Mediaboss Marketing

Although it can be politically expedient to draw a thick line between capitalist decentralization and socialist central planning, the truth is that these two systems have converged on many occasions. Moreover, each was conceived for the same purpose, and elements of both could be realized in today's digital economy.

PRINCETON The worlds most dynamic economy is governed by a communist party, whereas its previous capitalist stronghold is under the misrule of a man whose companies have gone bankrupt six times. With leading political ideologies becoming increasingly incoherent, labels seem to mean little anymore.

In the United States, President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans contend that only they stand between the American dream and a socialist revolution. Although Trumps Democratic challenger in Novembers election, Joe Biden, advocates no such thing, he does support putting an end to the era of shareholder capitalism. In any case, capitalism and socialism are once again front and center in the contest for public opinion and voters support.

But, unlike in past decades, the standard defense of capitalism has grown intellectually and politically weaker. While woke capitalists like the upmarket clothing brand Lululemon push marketing messages to resist capitalism, even traditional capitalists like the influential Business Roundtable an organization of CEOs from Americas largest publicly listed corporations are advocating fundamental reform. Similarly, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, denounces neoliberalism and free-market fundamentalism, and British Conservatives and US Republicans have taken to condemning the abuses of globalization and the market.

Todays ideological confusion owes much to technological disruption. Digitalization and the widespread diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) have upended established views about centralization and decentralization. Traditionally, capitalisms advocates have argued for decentralization as a means of ensuring systemic resilience. When the system is properly arranged, bad decisions dont matter, because the consequences immediately become clear and market players will learn and adapt. The system is ultimately stable and self-correcting.

But the weightless digital economy and the increased importance of economies of scale have transformed such arguments. The marginal costs of producing immaterial products are essentially nil, and network effects confer far-reaching advantages to those who can win the race for scale within a given domain. At the same time, ICT is also disrupting pricing, which used to be the key informational input in market exchanges. The digital economy now features price differentiation and discrimination on a scale that was previously unimaginable, such that prices are increasingly being delinked from consumer demand.

Meanwhile, debates about socialism have also changed. The old socialist claim that centralized (social) planning would allow for more efficient resource allocation could never account for the fact that human decision-makers are subject to imperfect information. As such, socialist planners since the 1920s have argued that future advances in computing would eventually close the knowledge gap, to which critics responded by pointing out that autonomous markets still would always know more.

Enjoy unlimited access to the ideas and opinions of the world's leading thinkers, including weekly long reads, book reviews, and interviews; The Year Ahead annual print magazine; the complete PS archive; and more All for less than $9 a month.

Subscribe Now

This debate has repeated itself with every major advance in ICT, from the advent of electronic computers in the 1940s through the introduction of large mainframes in the 1960s, PCs in the 1980s, and smartphones in the 2000s. Yet this time may be different. We have indeed reached a stage at which computers can process more information than complex human societies can. Artificial-intelligence algorithms have quickly gone from beating humans at chess and Go to writing poetry. Why shouldnt they be able to improve upon human markets?

The apparent convergence between central planning and individual choice is not new. In the 1950s and 1960s the heyday of managerial capitalism many assumed that big corporations would operate the same way regardless of whether the setting was capitalist or socialist. Since they themselves were planned institutions, they did not respond to market signals.

Similar convergences can be found in the early nineteenth century, when the terms capitalism and socialism first gained currency. Some of the most influential socialist theoreticians of the Industrial Revolution were themselves capitalists. The French ex-aristocrat Henri de Saint-Simon envisaged a future in which bankers, intellectuals, and artists would overthrow an outdated theological and feudal system in favor for what he called industrialism. And the Welsh textile mill owner Robert Owen tried to launch utopian, profit-sharing communities in the United States and Britain, developing an alternative scheme for a currency based on labor.

These earlier examples of convergence should remind us that the terms capitalism and socialism were both originally conceived for the same functional purpose: to create a decentralized system of allocation in which spontaneous needs and wishes could be fulfilled. And as the ensuing centuries have shown, both approaches become destructive when they produced excessive concentrations of power.

Against this historical backdrop, the search for a new decentralized framework looks like a reversion to the earlier dream pursued by ur-socialists and ur-capitalists. Yet with todays technologies, one can imagine the dream actually being realized under a hybrid sociapitalism. After all, while it once took months or years to make accurate assessments of the volume of economic activity or trade, these data are increasingly available in real time.

But data can be problematic. Whereas some is managed by governments and international institutions, much is held elsewhere, including at universities (Johns Hopkins in the case of COVID-19 data), individuals (as in the Harvard University economist Raj Chettys compilation of consumer data), and companies (which keep it as a commercial secret). In the case of governments and companies especially, there is a constant tendency to suppress data that is inconvenient or uncomfortable.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a harsh light on the ways health outcomes are linked to social and economic disparities, and this realization has led to the politicization of other data, such as that relating to crime incidence, incomes, and ethnic identities.

The early nineteenth-century struggles were fights over the ownership of the means of production, but we can now be much more specific about what that concept involves. What is most needed today is a broad-based movement to secure ownership of data, following on the model of early nineteenth-century workers demands to own their own labor. Can data be shared in ways that maximizes the benefits without compromising social interests, individuality, or privacy? Capitalists and socialists of the world must unite to answer that question. They have nothing to lose but their data.

Read more:
Capitalists and Socialists of the World, Unite! by Harold James - Project Syndicate

Until the election, we will be hearing everyday about the radical, leftist socialists who want to take over this country. It is easy to imagine how frightening this must be to some Iowa farmer who has never read anything more enlightening than the operators manual to his hay baler. This same farmer may have collected $1 million in USDA payments in a 10-year period and received $100,000 in Market Facilitation Program payments last year. This year, he will receive a 60% to 80% subsidy on his Federal Crop Insurance premium of $80,000.

