Interestingly, he also mentions that central economic planning doesn't work (although I am not so sure I completely agree with that thesis), but this sounds very similar to Cybersyn's design.
The Soviet Union sucked, but it lasted an extremely long time.
The moral of the story is central planning kinda does work, just not very well if you do too much of it.
I believe it would be more productive to argue about where the layer boundaries should be, rather than endlessly arguing about whether one or the other layer should even exist. (Because they'll both always exist. People will help each other out even in a free-for-all; and black markets will always come into existence in rigid, fully-planned economies.)
> Central panning doesn't scale
On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability.
The problem is that dictatorships (both countries and private companies) exist to benefit those in power. When push comes to shove everybody else is expendable.
I don't know about the internal workings of Amazon specifically, but many corporations are set up as hierarchical "business units" that each operate as separate companies within: selling their products and services within the company. There's still a market, not everything is determined centrally.
> On the contrary, it scaled pretty well in China and in Soviet Russia, leading to the two cases of the fastest economical growth on the planet. The problem is not scalability.
China grew much faster after it instituted market reforms. I'm not as familiar with Soviet Russia, but I'd be surprised if it grew faster than similar market-based countries during the same time period.
The overwhelming majority of companies, including Amazon, does not allow different units, departments or teams to compete with each other by providing the same service.
Essentially each BU or even team is a little monopolist.
At a country level (not talking about Amazon) these systems are fragile and don't handle volatility well.
Re: Amazon - you can't compare countries with private corporations.
Yes, that's my whole point.
> Re: Amazon - you can't compare countries with private corporations.
...and why? The similarity is more than evident.
Or rather, ultimately the people made their choice, central planning was scrapped and people could but American goods. So in a way the competition helped, people ultimately picked the superior option and the inferior option went under. But it took a very long time for that to happen, capitalism is way faster.
Countries engage in international trade and also go to war. If anything they compete more ruthlessly.
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3524078
Central planning fails to give the little people what they want. Walmart's central planning is to ensure the profits continue to flow up to the share holders. The workers are expendable, and get a bare minimum the profits (as wages).
Central planning in a communist regime is exactly the same - it enriches the regime, at the expense of the people.
"I really hate these corporate overlords, what can we do to fix it? I know, what about giving the corporate overlords all the power in the entire country? Yeah, that will fix it!"