Is deflation truly that bad for an economy?

[twiifm]

central planing is not about what consumers should consume, its about what producers should produce... the current system is dictating consumers what to consume.

Producers produce what they think (and try to find out) what consumers want to consume. 
The incentive to produce what consumers would desire is so large, that there's a continuous battle for the attention of consumers.  No central planning, who couldn't care less about the consumer's desires, can cope with the incentive of producers wanting to satisfy consumers in a new market.

The rule is not authoritarian if you dont make it so, people could vote on priorities

The problem with voting is that it doesn't cost you much.  You might vote that you want the moon, and eat it too.
The "put your money where your mouth is" is a much more secure way of voting.

I am not groupie of central planning I just see it as an eventuality... Unless and only unless we break through a new frontier and transcend the limits of earth.

The main problem I see with central planning is that it will always be corrupt, and claim to work for the general good, while serving the interests of the central planners, or their cousins.

The problem of central planning is ineffiency.  Corruption has to do w people not systems.  Unregulated free market is equally corrupt (like all the bitcoin scams)

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[dinofelis]

I dont think Nash equilibrium means what you think it means.

I think I explained that in detail before.  
In a "repeated vote" system, you base the others' behavior on their strategy in the "previous" round (that's all you know) and you optimize the outcome for yourself by picking your own optimal strategy GIVEN the strategy of the others. 

If the strategies taken by everybody in the previous game is a Nash equilibrium, then everybody will take the SAME strategy again in the next round.  So everybody's strategy will remain stable throughout successive rounds.

[dinofelis]

The problem of central planning is ineffiency.  Corruption has to do w people not systems.  Unregulated free market is equally corrupt (like all the bitcoin scams)

I differentiate between corruption and scam.  Corruption, for me, is claiming to work for the general good, while working for your personal advantage against the general good ; or, having received privileges for the general good, and using them for your personal advantage against the general good.  A public function gives power and public means to somebody who is supposed to use that power and those public means in the general interest.  If he uses it against the general interest, and for his personal advantage, then that is corruption for me.

I don't see how you can be corrupt in a free market where nobody received any privileges, any public means, and nobody is supposed to do anything else but to serve his own personal interest.

A scam is simply, and on purpose, not honouring a contract (because you put terms in it which you knew you couldn't or wouldn't honour). 

Selling you some pills that make you 20 years younger, is a scam, because you have no idea how to make such a pill, and no intention to give me one.  You give me something else, and so you don't honour your part of the contract.

[GreenStox]

I really like these debates that go nowhere.

Deflation is good for the economy ok, i dont know what proof you got that it isnt, but you should check your facts then !

[twiifm]

I dont think Nash equilibrium means what you think it means.

I think I explained that in detail before.  
In a "repeated vote" system, you base the others' behavior on their strategy in the "previous" round (that's all you know) and you optimize the outcome for yourself by picking your own optimal strategy GIVEN the strategy of the others. 

If the strategies taken by everybody in the previous game is a Nash equilibrium, then everybody will take the SAME strategy again in the next round.  So everybody's strategy will remain stable throughout successive rounds.

How does this lead you to say social systems cant work?

Explain w your exanple applied to healthcare.

Whats the game?

Who are the players?

What are each players strategy?

What are successive moves?

[twiifm]

The problem of central planning is ineffiency.  Corruption has to do w people not systems.  Unregulated free market is equally corrupt (like all the bitcoin scams)

I differentiate between corruption and scam.  Corruption, for me, is claiming to work for the general good, while working for your personal advantage against the general good ; or, having received privileges for the general good, and using them for your personal advantage against the general good.  A public function gives power and public means to somebody who is supposed to use that power and those public means in the general interest.  If he uses it against the general interest, and for his personal advantage, then that is corruption for me.

I don't see how you can be corrupt in a free market where nobody received any privileges, any public means, and nobody is supposed to do anything else but to serve his own personal interest.

A scam is simply, and on purpose, not honouring a contract (because you put terms in it which you knew you couldn't or wouldn't honour). 

Selling you some pills that make you 20 years younger, is a scam, because you have no idea how to make such a pill, and no intention to give me one.  You give me something else, and so you don't honour your part of the contract.

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

[GreenStox]

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

So you want to have a tyrant ruling over us to protect us from tyrrany? You realize how nonsense that is?

If people are sheeps they do whatever they want with them. Otherwise a free society will also have rules, its not the wild west, it just that it doesnt have rulers.

[twiifm]

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

So you want to have a tyrant ruling over us to protect us from tyrrany? You realize how nonsense that is?

If people are sheeps they do whatever they want with them. Otherwise a free society will also have rules, its not the wild west, it just that it doesnt have rulers.

