Absolutely, and we see this being to put to use already by large corps like Amazon and Walmart at scale. China also heavily relies on information processing technology for planning. Incidentally, information processing played a big role in arresting the pandemic in China.
I’m fairly skeptical if not outright critical. If anything, algorithms employed by big multinationals have shown to be highly unreliable and to create or perpetuate injustices. This is well-known in the case of so-called AI biases (and other AI-driven copyright/abuse bots), but we should also mention the many logistical failures (supply chain) of the past years that have driven shortages.
The leaders and their algorithms from their ivory towers have created such complex transnational supply chain which (apart from their terrible ecological impact) are very fragile. Why do we have sunflower oil shortage here in France right now, when France is one of the top 10 global producers? Why is the IT industry terrified when there is a single fire at ASML in the Netherlands and shutting down this single factory could stop the rolling out of new chip manufactures worldwide?
Many of the problems we face today are due to decisions being made at a higher level, with supposedly informed data. I don’t think data should be discounted entirely, but given the so many biases (assumptions) and errors/manipulations getting into the system, data-driven policy is i believe a very dangerous road.
As a libertarian communist myself, i would argue we need to decentralize planning/governance, empower local communes and producers so they can address their needs, instead of empowering sociopathic global entities to ruin their lives due to opaque processes. Long live the soviets, death to the Nation State! Vive la Commune!
AI biases are a problem in certain domains such as social interactions. I don’t really see how this applies to the domain of managing supply chains.
Most of the problems in western world stem from the fact that it’s driven by capitalism, as opposed to being a byproduct of central planning. China uses central planning at a far greater scale than the west, and it’s pretty clear they’re getting very different outcomes as a result of having a different political system.
Decentralization has advantages in some areas and centralization has advantages in others. The reality is that either extreme is not likely to produce good results. The real problem is that capitalism works in the interest of capitalists who are a tiny minority. This will be the case as long as capitalism remains the dominant global ideology, and that’s where the focus should be.
When capitalism is abolished it will be possible to try all kinds of different socialist systems, and see which ones perform better. I would always caution against dogmatism. We should always assess the current situation and come up with solutions that fit the problems at hand. This will always be an evolving situation. Sometimes more centralization will make sense and sometimes it will be better to decentralize. The current pandemic is a perfect example where a centralized effort in China is working much better than ad hoc efforts across the western world.
Exactly, I agree 100%, trying all kinds of socialist systems is out of question though. Changing systems requires lots of blood and isn’t cheap. Thinking about most stable socialism systems wrt time, which is super tough, is required and be chosen.
Most of the problems in western world stem from the fact that it’s driven by capitalism, as opposed to being a byproduct of central planning.
Capitalism is a form of central planning. The State sets guidelines and regulations, and oligarchs set directions for their economic empires. So it’s a multi-party centralized planning, but it’s certainly not decentralized: the workers/users have no say in whatever happens.
Sometimes more centralization will make sense and sometimes it will be better to decentralize.
Centralization is dangerous. It creates power structures and incentives to abuse them. Of coursing pooling together resources is a good thing, but in my opinion this must always be consented by every involved party, as in a federation. If a few communes that get along fine want to cooperate on some projects, fine… but if some people start imposing on a commune to behave in a certain manner (as the USSR did by replacing Soviet power with State power), then that’s a situation of abuse/exploitation.
The current pandemic is a perfect example where a centralized effort in China is working much better than ad hoc efforts across the western world.
I don’t know much about the pandemic in China, but i know in France the pandemic response was a centralized one, and a complete disaster. Not that it’s wrong because it’s a centralized response, but it certainly does not help that the State attacked decentralized initiatives such as fining/arresting people making free food distributions in popular neighborhoods.
Capitalism is a form of central planning. The State sets guidelines and regulations, and oligarchs set directions for their economic empires. So it’s a multi-party centralized planning, but it’s certainly not decentralized: the workers/users have no say in whatever happens.
Again, as I’ve already said, the problem with capitalism has nothing to do with central planning. The issue is that the goal of work is to produce capital for the business owners as opposed to social value for the society.
Centralization is dangerous. It creates power structures and incentives to abuse them.
Decantralization is also dangerous because it makes it difficult to carry out large scale coordinated efforts. As I’ve already pointed out, problems like the pandemic or the global climate crisis require large scale planning and coordination that is difficult or impossible to achieve via federated efforts.
don’t know much about the pandemic in China, but i know in France the pandemic response was a centralized one, and a complete disaster.
The pandemic response in China stopped the pandemic. The reason the response in France failed was due to the fact that the government of France represents the interests of capitalists, and France had the same response as every other capitalist nation. All the examples of centralized efforts producing positive outcomes are found in socialist countries which are China, Cuba and Vietnam.
To sum up, problems of capitalism are tangential to the problems of centralization and decentralization. Centralization can produce good outcomes only within a system that’s meant to serve the interests of the majority. And, as I’ve stated in a prior comment, in practice you likely want a combination of centralized and decentralized efforts to leverage the strengths of both where appropriate.
IT has always been a thing since the 50s, and no matter how big they grow, they can’t force centralized portals on all 7.9 billion people, so the result will always be biased.
“Garbage in, garbage out” as data-scientists say. No matter the advanced processing capacity, you will always fail at the data collection step, and any attempts at improving that will still fail, all the while creating a dystopian surveillance system.
Read “Seeing like a State” for a good in-depth analysis why central planning will always fail.
