Hacker News Reader

Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

Intelligent people tried central planning and it didn’t work. Repeatedly.

If you are going to propose banging our head into that wall again you can’t just naively point out how great it sounds from first principles. Been there, done that. Instead you need to seriously grapple with those failures and convincingly explain why this time will be different.

View on HN

Seems to be working well for Walmart. A major problem with central planning is timely flow of accurate information. Although this is still a problem, it has become much easier to do so than in the past.

Do not confuse forms of governance intended for whole societies with those that work for smaller, more controlled and more selective organizations.

Walmart cannot be compared to the USA or China for sure, but your criticism is a little pedantic and presumptuous. There are national economies that are in the same order of magnitude as, or smaller than, that of Walmart's.

As context, if my numbers are right, then at ~$550B annual revenue Walmart would be around the GDP of Belgium and Thailand.

Or about the 25th largest economy in the world, if looking at it that way.

And it's a better corporate analogy than most, considering it essentially does everything from retail to services.

And it’s failing again! Interest rate interventionism has been slowly eroding social and economic mobility in the west for 30 years!

Why is decentralized planning impossible? Why can't areas of importance be picked by democratic vote?

It seems like a possible option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com