When did I say that?  I merely claimed that corruption occurs because of legal framework not economic systems

[GreenStox]

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

So you want to have a tyrant ruling over us to protect us from tyrrany? You realize how nonsense that is?

If people are sheeps they do whatever they want with them. Otherwise a free society will also have rules, its not the wild west, it just that it doesnt have rulers.

When did I say that?  I merely claimed that corruption occurs because of legal framework not economic systems

Corruption occurs because the legal framework enables is. I promise you 100% that without taxes, there would be no corrupt politician to steal our money.

What does it matter if a politician is corrupt, they already steal our money by taxes, if that doesnt bother anybody, than corruption shouldnt either.

[thaaanos]

I ask what is marketing? is it about finding what people want? if so what stops use of marketing in central planning?
Central planning is not about giving people a take it or leave it choice, its about meeting demand optimaly, and  about not inflating demand

You are somehow right that if there would not be any scarcity, then you could just as well centrally plan all the needs and desires, produce them, and send them off to who-ever wanted them. 

But the problem is the allocation of resources to those actions that respond best to consumer's demand, all while knowing that they cannot be satisfied all of them.  So the question is not only: "what do consumers want ?", but also "what demands of consumers can we satisfy by using a limited and shared amount of resources".  And that's where competition comes in: I may know a way to satisfy a consumer's demand by using 3 resources A and 5 resources B ; now someone might come up with the idea to satisfy that same demand (or a very similar one) by using 4 resources A and 3 resources C.
First of all, a centrally planned economy may not know that someone had this idea.  Next, we don't know if it is a good idea: is it better to consume 3 resources A and 5 resources B or rather 4 resources A and 3 resources C ?  That will depend on how those resources are solicited by OTHER needs and by OTHER ideas by other people to do this.
So without knowing all these things, there's no way to find a good deal.  Moreover, why would someone make any EFFORT to try to find another way of producing, if there's no personal gain to it ? 

So in the end, if you are going to centrally plan the rewards  to people finding new ways of producing (taking risks !  It might not work) equal to the gain they allow to make, then you could just as well let them do their business in a free market, no ?

And if not, then these people will not be motivated to find, and even to tell, their invention of a new way of transforming resources into products. 

Those problems you described are the problems that only now we can address, IT infrastructure can provide communication of ideas, distributed concesus, simulation, risk analysis, this is why i claim there is no proper central planning deployed yet
Inventors are not motivated by money, just as people are not motivated by money. Sure they need them to cover basic needs but what drives them to excel is social status.

Oh and about the nash eq debate, economy had never ever be in a nash eq, and i just wanted to show you why that is. The equilibrium is the laser dot, and the economy is the cat

[thaaanos]

Open source projects are centrally planned no?
Do we really need that many browsers, other to satisfy company vanity or platform lock in? Dont they all look the same?
I think that innovative projects can be allowed to operate in a free market but once technologies, services, products mature and become mainstream, they can be extracted and fused into a single entity that can evolve the tech/service/product the open source way.

Partly we do that already by the standarization process but with some reluctancy and only on specs not on actual products.
And mature markets generally gravitate to a few competitors that would rather merge if allowed.I say in this case lets not pretend that they operate in a free market, merge them, take them over, and remove them from the free market game into a centrally planed scape

[dinofelis]

Those problems you described are the problems that only now we can address, IT infrastructure can provide communication of ideas, distributed concesus, simulation, risk analysis, this is why i claim there is no proper central planning deployed yet
Inventors are not motivated by money, just as people are not motivated by money. Sure they need them to cover basic needs but what drives them to excel is social status.

They are motivated by celebrity and by an over inflated ego.  So they would over-sell their invention.  The proof of the pudding is the eating.  There's no way to know (except in very stupid cases) whether an idea really works, in all the details, until you've done it.   Thinking that you can simulate an economic activity with all the details is an illusion.  You don't know if the guy you've paid to do the testing is going to do his job correctly.  You don't know if the machine you ordered will work exactly as promised on the contract.  Whether it will be delivered on time.  There are so many little details between an idea and an actual product on the shelves, that it is only when it is really done that you really know how much resources it used.  On the other hand, you can have inventions that are not completely understood by their inventors themselves, but they work.  They would not be able to convince you, but they believe in it.  They might be right or wrong.

The only way to make sure that what people claim, is true, is by making put them their money where their mouth is.

And then there's something that no central planning can ever achieve: the whimsicalness of people's desires.  What would sell like crazy today, would not interest any one any more tomorrow.   You see that with children: one day there's a buzz and everybody wants Pokemon monster cards.  A few years later, nobody wants them any more.  Nevertheless, on the moment itself, they are a source of immense satisfaction for the kids.   How is your central planning going to find that out ?

