definitive answer.

You're probably right. I think what I was trying to get at is why do the people who rant against government "control" in the economy seem to have no problem with oligarchical "control" of the economy. Seems to me that for a truly free market to work wealth would need to be spread around more so that the power that comes with wealth accumulation doesn't concentrate into too few hands.

If this were a chess game and Putin was the representative for oligarchy he just lost. How far the Russians have fallen.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I like Chalmers Johnson's stuff, mainly about the American empire.

But he was an Asia expert and a PhD in economics.

He used to say the Asian tiger economies are far more controlled than the U.S. He characterized it as a third way, between capitalism and communism.

This is from 1982:

As a particular pattern of late development, the Japanese case differs from the Western market economies, the communist dictatorships of development, or the new states of the postwar world. The most significant difference is that in Japan the state's role in the economy is shared with the private sector, and both the public and private sectors have perfected means to make the market work for developmental goals. This pattern has proved to be the most successful strategy of intentional development among the historical cases. It is being repeated today in newly industrializing states of East Asia - Taiwan and South Korea - and in Singapore and other South and Southeast Asian countries. As a response to the original beneficiaries of the industrial revolution, the Japanese pattern has proved incomparably more successful than the purely state-dominated command economies of the communist world. Since the death of Mao Tse-tung even China has come to acknowledge, if not yet emulate, the achievements of the capitalist developmental state.

What do I mean by the developmental state? This is not really a hard question, but it always seems to raise difficulties in the Anglo-American countries, where the existence of the developmental state in any form other than the communist state has largely been forgotten or ignored as a result of the years of disputation with Marxist-Leninists. Japan's political economy can be located precisely in the line of descent from the German Historical School - sometimes labeled "economic nationalism," Handelspolitik, or neomercantilism; but this school is not exactly in the mainstream of economic thought in the English-speaking countries. Japan is therefore always being studied as a "variant" of something other than what it is, and so a necessary prelude to any discussion of the developmental state must be the clarification of what it is not.

 

[laughing dog]

The issues in Bosnia, Serbia, and Macedonia are ethnic not from oligarchy.

There are a multitude of issues of which the "oligarchal" nature of the economies is but one.

And I don't know how you determined that Slovenia and Croatia suffer from oligarchy. There's nothing on the Google (in contrast to Russia). Elaborate?

Unclear response in my part, "those republics" referred to Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia.