Every site is trying to pull a Bonzai Buddy now.
“We need all your info for advertising, not you can’t opt out unless you make an account and give us your email. Oops, looks like I hid the opt-out under a subheader. Amazon is now profiling you.”
WE USED TO CALL THAT SHIT A VIRUS.
ITS EVERY. FUCKING. WEBSITE. NOW
“Hi I’m going to block this entire site until you give me your info, this is very cool and normal.”
Capitalism ruined the internet. The whole thing is malware now.
Show me where this article says it was about the threat to the power of bureaucrats & not the feasibility of cyberneticizing the economy in the first place lmao. If it’s so easy why hasn’t anyone than China even begun to do it with modern technology? Walmart and Amazon sharing information along their chaotic just-in-time supply chain does NOT count. Rich investors prefer to use information technology to get an advantage over others, rather than cyberneticize economies anywhere.
In the Russian version of the article you will find it, including even ministries most opposed to it and references to other attempts. The English version seemed its translation to me on the first glance, a glitch in my firmware so to say.
For USSR it would in theory (not considering politics inside a bureaucratic system) be easier due to the command system of the economy.
And some local transitions of this kind even happened in USSR, but to preserve balance of power between ministries, service branches etc there would be elements in the chain that wouldn’t be converted specifically so to not give away control to a different organization.
That would look as stupid as automated data submission to some analytic center, but some stage of the calculations it would perform (for planning purposes or something else) would be done by human computers. Purely for organizational\political purposes - “no, that other ministry can’t do it without us”.
Or they wouldn’t be global - some plants etc would submit data to some computational center of one ministry, some to another, but those centers wouldn’t share data or expertise.
That was also the case with much less ambitious modernization projects in the USSR.
The english language one also references a book about how there was a failure to network the country for various reasons. There are all kinds of valid historical materialist criticisms of the soviet union but I’m not buying this pop history take about how bureaucrats were threatened by a cybernetic system that barely existed conceptually
The English version doesn’t reference many things other than that book. The Russian version has a rather long list.
The whole history of USSR’s demise consists of various bureaucratic groups perceiving any change as a threat.
Vague historical truisms are not really useful to anybody.
This was over 50 years ago. We’re talking about computers about as powerful as graphing calculators. Handing over planning to something like that is a ridiculous prospect. It wouldn’t have saved the USSR.
The USSR had an overly hefty tribute going to administration and industry, industry was too focused towards military, this planning structure was inflexible for various reasons including external pressure. USSR applied too much external pressure in turn, it supported an unsustainable development policy where third world countries were supposed to be develop in the context of an imperialist financial system with USSR serving as a counterbalance. It’s because the USSR was so successful with parts of its planning that it was able to play this role IMO. Painting pretty broad strokes here.
Maybe better computing devices would have helped them figure out their planning was not materialist, but semiconductors don’t appear out of thin air. These days require extreme metallurgy, precision engineered parts like X ray mirrors & the tables which move chips to carve circuits. They recycle hydrogen gas to keep impurities out.
Let’s please not make such statements without some spreadsheets. They didn’t have to run DALL-E on those computers.
That aside, those times had plenty of specialized (non-universal) counting machines, analog computers for engineering and planning purposes, and those were practically used, and in USSR too.
N-no. It just had sufficient resources on start and, as you said, administrative inflexibility not to notice and not to react to the fact that it actually couldn’t.
You are overestimating the technology required to make such a system an improvement over what USSR really had.
Let me give you a classic historical example of relatively good agricultural planning that still squandered its potential: irrigation with slightly salty Nile water destroying soil over time. Just a really broad analogy.
Can’t be too good at industrializing the country and also incapable of basic planning to the point a graphing calculator changes everything. They were the reason we had a space race bruh
They weren’t that good at industrializing the country. Large part of it had been done by foreign engineers, large part of heavy machinery still in operation in 70s had been bought in 30s for gold, and some “taken” from Germany after 1945 as reparations.
And, eh, what a certain machine will or will not change requires technical arguments. I’m not making statements requiring such, you do.
Also if I did say the opposite of what you say, that’d be sort of supported by existence, again, of computerized networked control systems in USSR not intended for economic planning and exchange.
I bet you’re like three times my age and you still have Barnes and Noble browser history knowledge because you’re rummaging around for political talking points about communism like “they squandered all the resources of great mother russia, the tsar would be so sad” “they couldn’t industrialize, they bought all the equipment with gold, and were given it as pity after the USA singlehandedly defeated Hitler” like lmao
Before we continue, you need to go read Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, a liberal historian who is still better than the dweebs you read.
I’m not talking to someone who thinks the USSR needed to steal industry from the Nazis.
The whole reason the USSR wiped the floor with them was their industrial production.
Where did they get the tanks from?
Did they buy all the tanks with gold lmao?
Delusional and shifting the goalposts to boot. They weren’t good at industrializing, they stole it, so it didn’t count 🤣. What are you basing this off of, I wonder?
You don’t talk to people. Nobody talks like this.
I actually just gave you later examples of how computerized planning means jack shit in the face of external pressure, which is what the USSR was unable to withstand.
Okay so I have to back up my statements with spreadsheets, but you get to use vague historical truisms. I love talking to people online about history.
I’m just saying that USSR had systems capable of processing data necessary for centralized control of air defenses and nuclear missiles, in operation.
And Soviet planning was sufficiently rough for computerization of that kind to be absolutely beneficial for it.
Anyway, it’s not even about processing, which would require machinery, because that could be done in large part by humans still, it’s the idea of such an open exchange of data between institutions and ministries etc, which shot it down.
A purely administrative reason.
I think you are overestimating how powerful the computing systems needed to operate air defense back then were. Some of that shit was pretty analog. Cybernetic systems are all about inputs & outputs, more complicated than just needing processing power. Go watch Eyewar 😎🦾⚙️👀🤩🤖!!!
Chile is a later example that was visibly not saved by interest in cybernetics either. US Chicago School economists pushed for an intervention to overthrow Allende, rape and torture as many people as possible, then their moronic laissez faire economics that don’t even understand what money are face planted. Chilean right wingers and modern Chicago Boys try to ignore that lol
The thing abt it purely being lack of information transparency between different USSR organs resulting in inefficiencies doesn’t strike me as a great historical approach, more trying to fit whatever you’re talking about to a conclusion, in this case that bureaucratic obstruction alone led to the USSR being dissolved. The USSR was too good at industrializing.
Again maybe seeing better statistics about agriculture may have hypothetically convinced them they need Maoism.
Trying to boil everything down to a few interpretations of politics within the USSR is really missing the forest for the trees.
Totally down to keep exchanging information about it long term as long as you don’t say anything weirdly reactionary and get booted from this instance.
Can’t wait for your “N-no.”
response because you don’t actually give a fuck about history, you want to keep inbox notifications at bay. Prove me wrong tho.
You can always cite these examples you know instead of just linking to a Wikipedia article.
You know Wikipedia is highly ideological and has major sourcing issues?
Did you know many of your sources for information about the USSR are literally compromised by NATO intelligence? Simon Sebag Montefiore is in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact book.
Mao Zedong thought would have saved the USSR’s agricultural base