Oh and about the nash eq debate, economy had never ever be in a nash eq, and i just wanted to show you why that is. The equilibrium is the laser dot, and the economy is the cat

Of course.  Like nothing is ever truly in thermodynamic equilibrium.  But that's not a reason to say that, as anyway things are not in an equilibrium, I'm constructing my house on the top of a pin head, as equilibrium is in any case an illusion.

[dinofelis]

Open source projects are centrally planned no?

No, not at all.  What is the central planning of all open source software ?
Open source software is open to competition.  Some is never used, others become great success stories.

You mean that WITHIN a single open source project, there is some kind of organisation ?  Sure.  Like within a company, there's some kind of organisation. 

But I'm not aware of any central authority that decides what are going to be the next open source projects on which volunteers are going to work, and forbid others to spend their voluntary effort on useless open source projects :-)
If you want to, you can start an open source project yourself, without getting an order from the Central Open Source Planning Center, you know !
Whether your project will be successful or not, will only depend on whether people start downloading it or not.

[dinofelis]

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

I call a monopoly, if it is freely established, and not a privilege of law, simply a way of doing business.  Certainly not corruption.
The only exploitation of labor is when there is slavery, that is, people are forced with the threat of violence, to work.  Any other free agreement to sell labor against something else is business.

If you starve to death, and I propose you a contract where you get one bowl of rice per week if you work 16 hours a day for me, then that's a business proposal.  You're probably better off with it, than without it.  Up to you to decide.  That's business.

Monetary influences on legislation is exactly corruption, because legislation is "supposed to be for the general interest" and clearly people with the privilege to make legislation and supposed to act that way, take personal advantage to adapt legislation to their "customers".
In other words, they're supposed to write law in the general interest, and that's why they got their privilege to write the law, and in fact they are setting up a commercial activity of selling their privilege to their customers who pay for it.  

I consider warlords in Africa as "states".  To me the state is the violence monopolist.  The one with the biggest gun.  If that happens to be a guy on a jeep with a big machine gun, then that guy is now locally "the state".  No matter what they think at the United Nations.  The one pointing a gun at you and telling you what to do, is the state.

[twiifm]

Wait you think free markets cant have corruption?  What about monopolistic practices or monetary influence on legislations.  Or just take any African states ruked by warlords.  Or exploitation of labor?

Corruption has to do a slack of legal framework more tgan anything

I call a monopoly, if it is freely established, and not a privilege of law, simply a way of doing business.  Certainly not corruption.
The only exploitation of labor is when there is slavery, that is, people are forced with the threat of violence, to work.  Any other free agreement to sell labor against something else is business.

If you starve to death, and I propose you a contract where you get one bowl of rice per week if you work 16 hours a day for me, then that's a business proposal.  You're probably better off with it, than without it.  Up to you to decide.  That's business.

Monetary influences on legislation is exactly corruption, because legislation is "supposed to be for the general interest" and clearly people with the privilege to make legislation and supposed to act that way, take personal advantage to adapt legislation to their "customers".
In other words, they're supposed to write law in the general interest, and that's why they got their privilege to write the law, and in fact they are setting up a commercial activity of selling their privilege to their customers who pay for it.  

I consider warlords in Africa as "states".  To me the state is the violence monopolist.  The one with the biggest gun.  If that happens to be a guy on a jeep with a big machine gun, then that guy is now locally "the state".  No matter what they think at the United Nations.  The one pointing a gun at you and telling you what to do, is the state.

So you are a person with no ethics.  Gotcha.  Wow just wow, you are an actual opponent of indentured servitude! 

BTW none of these things have to do with whether the economics is free market or socialist.  My point is that people are corrupt not systems.  Corruption can occur in socialist as well as free market systems. 

[dinofelis]

How does this lead you to say social systems cant work?

I never said that social systems can't work.  The confusion comes maybe because I said that most social engineering is based upon that misunderstanding.  Social engineering.  Wanting to transform the social relationships of humans, like communism or the like.  Wanting people to want other things than their own interest.

[dinofelis]

So you are a person with no ethics.

Everybody is always with some or other ethics.  Ethics is the study of the concepts of "good" and "bad".

My ethics is this:  "good" is what is good for me, "bad" is what is bad for me.  This seems to be such a self-evident truth, that I don't even see how you could consider any other form of ethics, except in the frame of a religious conviction or so.

There is namely only one source of "good" and of "bad": that are my subjective experiences of "good feelings" and "bad feelings".  If I wouldn't have those feelings, all actions would be totally indifferent with respect to any "good" or "bad", wouldn't they ?

To a computer, nothing has a meaning of "good" or "bad" I would think.  A computer is ethically totally indifferent is my idea (unless you would consider a computer to be a sentient being).

