Why not have both? A planned economy in areas where we need one and a market economy in areas where we can afford to make mistakes. This is pretty much what everybody has right now. The main thing that varies from country to country is what is planned and what is free market.

Either way, I don't think centralisation is the answer for most things.

Keep things small and local when you can. Not only will it be more flexible and connected to local needs, but it will also be more corruption-proof.

If you have city offices managing things for their cities, damages when an office becomes corrupted are limited to a single city. If you got a central office for the country and that gets compromised, the scope of the damage becomes much greater. Don't put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.

Atm. for much (and I think it safe to say most) of your economy, corporate offices somewhere far away (often halfway across the world) plans things for you and often not with "you" in mind.

If what you worship is the mom&pop shop at the street corner and generally little guys controlling their destinies, your country's brand of capitalism is an epic fail. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, whether it comes from a government or a mega-corporation.

There is more freedom to be had in many countries that are more "socialist" than your own.

Correction: not only government, any centralised authourity, otherwise, we wouldn't talk about an economic model anymore, but rather a political model.

Have you ever looked around you?

WTF are the big corporation telling their suppliers? And if you don't do as they say, you are gone with the wind.....if you don't abide by THEIR rules, you are gone. They DICTATE the prices, end of story.

As mentioned above, NOT at all, where ever you look. Have a look at the price of gasoline compared to the price of an oil barrel.

You ASSUME a competitive market, which we DO not have, so back to the anti-trust-laws. Like in the moment the price of the barrel went down to a 5 year-low, it might even go further down. Did the price of gasoline go down?

So staying with YOUR example the price would need to drop quite a bit in the moment, according to your example, right?

Now you insert this into your thoughts:

So you are saying, that what is going on in the moment is theft?

hmmmm, what do you think big corporations are doing in OTHER countries. exactly this as they CAN NOT do it any longer in the bigger western countries. Again best example Oil industry: Nigeria. Did you have a look for this?

Cutting down of rainforest in South-east asia for big western corporations, just to plant palm trees too get palm oil and hence destroying everything.

OK, your 2 cents, but still wrong as this is seen as an administrative command economy, with which definition I don't agree either, they had stalinism, which is another form of dicatorship.

And by the way, the creator of this threat wanted to talk about the economical model, NOT the political site. So you missed the point, we were discussing ;)

Sorry have to open the can of worms:

1.) who decides where we need it? ;)
2.) free market implies competition, you just want to deny it. What about if a local producer in a nearby town could produce cheaper?

Your idea sounds nice, it is a little bit, where we are going back to in the moment, but only for the moment and with big problems again. It happens for the food market, but why?

Oh sorry, brandmarked by some guys as SOCIALISTIC ideas......

Why did we went away from this (above) by the way, no not because of capitalism, but rather corporate PLANNED decisions: Oh, it is cheaper to buy/produce in country XYZ, so lets go out of here and produce over there and bankrupt our local supplier. They are producing now with an unfairly competition. How does country a, let's take the US with a min. wage of $8/h IIRC compete with a country, were labout costs only $4 bucks a day and still charge the same as before......not including enviromental damage, health care or the lack thereof.....

In many countries, if you sexually exploit (but not only) kids, you can be tried in your own country and been thrown away for years (rightfully). But the ongoing exploit of other countries kids, sometimes even slave-work is not being held to the same standard?

For me, that is foul-play, but again as I raised before, do we still have democracies or do we already have corporatism?

Couldn't agree more and at the same time disagree more......more on this later, have to go in the moment....

This is a very, very flawed logic! Evil people hate dying too, you know. So if evil people hate getting killed, then getting killed, by your logic, must be good. And getting robbed. And getting hurt etc. All this must be good, because evil people hate it.
...And quite often evil people also hate other evil people. So by your logic evil people are good (as long as they are hated enough).

It's only flawed logic if you apply it to everything. Don't apply it to everything and it works just fine. Obviously if an evil person loves wurst, pommes and ice cream then wurst, pommes and ice cream doesn't = evil. And I'm not here to defend socialism against you. I've learned that defending socialism against people who are against it is just a waste of time. I was trying to make Emob78 leave the thread so he ceases infecting this thread with his ignorant and insane "socialism is evil" posts. That is why I said what I said. He finds the way I defend socialism, very annoying. And from my previous experience with him, when I annoy him too much, he goes away. Everyone should go back to the original topic now because it's a very interesting topic.

I won't address all of the fallacious appeals to ridicule that have been thrown at me (not all by you) along with some of the thoughtful discourse, but I will agree that I have many issues with the way things are in the U.S. IMO, the best way to get rid of most of what I and many others in the U.S. dislike would be to have an amendment to the Constitution that separates business and state much like the separation of church and state. Religion in the U.S. resembles a spontaneous order. That doesn't mean some of them aren't more successful in their membership than others, but they can't use the state to force it on people. For example, the Catholic church has to adapt much more to keep membership than they have ever had to do in the past when they were a state religion. No religion gets a free pass to murder anymore just because they are the preferred religion of the political system. Murder is murder is the ideal of the common rules even if there are some prejudices that exist.

Similarly, the common rule would be that theft would be theft in a separation of business and state where some businesses could no longer use the state as a weapon against other businesses and consumers.

Quite unfair, what you are doing, you are 'kind'of insulting me, without giving me the chance to reply. So please state were you think what was, in your opinion, wrong.

Now, for the point you brought up, a stronger seperation between state and commerce/business:

As I tried to point out in the beginning, look at the robber barons, pure capitalism, that's were you would end up, IF the state would not intervene by setting up laws against it.

The state has to look after their citiziens, so who else should look after them, also in the way of consumers, if not the state? A free board manned by the producers, those who are always against any restrictions?

