#+title: How to Make a Pencil | Logic Magazine
- source :: [[https://logicmag.io/commons/how-to-make-a-pencil/][How to Make a Pencil]]
- tags :: [[file:../20210103203659-technology.org][technology]] [[file:../20210120215019-economic_planning.org][economic planning]] [[file:../20210120215050-post_capitalist_economics.org][post-capitalist economics]] [[file:../20210120225816-socialist_planning.org][socialist planning]]

* Notes
- So-called "digital socialists" believe that a socialist economy can be planned
  through the use of computers, algorithms, etc.
- The book /The People's Republic of Walmart/ makes the claim that Walmart
  already does this, and that we can appropriate this to socialist ends
- A socialist society would not want to simply /optimize/ production, but would
  have other goals beyond optimization
- Socialists must contend with the [[file:../20210120220708-calculation_problem.org][calculation problem]], kicked off by
  anti-socialist [[file:../20210120220847-ludwig_von_mises.org][Ludwig von Mises]]
- Mises's argument was that in socialism workers would have to work more for
  less because they lack prices
- For Mises, prices were an expression of living market society, and markets
  could place pressure on manufacturers to "get prices right", i.e. equitable to
  both the purchaser and the seller. This to him is a rational allocation of
  assets to society
- Benanav remarks that the way Mises talks about capitalism sounds very
  algorithmic
- In the 1930s and 40s, Russians worked to solve the calculation problem by
  guessing the correct price for an intermediate material, and through trial and
  error would find the right price
- Benanav claims that people misunderstand Mises's challenge. The point isn't to
  find prices for final consumer goods, it's about finding prices for the
  intermediate goods
- [[file:../20210120222224-friedrich_hayek.org][Friedrich Hayek]] observed that a market was a collection of decision makers,
  not a collection of equations waiting to be solved
  + A pencil manufacturer would need to know the implications of choosing one
    kind of graphite over another, for example, which a computer probably
    couldn't do
- In a socialist society, the whole world would be involved in making decisions
  around production, and would be concerned with questions such as working
  conditions, dignity, justice, sustainability. Things that may not be able to
  be digitized away
- [[file:../20210120222618-otto_neurath.org][Otto Neurath]] was an Austrian philosopher who argued that planning
  /necessarily/ had to be democratic because of the reasons stated above
- Neurath thought that the price system was a problem to overcome, not replace
- Neurath proposed that planning should be done via protocols, such as voting,
  auctioning, etc. within producers. Neurath believed that this process would
  allow for a new type of rationality to emerge
- Neurath felt that production would be organized between associations of
  producers (coming from Marx), and hoped that guilds and councils could set a
  path forward
- We should optimize for the betterment of humanity, and for that we need a
  social solution, not a technical solution, to a social problem
* Takeaways
- We cannot algorithm away the very difficult problem of planning a socialist
  future
- Mises's critique of socialism isn't taken in its proper context. Benanav
  claims that what Mises was getting at had to do with organizing the
  intermediate parts of consumer good production, rather than consumer goods
  themselves
- Neurath believed that the socialist planning problem can be overcome by "total
  planning", that is, coordination among and within producers
- Algorithmic solutions to planning would leave out things computers cannot
  optimize for: happiness, dignity, justice, and so on
* Related notes
- [[file:../20210120225414-problems_of_digital_socialist_planning.org][Problems of digital socialist planning]]