This is a debate that drives me crazy because it obfuscates the very real problem of central planning. Ecosystems require diversity and achieve stability via dynamism. In an economic ecosystem, we can achieve central planning by communism or capitalism by means of design, monopolization, and regulatory capture. Capitalism has won out over communism time and again not due to its philosophical merits, but because it does not take a straight line towards central planning. To think that we can understand the needs (both cultural and physical) of a populous so well that we can adequately give and take in mono-measure is intellectual (and cultural) hubris. Capitalism is beginning to fail us, because we have failed to restrict the development of monopolization and regulatory capture. However, the solution is not a top down management of resources."Take Uber. Huge company," Bastani says. "Its idea is that by 2030 it will have this huge global network of driverless cars. That doesn’t need to be performed by a private company. Why would you have that? In London, we have Boris bikes. Why couldn't we have something like Uber with driverless cars provided at a municipal level without a profit motive?"
Yes, any future organization must be distributed. In this sense I prefer understanding the future in a Marxist lens as opposed to a Communist lens. Marx hated government and saw the future as eventually leading towards the disintegration of the state. Communism, in contrast, was built on a centralized state... Yup, agreed. I recommend checking out Zero Marginal Cost Society (2014) by Jeremy Rifkin where he goes into detail about the fall of capitalism and the rise of the "Commons". Actually, the "Commons" is an entity that, with its reliance on social and creative capital, and its inherent distributed non-hierarchical nature, does lend itself to sensible Marxist analysis.This is a debate that drives me crazy because it obfuscates the very real problem of central planning.
Capitalism has won out over communism time and again not due to its philosophical merits, but because it does not take a straight line towards central planning. To think that we can understand the needs (both cultural and physical) of a populous so well that we can adequately give and take in mono-measure is intellectual (and cultural) hubris. Capitalism is beginning to fail us, because we have failed to restrict the development of monopolization and regulatory capture. However, the solution is not a top down management of resources.
An Uber mass transit system doesn't preclude other solutions. Why can't we have both?To think that we can understand the needs (both cultural and physical) of a populous so well that we can adequately give and take in mono-measure is intellectual (and cultural) hubris