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axeil posted:They showed empirically that the countries using command-style economies were, on the whole, only using their resources about 76% as efficiently as non-communist countries. So the school of economic thought that rejects empiricism managed to empirically prove something? That seems odd. evilweasel posted:So that's why I am generally highly skeptical of marxist thought. I think putting the value system at the wrong level also tends to make marxist thought dogmatic - you must demonstrate first your fidelity to the thoughts of the past and that you are refining and expanding them, not taking some good thoughts and building a new structure out of them. Das Kapital was written a hundred and fifty years ago. It was written in opposition to a world that barely exists today. It has been historically hilariously inaccurate with its beliefs of the inevitability of communism and how capitalist societies would evolve into communism. It has some good insights into flaws of economic methods practiced a hundred and fifty years ago. It is not a useful bible today. People who took those useful insights and rejected the ones that are obviously inaccurate or no longer relevant generally don't describe themselves as marxist - they're social democrats, or socialists, or something else. It's people who don't - who treat it as a psychohistory text that simply needs a little refinement and expansion - that continue to describe themselves as marxist. And that is the biggest problem I have with "marxist" thought. It's not that there's never been anything useful in Marx or subsequent thought based on his work. It's that the good stuff has been extracted and gets used elsewhere. I appreciate the thought in a lot of that post despite disagreeing with you on a bunch of stuff. However this part stuck out to me. I think you're reading a bit too many internet Marxists because while there are some who demand you read Kapital or the various ancient stuff that Marx put together, there's quite a bit of modern Marxist thought that talks about how Marxism works in the actual world of today and doesn't require you to go back and read into the 1800s. It's like thinking that capitalism stopped at Adam Smith. Now you're not going to see as many academics incorporating Marxism purely because it's not great for a career at this point in most countries. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 19:42 on May 3, 2021 |
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May 3, 2021 19:06
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As near as I can tell, that study is using real GDP per capita to determine efficient use of resources. I'm not sure how one follows the other. I'm aware that the follow up question is "well then what would you use?" But I don't necessarily accept that GDP per capita(or per worker) is measuring what it claims to be measuring.
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May 3, 2021 23:53
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Kraftwerk posted:My favorite anecdote here is how in East Germany they manufactured chandeliers to a quota that was unmeetable through normal means. This quota was also denominated in kilos rather than individual units. So to meet the quota they started making them out of lead and heavy metals which resulted in falling light fixtures causing accidents and killing people. That certainly sounds like "Russian cosmonauts used a pencil" levels of cold war chatter.
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May 4, 2021 01:16
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May 4, 2021 01:44
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axeil posted:And yet they were right about this one thing: command economies generally suck at being productive compared to market economies. And they argued it with math and then other non-Austrians went and confirmed the math with empirical observation. Sorry that you hate the Austrians (I do too), but even people you hate can be right sometimes. Does that paper show resource efficiency, or does it show GDP per capita? Or am I reading that wrong?
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May 4, 2021 18:53
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