Project Cybersyn (2022)
bactra.org
bactra.org
There are a number of very subtle insights contained, in particular there's a tension between the "cybernetic" model he proposes, and sensitive dependence on initial conditions (Lorenz etc.) which as far as I know has yet to be resolved.
The CCRU produced a lot of talented philosopher/writer/artists but Land definitely went a bit far out there and never came back.
The connection between what the CCRU did and Wiener-style cybernetics is also a little strained. I don’t think a layperson would be all that interested in the former if they were looking for more of the latter.
For similar ideas on cyber-positivity without the insanity, I'd recommend Michael Downs' "Capital vs Timenergy" (soon to be republished as "Capital vs Subjectivity"), and Poliks & Trillo's "Expocapitalism" [0].
I agree, perhaps... I think I got something out of slogging my way through Fanged Noumena (although I did throw in the towel near the end--there's an essay written entirely LiKe ThIs and I just bounced off of it, DNF).
If we are talking about accelerationism(s) instead of cybernetics, I much preferred Gruppo Di Nun's Revolutionary Demonology. It's at least written in a human register.
It's on my shelf! Haven't gotten to it yet, looking forward to it. Also interested to read Reza Negarestani's "Intelligence & Spirit"
It's on my shelf, next to Cyclonopedia! Regrettably, I haven't made the time to read either. There aren't enough hours in the day.
That problem is now solved.
Mainstream economics doesn’t even have a non-tautological theory of equilibrium price.
So what “everything else” are you referring to?
> The labor theory of value (LTV) posits that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the socially necessary labor time required to produce it under prevailing conditions
I see the framing of "optimal" pricing as inherently ideological. "Optimal" for achieving which socioeconomic goal?
Is your position that your pricing is not more "optimal" than market based pricing? Just because you're using moral terms doesn't mean you're not making a value judgement.
If theres no empiric evidence, how can you claim that you can simply use LTV to price market inputs?
We do, however, have plenty of empiric evidence for how the current pricing mechanism works and based on that I figure it might be time to try something new?
https://unlearnecon.medium.com/astonishingly-poor-empirics-c...
What is your preferred alternative theory of equilibrium price?
Also consider that unemployment exists, thus the quantity demanded of labor is lower than the quantity supplied, meaning the price of labor is above equilibrium. If you claim equilibrium price == value, you imply that workers are paid more than the value of their labor. Heh.
The value described in the LTV is the equilibrium price, it’s not exact to real world prices because supply and demand are not exactly equal.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/equilibrium.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_equilibrium
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/equilibr...
It's not a circular definition, unless you also think "freezing point" is a circular definition because it refers to the freezing point of a substance. Supply and demand are both functions dependant on price, equilibrium is the intersection point Qd(P)=Qs(P).
If supply and demand set the equilibrium price, and "value" is just defined as that equilibrium price, labor does zero explanatory work. You must explain how socially necessary labor time independently calculates the price before looking at supply and demand. The moment you say "value is just whatever price supply and demand balance out at," you have abandoned the LTV and adopted neoclassical market theory while keeping the word "labor" as an empty label.
If you don't use "equilibrium price" to mean the equilibrium of supply and demand, you're just using it as a synonym for "value" as defined in the LTV. Which is meaningless.
Btw Marx himself said that "value" is NOT equal to equilibrium price. If price equaled LTV value at equilibrium capital intensive industries with few workers would have abysmal profit rates compared to labor heavy ones. Since market competition equalizes profit rates across industries, equilibrium prices permanently diverge from labor values. LTV describes a theoretical cost-anchor, not the equilibrium price.
obligatory https://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/
1. Every large corporation in the world has tried a similar "Let's get a bunch of statisticians to quantify our business and we'll manage the company by looking at the graphs" experiment at least once, and it always explodes in a combination of manipulated metrics and Goodharts's Law
2. Every centrally-planned economy in the world that makes plans based on data from individual factories has been massively impacted by a combination of falsified metrics and Goodharts's Law
But because it was destroyed in a CIA-backed revolution, we don't actually know how it would have turned out, so modern Communists can convince themselves that it would have ushered in Utopia!
The problem of getting accurate data started to be solved when bar codes and RFID tags came in. It's possible for a factory to fake "we made 431 washing machines today." It's hard to fake "we made 431 washing machines today, their serial numbers were scanned as they left the factory, scanned again as they arrived at the various distribution centers, and scanned again when they were shipped to a customer, and scanned again when the customer received them." It's not airtight, but faking it requires a sizable fakery operation which tends to be detected eventually. Much real world activity is driven by all that "where's my stuff" data, and if the data is way off, people notice.
For large classes of products and services today, there is no real price competition. There just aren't enough players to make a market. The magic number seems to be four, from an EU study. Less than four major players in direct competition, and prices don't go down.
Unlike USSR they simply do it on shorter timescales, too, and with better customer feedback. Something Cybersyn actually targeted, as it's closer to Toyota Production System (as much done at lowest level in small decision loops) than centrally managed GOSPLAN or large american FMCG giants
I was wondering the same after PRW lol. Recently I had the chance to ask a friend of mine who worked in Google Infra (years ago) if they had ever tried to 'liberalize' their infrastructure planning; something like having internal business units bid on space, power, and compute instead of distributing it top-down. He said that yes, this was actually something like their original operating model, and the outcome was that YouTube basically bought up every piece of hardware in the company and then leased them out to other verticals at a profit.
There are a few small examples that come to mind (co-ops and communes mostly), but I can’t think of any that have been successful at scale. Running an internal market would be almost pure overhead, so if it worked it would really have to be efficient to be worthwhile.
In addition to your Samsung example, I know of a major tech company whose services division often buys hardware from competitors because they get a 40% discount and priority deliveries when stock runs low. If they were to buy the in-house alternative, they'd be paying list price and be at the back of the queue for deliveries.
There's also huge scope for "funny money" Hollywood accounting-style practices, where internal prices become entirely disconnected from supply, demand, or any sort of underlying value - which actually results in the organisation being even more dominated by the whims of senior leadership than they otherwise would be.
(These problems are very similar to those experienced in country-level command economies too, of course)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/07/16/do-inte...
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/4385-failing-to-plan-h...
Basic point is just that operations research/supply chain management was heavily developed by the USSR to support the central economy and now it's used by every major retailer (among others) to manage supply chains that are massively larger than anything the USSR ever got close to.
How many times has that actually happened in real life (opens history book) (oh-no.gif)...
Or even better, "leak" that there might be metrics (that are in reality false), and then see who allocates resources towards maximizing them. Favor allocating resources to those who hit your internal metrics, favor de-allocating resources towards those that hit your "honeypot" metrics.
This all kind of depends on having direct reportees who have a great degree of latitude in how they spend their resources I suppose.