sci.energy.hydrogen

Fran wrote:
| On Aug 26, 11:13 am, "Morris Dovey" wrote:

|| A "rational" economic planning system was tried by the Soviets.
|
| No, it wasn't. They did "war communism" for a time, essentially as a
| work around in response to Civil War, and the ruin of the agrarian
| economy by the war and a poor harvest and the run down of food
| reserves and the attempt to hold onto industry in the cities. They
| then went to NEP in 1921, which took account of the end of the Civil
| War. Then, as a manoevre again st the left of the party, Stalin
| applied forced march industrilaisation in 1927 and then forced
| collectivisation. They assumed that they'd have to fo it alone, but
| the reality was that the industrial base for socialism had never
| existed, which is of course why Stalin could get power in the first
| place.

Yes - it was a disaster, but that wasn't my point, except to mention
that efforts to exert central control of an economy failed to produce
satisfactory results.

|| One is
|| obliged to consider that their Central Committee was essentially
|| well-informed and well-intentioned.
|
| Why? They weren't. They were a bunch of incompetent venal desperate
| scheming murderous bastards -- in short, much like the Tsarist
| regime they replaced, which was no accident since many of the admin
| and military personnel were the same.

As may be, but the fact remains that they had best access to
information and used that information to formulate a series of 5-year
plans. Personal characteristics aside, it was an impossible task that
resulted in an unintended worsening of conditions.

You'll need to work hard to convince me that any group of people could
have done better at that time.

|| The experiment was a success and
|| yielded the information that such macro systems perform less well
|| than chaotic micro systems based on stakeholder self-interest.
|
| The "experiment" was a success only in keeping Stalin and his
| coterie in power at huge human cost.

An experiment is a success if it provides information - not a specific
result. Even after Stalin's death the _system_ failed to produce
satisfactory results.

|| Market-based systems move the decision-making to, or at least very
|| close to, the individual level.
|
| They can but they often allow small groups to push externalities
| with cost implications onto others, as we now see in energy
| systems. What one needs to do is to rework the notion of
| stakeholders to ensure that costs, benefits and risks fall in the
| right places -- ie. in ways that are parallel with each other. 10%
| of the cost and risk should mean 10% of the benefit. As a general
| rule, one should try to arrange matters so that everyone gets
| something of roughly equal value out of the deal and puts in
| something of equal value at the front.

No disagreement here, although we might not agree on how to transition
from zero-sum norms to win-win norms.

But I'll also rush to offer a reminder and a caution that efforts to
control economic systems are fraught with potential for unintended
consequences.

| Market-based systems are best at allocating resources and delivering
| goods and services where only small numbers of people need to be
| involved. They are less good where the cooperation of very large
| numbers of people is needed. They are ridiculous at the level of
| heavy infrastructure and the use of the term is simply a red
| herring for the wet behind the ears.

IME, all that you've said has much more to do with communication than
the numbers of participants. I have had opportunity to observe a few
endeavors involving 'very large' numbers of people engaged in
cooperative effort. In all of the instances when a breakdown occurred,
it was because the communications web was inadequate for the
information sharing necessary.

I'd be interested in why you might have concluded that market-based
economic systems can't work for other than where only small numbers of
people are involved...

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www. /DeSoto/