> Economic central planning is a fool's errand.

crazy, because the two biggest cases of economic central planning are the USSR which grew faster than any civilization ever (a literacy rate of 30% to 100% in 60 years) and China who is currently making the United States world power look like a toddler.

There's clearly something to central planning, it's still up in the air if you can totally plan an economy centrally. I tend to agree with Chibber.

That is nothing but an ideological statement without any evidence, one that is being disproven as we speak.

Free market economics haven't worked out great for the vast majority of people.

This really gets at the core problems with communism as I see it.

For starters I think the only way for communism to actually work would be with robust checks and balances in place to properly address corruption within the government. AFAIK, basically all communist governments have started as autocracies. That's a really bad combo for corruption. The ideal communist state would arise from democracy, but I don't think democracy will ever create a communist state.

Next, I don't really think state control of all markets is a good idea. A good state would be too slow to react market requirements. You really want your population to self sort and organize as much as possible. That's what makes sure everyone gets all the scarfs they want. That said, I think there are fundamental duties that capitalism does not properly handle. For example, building roads or running a fire department. Capitalism, IMO, works best when there is a truly competitive market in place. Food production would be a good example where capitalism works well (but still might need government support since it's vital to survive).

Now to the USSR specifically (but AFAIK a lot of communist states are like this) the other big problem that goes along with corruption is that there aren't really second chances. I have a coworker that grew up the USSR and he mentioned this with schooling. Fail a class, fall behind, or need extra help and boom. The better job is permanently locked out and you have to settle for a crappy job. A chinese roommate of mine describe a similar phenomena in China. As it turns out, all the wealthy chinese families still ended up in positions of power and relationship ultimately mattered a lot more than competence. I think this mostly comes from the state optimizing for the wrong things. They assume that people wouldn't want to work on farms or that farmers would always want to be farmers. One of the benefits of a capitalist society is that, while no trivial, changing professions is accessible to pretty much everyone.

The core problem with the USSR's version of communism is that it concentrated too much power on too few people (well, and the fact that stalin operated by both being drunk and keeping all the heads of state perpetually drunk). People can get weird ideas (like mao's feelings towards birds) and putting too much power in those individuals' hands is doomed to pain for the citizenry. Some problems are best solved by a little bit of market anarchy.

> a regulated free market in parallel with a highly regulated UBI?

No UBI. Just basics for survival guaranteed. You should not starve if you can't find work. That doesn't mean we can support a non-working population at leisure. (Which, in our current model, occurs at both ends of the income spectrum.)

It'll obviously be industry dependent.

A few that I'd see the need.

- Railroads - The lines themselves and the operation should be owned by the federal government. Private rail companies should buy access which pays for line expansion and maintenance. The US needs regulations on things like train length and line speeds (none of these super massive trains blocking roadways because they don't fit inside a rail yard).

- Medicine - Medicare for all, but honestly I think nationalizing major hospitals and pharmaceuticals would probably be warranted. It's in the national interest to fund a wide breadth of research and medicine production even if that medicine doesn't ultimately turn a profit. But even if we just did insurance, the US is already covering the most expensive pool of individuals with Medicare (old people) expanding it to all citizens wouldn't be that expensive. Reform to medicare would help (particularly removing Part C, that's just a slush fund for insurance companies, but then also expanding and simplifying the other parts).

Utilities ownership - Doesn't need to be nationalized, but having municipal or state ran utilities would, IMO, be preferable. The state utilities boards suck and putting in checks for utility companies. They aren't elected and are easy to corrupt. For example, my water utility was recently purchased by a company. In order to cover the loan they took out to purchase the previous water company, they raised rates (fat chance those go down). For telecommunications, I think a British telecom style system would work well. The government owns the lines while various telecommunication companies compete for service. That'd make it easier for more than just 2 companies providing internet service to a given location. Cellular networks practically already work like this, the big 3 own everything and sub-carriers just lease access. It'd be better if the government nationally owned cell service deployment. Especially in terms of spectrum usage.

- Food production - I don't really think government ownership is needed here, I think anti-trust and breakups are needed. These markets have consolidated to a huge extent which is really bad for everyone. Having just ~5 different national grocers is a bad thing. Having just a few mills (like general mills) is a bad thing.

- Chip fabrication - This should be owned by the government much like TSMC. And like TSMC, the likes of nvidia/intel/amd can buy a fab to do their runs. Fabs are just too crazy expensive and losing the competitive edge here is a security problem.

Basically, my view centers mostly around when an industry gets too consolidated. Especially when I think it's something that has critical importance to the general public. I could be open to more of these sorts of actions, it just depends on if an industry can be naturally competitive or not. Like, for example, I think a nationalized shoe manufacturing is a dumb idea as it's already a highly competitive market that could be easily broken up.

Hopefully that answers your question.