But of course, I would like YOU to adhere to another kind of ethics.  I would like you to consider "good" MY advantage, and not YOURS.  I would like you to consider "bad" MY disadvantage, and not yours.  If I could talk you into such behaviour, I would consider that as good.

And that's the basis of "morality": morality is the behaviour I want others to have that is in my advantage.

I don't want others to steal me, I don't want others to cheat on me, I don't want others to be violent with me, I want others to be generous with me, I want others to be friendly with me ...

All these things is what we usually put into one or other morality.

So of course we are indoctrinated with "morality" from childhood onward.  Because others want us to have a moral behaviour.... to their advantage.

[twiifm]

How does this lead you to say social systems cant work?

I never said that social systems can't work.  The confusion comes maybe because I said that most social engineering is based upon that misunderstanding.  Social engineering.  Wanting to transform the social relationships of humans, like communism or the like.  Wanting people to want other things than their own interest.

I'm not a Socialist or Communist so don't mistake what I post as a proponent for Socialism or Communism.  But I don't think you understand what Socialist means.  Doesn't mean to transform social relationship of humans or making them want things other than their own interest.

It means the ownership is socialized (owned by the workers) as opposed to owned by capital (owners).  If applied to macro like the Communist experiments of the 20th Cent., then clearly they all failed (with the exception of China)

But it can be applied to micro as well.  I.e. co-ops vs corporations.  Socialized healthcare (in Sweden, Canada, Uk, etc..).  Social Security in USA.  And so on


Re:  Ethics.

Clearly paying a starving person a bowl of rice to work 16 hrs a day is unethical.  If you want break it down to economics.  If you exploit labor like this where will you get consumers?  When people have decent wages they can become consumers so in the long run the producers will enjoy more wealth.  

[thaaanos]

Those problems you described are the problems that only now we can address, IT infrastructure can provide communication of ideas, distributed concesus, simulation, risk analysis, this is why i claim there is no proper central planning deployed yet
Inventors are not motivated by money, just as people are not motivated by money. Sure they need them to cover basic needs but what drives them to excel is social status.

They are motivated by celebrity and by an over inflated ego.  So they would over-sell their invention.  The proof of the pudding is the eating.  There's no way to know (except in very stupid cases) whether an idea really works, in all the details, until you've done it.   Thinking that you can simulate an economic activity with all the details is an illusion.  You don't know if the guy you've paid to do the testing is going to do his job correctly.  You don't know if the machine you ordered will work exactly as promised on the contract.  Whether it will be delivered on time.  There are so many little details between an idea and an actual product on the shelves, that it is only when it is really done that you really know how much resources it used.  On the other hand, you can have inventions that are not completely understood by their inventors themselves, but they work.  They would not be able to convince you, but they believe in it.  They might be right or wrong.

The only way to make sure that what people claim, is true, is by making put them their money where their mouth is.

And then there's something that no central planning can ever achieve: the whimsicalness of people's desires.  What would sell like crazy today, would not interest any one any more tomorrow.   You see that with children: one day there's a buzz and everybody wants Pokemon monster cards.  A few years later, nobody wants them any more.  Nevertheless, on the moment itself, they are a source of immense satisfaction for the kids.   How is your central planning going to find that out ?

Oh and about the nash eq debate, economy had never ever be in a nash eq, and i just wanted to show you why that is. The equilibrium is the laser dot, and the economy is the cat

Of course.  Like nothing is ever truly in thermodynamic equilibrium.  But that's not a reason to say that, as anyway things are not in an equilibrium, I'm constructing my house on the top of a pin head, as equilibrium is in any case an illusion.

Nobody denies the merits of prototyping, it doesnt need to be in the production line to determine the product parameters, nor does the public hold the ultimate test on success or failure.
If enough data are available short term forecasting is accurate enough, note central planning models having less entropy is easier to simulate than free market (i think)

art, fashion, games and trending items are true impossible to plan, but they are thankfully candidates for self-production (3d printing), ie Cards against humanity, designs are immaterial anyway, custom manufacturing is a good thing.
So what about million dollar holywood movies? art always required funding, I dont regard it as a commodity or product, artists should be funded though, not art-projects maybe the same could apply on inventors, angel investing can be done centrally too.

[deisik]

It means the ownership is socialized (owned by the workers) as opposed to owned by capital (owners).  If applied to macro like the Communist experiments of the 20th Cent., then clearly they all failed (with the exception of China)

China got where it got today after they essentially allowed private capital ownership in the late '70s when Deng Xiaoping took power and began carrying out significant economic reforms. They switched from a planned economy to a mixed economy with an open market (a dig at central planning). In short, "Communist" China is as Communist as any other Capitalist country out there...