Crooked Timber

The article has a rather convoluted definition of 'bullying':

> "Bullying, a form of peer victimisation, can take place between children, between adolescents or between adults. It is not bullying when a parent or a teacher is abusive towards a child. While the terms peer victimisation and bullying are often used interchangeably, peer victimisation is not equivalent to bullying. For example, it is not bullying when two people of about the same strength quarrel or fight, but it is peer victimisation. An especially important feature of bullying is the power imbalance between those who perpetrate bullying behaviours and their victims..."

The notion that parental or teacher abuse can't be called bullying is nonsensical, as it produces the same kind of behavior in children (fearful, submissive, avoidance, etc.). The general psychological concept is 'operant conditioning', essentially brainwashing by authority figures enforced by violence, humiliation, and so on. It's a key feature of all authoritarian systems. There's little doubt that schoolyard bullies are merely aping the behavior of adult authoritarian figures:

https://www.thoughtco.com/operant-conditioning-definition-examples-4491210

The best literature on bullying (and also a criticism of the British school system) IMO is "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding, 1954). Note it was not a critique of so-called 'human nature' in general but of a particular societal…

I'll also note that all of this still mostly reinforces your main thesis.

One major issue with central planning is that it usually lacks the internal feedback mechanisms necessary to properly account for all of these factors.

Price signals usually work faster, and thus more efficiently! The USSR even had an economic reform where they introduced mechanisms that could be described as "shadow prices" within their own system [1]. It was the driving force behind one of the independent discoveries of linear programming.

I'd highly recommend "In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You" [2] and the novel (historical economic fiction, a nerd's nerd literary category if there ever was one) Red Plenty to learn more.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Soviet_economic_reform 2. https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/

Yes, sure, but there's a slightly deeper meaning to the joke: fascism as an ideology has always been built around the glorification of death. If you want to spot capital-E Evil in real life, look for the people loudly proclaiming their devotion to death.

Maybe they cover it up with "God is great!" sometimes, but then they pop out, "We love death as you love life!"[1]. Sometimes, rarely, they do you the favor of actually printing the Chaos Star of the occult on their book-covers[2] (and I seriously thought that was a pop-culture reference until I found the link proving its truth). Or maybe they're just cheering, "Let him die! Let him die!"[3].

[1] -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfagPS6490

[2] -- http://crookedtimber.org/2015/03/10/who-is-aleksandr-dugin/

[3] -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepQF7G-It0

The fiscal-progressive nature of the New Deal earlier in the century was so successful it created the middle class in the post-war era (90% marginal tax rates!) and it was being followed up by a socially-progressive era of the civil rights movement in the 60s and the powers that be had to make a concerted effort to derail both.

The takeover of the political dialog by economism using the Freshwater/Chicago school of economics started in earnest around this time and was so remarkably successful that Democratic presidents were spouting the neo-liberal conservatism[0] hogwash by the time of Clinton.

I am a member of the Cory Doctorow school[1] of political thought.

[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

[1] https://pluralistic.net/tag/political-science/

I suggest you read this excellent piece my Cosma Shalizi. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/

There he talks about the computational complexity and limits to planning. He also talks about markets, how non convexities leads to inefficiencies (allowing polarization of wealth) and why large firms form: difficulty in setting prices and being informed enough to make optimal decisions benefit concentration of complementing talent.

As computational power increases and communication friction decreases I expect we will start to see company size decrease and lifetimes to within an order of magnitude of the sceanrio in alluded to in Rainbows End where companies are old at 5 years and large ones have 3 people.

For those more interested in this, there's a follow-up to comments, which results in this (still on-going?) exchange:

- The original article (linked by OP): http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/

- A comment made by Paul Cockshott (a Marxist economist and computer scientist, most known for "Towards New Socialism" book): http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/#comment-416201

- Shalizi's response to Cockshott, among his other responses to other comments: http://bactra.org/weblog/919.html

- Cockshott's response to above: https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/plan-balancing-algorithms-reply-to-some-criticisms/