xhotaru

There's no difference in the number of powerful assholes in the market or the socialist economy, only a difference in their goals, I think. It's not about what should be right, because regardless it all ends up to the buraucrat with The Plan. The higher you are in the hierarchy the more brutal you are, by how much abstract everything else becomes

Imagine someone trying to argue HIV medicine or glasses don't fulfill a social need because the majority of people don't have AIDS or don't need glasses.

that's the thing I can totally imagine an all powerful economy overseer immagining that! When you're managing at such a high level, it's extremely easy to detach and dehumanize, and think in terms of raw numbers and extreme utilitarianism

I could see a healthy situation where various artisan goods of particular artistic designs have purposefully limited distribution, which incentivizes people to actually visit the state/province/city in order to purchase the good.

That's actually a really good idea! I like that

In that decision is the problem, because that decision is still guided by The Goal, and no matter the number of independent guilds and such, if The Plan denies them resources, they have no other choices.

It doesn't have to be about productivity though. The Goal can be any other thing. Industrialization, militarization, independence, whatever. Whatever The Goal is, the planned economy is subservient to it, and that may result in the things I've been concerned about in this post

What is scary of splitting the planned economy from the independent economy is that the planned economy controls the independent one regardless. Sure, there can be independent worker coops and enterprises and such, to try and make stuff. But they need resources and funding for that stuff, which is definitely mostly generated by the planned part. And the planned part can say "fuck off" at any time. There's a big incentive for them to use this power over them to lead them in certain ways.

Yeah that'd be incredible

Thanks a lot for the explanation, it makes sense in my head.

I think you have a great point, in the sense that tracking and getting raw genuine data for the planner bureaucrats to use has never been easier. In a way it sounds awesome that they could do that... though I'm also terrified of it going overboard. With how much data services like Facebook and Google collect about every single one of their users, to think the government would have extremely easy access to it all and make choices with it in mind is terrifying.