The problem nowadays is, that the corporations are far too strong to be handled by the consumers only. That worked on a scale like with the old mom and Dad shop. If they screwed you badly you went to another one and told everyone.

But nowadays, as most commodities are being bundled into the hand of a few (namly big corporations), how do you want to break this up again?

Look at the, IMHO redicilous claim when one of the South American countries annexed the oil fields and what the oil industry claimed as a supposed loss. (can't find a link in the moment, but the trial was in the US and their request was slashed down to a fourth or fifth of what they claimed arounf from 15 down to 3 or 4).

Anf it even goes further, look in the US the case of imminent domain missuse by big business: They not only missuse the policial system, but as well the judical.

So IMHO a stronger seperation doesn't really help, they would need to be treated as a natural person, so that the judical system can throw them in jail (Yes, would mean the whole corporation ;) )

And by the way, do you now why businesses where ever allowed to be treated as a legal person?

Quite easy: In most countries ONLY person (natural) where allowed to own property.

OK. I understand where your comment came from. But I don't like the "socialism is good" stance any more than the "socialism is evil" stance. Both are incomplete to an extent, that they become plain wrong. Socialism as an idea is nice, but it doesn't work as soon as humans are part of it. Reality has shown that time and again. And real governments that called (and call) themselves socialist or communist really were (and are) evil. And anyone glorifying this ideology is doing injustice to the victims of the USSR, the DDR, North Korea and all the other dictatorships, who oppressed their people in the name of the people.

And back to topic: while a planned economy and socialism aren't the same by far, they share the one point which I stressed already: they don't work as long as humans are involved, who can exert some kind of power. Only by removing free will can you cull human ambition. As long as humans have power, they will abuse it and no ideology, philosophy or religion can change that.

Reality has never shown that socialism doesn't work. Reality has shown that Stalinism doesn't work. If you want a good example of Socialism, then look at the Scandinavian countries. Just because in the past, governments have decided to call themselves communist or socialist or whatever, doesn't make it so. The USSR was not a socialist country. And the USSR could of renamed itself to Happy Fun Land but would that of made the USSR a happy fun land? You are trying to start a straw man argument here. In fact, reality has shown us, since the beginning of time, that socialism works.

You should also read this person's post. http://www.gog.com/forum/general/a_planned_economy/post69

...and Marxism. And Leninism. And any form of one-party socialism or communism.

Nope. They are social democratic. And social democracies work, I agree (Germany is one, to a certain extent). But that's not socialism. Sure, social democratic priciples are often called 'socialism' in the US, often as a derogatory term, but that still doesn't make it true. One of the central tenets of socialism is the control of all productive economy by the people (through some kind of government) via disappropriation. And l can think of quite some Swedish multi billion dollar corporations, that have definitely not yet been disappropriated or put under the control of the people.

Nope again. It never did. Social democracy works, yes. Full socialism up to now always failed. And every (ostensibly) communist revolution led to a dictatorship. Please name one country that is thriving, is giving all human rights to it's people and is fully socialist. Because I actually know of not a single one past or present. And please don't just cite countries that are social democracies. That's not the same thing by far (like planned economy and socialism aren't necessarily the same thing. So let's not mix things up).

Then you should just say social democracy to avoid this kind of misunderstanding. As I said, I am aware that in the US many people use these two as interchangeable. But that doesn't make it better. Many people also use 'your' when they mean 'you're' and 'there' when they mean 'their' or 'should of' instead of 'should have' etc. ... But the fact that many use a certain word wrong doesn't make it right. Even if it should become accepted in the US that socialism means social democracy (and not socialism), it still is misleading to use it like this. Like equating socialims with a planned economy. Same thing. Sure, you can re-define your terms. But the distinction between socialism and social democracy can be quite important over here. Especially in a country that was divided and where many people (my family included) suffered under a so-called 'real socialistic' state.

One thing I was thinking about, how that socialism thing would have worked out, when there would have been not that pressure from the outside, that pushed the existing system to take measures to keep their citizens in line. After WW2 there were quite some socialist governments emerging in smaller countries over time around the world, but they got smashed fast by outside influence. Cuba is the only one that survived till today. Correct me if I am wrong.

You know what? You are right. Just because a social democracy is a kind of socialism, doesn't make "socialism" the best word to use when talking about social democracy. Just because I'm allowed to call social democracy, "socialism" doesn't make it a good idea when trying to communicate with other people, especially with people outside of the USA. Because like you said, using the word "socialism" will lead to people misunderstanding me and thinking I'm a Stalinist. The word "socialism" is not precise enough to be used in conversation and debates. And one should always be precise as possible in conversations and in debates. So from now on, I will try to call the kind of socialism, I support, "social democracy" in conversation and debates.

Goodie. In that case we even agree on our political point of view, because I support social democracy too. :-)

Okay then back to the planned economy discussion started by Crosmando. "does anyone think that in the modern world, with computers and the like, that a planned economy would actually be possible in an efficient sense, if the entire economy's needs were organized by a huge computer system, or will a market economy always be superior."


I will copy and paste my reply to Crosmando.

"If this huge computer system couldn't be fucked with by human beings then yes. But is it possible for a computer system to be immune from humans messing with it if it's running everything? Humans will desperately try to gain control of it. Because he who controls the machine...controls the world. It would have to be impossible to hack and guarded by an elite army of killer robots. And not the kind of robots from 50s, 60s, 70s science fiction but robots like the Terminator."

So my thoughts are not so far from your thoughts. The only way a computer can handle things for us is if humans can't get their hands on it. Because there is just too much power to gain from gaining control of such a computer... And most human beings crave power...