The People's Republic of Walmart
Are multi-national corporations like Walmart and Amazon laying the groundwork for international socialism? For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People’s Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.
Stats for nerds
12recommend
26mentions
23people
2019–2026years
54% recommend46% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > they all suck because they all have one thing in common - they are planned
I suggest you read The Republic of Walmart [1]. Every big corporation in existence works with planned systems. Every. Single. One. That argument is a fantasy repeated by people that never truly thought/read about it.
Most people read somewhere that the USSR failed because of their planned economies, therefore it doesn't work. They had so much more going wrong that simplifying why they failed with "planned economy" is preposterous.
Not to mention capitalists conveniently forget all of the failed capitalist experiments. Perhaps because now the bigger capitalist countries benefit from exploiting those same countries.
From all the answers I've seen you give in this thread, it's clear you're very deep into the capitalist mindset. It really seems you don't even attempt to consider alternatives. You have your winner and everything is a confirmation of that. I would earnestly ask you to reconsider your position. Really read up on the subject.
There is no perfect solution, but the current one is absolutely unsustainable by definition. There is no infinite growth, and the pursuit of it has now reached the point where it only harms everyone that is not at the top. We could save the planet, we could house all the homeless, we could end famine, but we choose not to because it's not profitable. I personally can't look at that and think: that looks reasonable.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Wal...
- It seems the many of the only people who really read and understood Marx looked at it and said “well ok, I’m going to be one of the capitalists, and this is actually good.”
There are actually planned economies in our system, Einstein would have been shocked by Walmart. I recommend “People’s Republic of Walmart” by Phillips and Rozworski if you want to read about it.
- The book _The People's Republic of Walmart_ by Leigh Phillips <sp?> and Michael Rozowski <sp?> makes a compelling argument why employing the same technologies companies use to manage supply chains and decision making on a state level could actually produce a working communist system.
Of course, we first would need to agree that this is desirable and that's probably the point where it breaks down.
- There is a nice book on this theme: "The People’s Republic of Walmart"[0]
- See also The People’s Republic of Walmart
- You could give The People's Republic of Walmart a read. Full disclosure, I haven't read it, I've just read/listened to media talking about it.
> For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us?
https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-Republic-Walmart-Corporations...
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