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sva_ 5 hours ago

> Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms.

Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? I think we've seen over an over again which one works and which one doesn't.

miyoji 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy?

Not at all. Market vs planned economy is about how the economy is set up. Are there businesses that offer products that you can choose between? That's a market economy. You can have that with democratic governance of corporations. The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy.

You don't need ownership by idiot dictators with money to have a market.

shigawire 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Democracy in business would be worker co-ops or employee ownership schemes. It would still be fully market-based, not planned.

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jmull 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is that a settled question? China isn't exactly struggling right now.

edgyquant 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

China has succeeded so much by moving away from a planned economy when they were fully planned they were one of the poorest nations in the world. Most successful nations are mixed economies and yes, this is a settled question.

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miyoji 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Past performance is no indication of future success. It doesn't matter what's been successful in the past, these things can change. Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed and so did the narrative.

None of this is settled, because it's a living system that changes over time. What may have been perfectly true in 1850 might not be remotely accurate in 2050.

Kuxe 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was) According to whom?

fwip 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They were very poor before central planning, and the central planning is what got them from being very poor to relatively poor and economically powerful.

sva_ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you look on Alibaba or AliExpress and see different companies competing and undercutting each others prices, I don't really see it as a planned economy.

throwup238 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The CCP publishes their primary central planning mechanism for all to see. They just adopted the new 15th Five Year Plan in March [1].

There’s a whole bureaucracy just to coordinate the implementation at the sector, provincial, and corporate level driven by the State Council, NDRC, and NPC. Governments at all levels are involved with coming up with their own implementation plans to execute on the Five Year Plan.

You can trace decades of Chinese industrial development to those plans but the Chinese system is very different from the Soviet central planning mechanism, which is why I think you’re misinterpreting Alibaba’s price competition. The CCP explicitly allows non-state owned enterprises like Alibaba and the manufacturers on it to compete; that’s their whole point within the system, and they operate within the regulatory environment setup to promote the five year plan instead of quotas like the Soviet system. The resolution of the planning is different, but it’s very much there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan

dghlsakjg 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think a better term might be a “steered economy”. You see fierce competition in some very specific and preordained market areas. Lithium batteries, solar panels, electric cars, industrial and autonomous robots, AI.

Now go look at the 5 year plan from Beijing. Green technology, robotics, mature node chips, and AI are the focuses.

In other words, it isn’t a mistake that China dominates in the industries that it does.

thaumasiotes 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> China isn't exactly struggling right now.

Have you asked people in China about this?