Early 20th Century Technocracy Movement
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Adam Curtis "documentary" is the extent of my knowledge on their attempts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI
It's a monumental complex systems problem. Besides the 1960's computers the Soviets were hampered by their utilitarian ideology that didn't take home decor into consideration.
The Soviet GOSPLAN planning cycle was just too slow. They had an annual planning cycle and a monthly information cycle. Wal-Mart has a weekly planning cycle and a daily information cycle.
China has a national 5-year plan. Here's an analysis of the last 5-year plan (2011-2015) by a US consulting firm.[1]
[1] http://www.kpmg.com/CN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublicat...
Running an economy is a political affair. People can decide not to go to Wal-Mart; they cannot as easily decide not to be a citizen.
Quite frankly, a large majority of the horrors of the 20th century were due to folks thinking "Oh, I understand where we went wrong this last time with our centralized planning. This time will be much better!" There's a ton of reasons for this -- enough to put in a book. Or several books. And those books are out there if you are interested in them.
A related question is this: can you run just a simple store like Wal-Mart through a technocracy? You probably can to a certain degree, then it falls apart. The more you can automate, of course, the less actual value you are creating. Software continues to eat the world.
But no, feedback cycle time is not the issue. Not even close.
As far as markets vs centralization, it was always this way. There was never a purely capitalist or communist society that lasted long and supported a large population. The argument was always the implementation and balance of centralization and privatization.
Starting from scratch in a radically different system is too disruptive, even if the final result would have been better. A lot has to do with culture, as people say you can write Java in any language. You have to change an existing system very slowly.
No, it doesn't. It runs a business enterprise spread through a number of economies that is bigger than Soviet consumer production in the 1970s, which is perhaps a mildly interesting factoid but not particularly significant in assessing planned economies, since most of the markets in which it operates are not planned economies, and, in any case, even for any that are, WalMart isn't doing the planning.
Being bred and raised to govern isn't a good thing in some people. It gives them a sense of entitlement that makes them ineffective. Far better people should have to try out for the position. Which is of course how many dynasties originally begin.
Democracy kind of sucks in ways, but it mostly works better than government by "specialists".
Really I can't wait for government by machine. I have to suppose it's inevitable given time.
Fair point, but it's not unheard of. Pepin the Short is probably the most famous example of how it could happen.
It's the same problem. What if you get a bad machine?
Technocratic views always seem to me to be a variant of the 'old physicist' problem (http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556); that is, smart people in a given field wrongly assuming they are just generally smart, rather than specifically.