This farmers seven children all received a free K-12 education, but he is convinced that anyone who proposes a free K-14 education (includes two years college) is a Marxist-Leninist who wants to turn America into Venezuela. His greatest fear is that his single parent worker making $14 an hour with two children might be getting too many food stamps.

He has never really understood what the word hypocrisy means.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Forum's editorial board nor Forum ownership.

Go here to see the original:
Letter: Socialism and the American farmer | INFORUM - INFORUM

I am puzzled. The party that is asking me to fear encroaching socialism assures me that it will protect Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security and Medicare are perfect examples of socialistic programs, as are in my view the 40-hour work week, workers compensation, public education, the interstate highway system, government financing of virus research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Small Business Administration and many programs fundamental to our daily lives.

We have been a socialist country at least for the past 90 years, and it could be argued that many of the original colonies that formed our country were founded on concepts now considered socialist.

The term socialism has been made into a swear word by those who would use We the People for their personal enrichment.

Fundamental to the freedom we enjoy is capitalistic opportunity for the entrepreneur balanced by social programs to protect the worker and consumer. The tough part is maintaining the balance. Fear neither socialism nor capitalism. Fear losing the necessary balance.

J. Phillip Eisemann

' + submsgtxthtml + '

' + submsgtxthtml + '

' + submsgtxthtml + '

' + submsgtxthtml + '

See the article here:
Socialism is part of our balance (letter) | Letters To The Editor - LancasterOnline

Dr. Daniel Sutter has been the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy in Troy Universitys Sorrell College of Business since 2011. He's also a contributor to Heartland's blog, the Freedom Pub.

Opinion polls consistently find that young Americans view socialism favorably. For example, in a recent Gallup poll, 49 percent of millennials and Gen Zers held a favorable view of socialism versus 32 percent of Baby Boomers. Does support for socialism indicate a need for more economic education in Americas high schools and colleges?

As an economics professor, I would certainly like more college students to take economics! States could emulate Texas requirement of a high school class in economics teaching the benefits of free enterprise.

Does learning about economics and markets necessarily reduce support for socialism? Or would economic education about markets just amount to indoctrination?

Our views on most public policy questions mix information and values. By information, I mean facts about the world and testable predictions about cause-and-effect. Values refer to ethical evaluation of outcomes in the world.

Economics education should improve the information content of peoples policy views. I can use electricity without understanding electrical engineering and people can use markets without understanding how they work. The amazing coordination that occurs through markets, what economists call the invisible hand, should inform policy view. Markets allow people enormous freedom while delivering a rising standard of living.

Understanding how markets work does not require acceptance of the values of capitalism. Two people might agree on the effects of the minimum wage (reduced jobs and higher pay) and disagree on the policys desirability due to differing values.

Economic education could also teach young people what socialism meant historically. A hundred years ago socialism meant government ownership of the means of production (e.g., factories). Today politicians likeBernie SandersandAlexandria Ocasio-Cortezprimarily advocate a generous welfare state. They point to Scandinavian countries, not the Soviet Union, as examples of socialism that works.

In the 1930s and 1940s, economists debated whether bureaucrats could coordinate an economy as effectively as markets. Potentially bureaucrats could mimic markets by setting the same prices. In practice, political influence over price setting and the lack of a profit motive leads to inferior performance.

The position of modern socialists, I think, reflects this learning. The gains from substituting bureaucratic commands for prices are nonexistent and the U.S. Postal Service shows the limits of government production. Taxing a prosperous market economy to fund government spending better achieves socialist goals.

Scandinavian countries employ this approach, as the 2020 edition of the Fraser Institutes Economic Freedom of the World Index demonstrates. Countries are score between 0 and 10 in five areas, with 10 representing more freedom, and the components to generate a countrys score. The U.S. ranks 6thwith a score of 8.22; Hong Kong ranks first at 8.94. (The data do not reflect COVID-related spending and restrictions.)

Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden rank from 11thto 46th, with scores ranging from 8.10 to 7.58. Venezuela, a more traditional socialist country, ranks last with a score of 3.34. Clearly, the Scandinavian countries resemble the U.S. far more than Venezuela.

Their reliance on markets is even greater than this. The Scandinavians lag the U.S. in the size of government component because they choose more government spending and higher taxes. On the other four areas property rights, money and inflation, international trade, and regulation the Scandinavians match the U.S., with Denmark averaging one third of a point higher on the other areas. The nations where socialism works are largely market economies.

If market forces and not politics determine prices, wages, and salaries, an economy can continue to prosper. High taxes will reduce prosperity some; when the government taxes away half (or more) of incomes, people will work less hard. Exactly how much high taxes and government-paid health care, college, and housing reduce prosperity is an empirical question.

Socialism today does not mean what it did a century ago. This is fine and arguably reflects economic education. Economic education may additionally ensure that young Americans know that the countries so many socialists admire rely on prosperity generated by market economies.

[Originally posted on Alabama Today]

Socialism and Economic Education was last modified: September 30th, 2020 by Daniel Sutter

Read this article:
Socialism and Economic Education | The Freedom Pub - Somewhat Reasonable - Heartland Institute

Socialism is currently a hot-button word that is too often misused. In 1952, President Harry Truman called the term a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years .... Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

Seems not much has changed in almost 70 years.

Here are three stories, one from each of us, about our own experiences at the intersection of free markets and public goods. Theyve helped us see that if government partnerships to promote public goods are what we are calling socialism, then a little well-placed socialism might be a good thing.

James Glenn Just last week I slipped my kayak into the Provo River, not far from my home, on a beautiful sunny Saturday. There were already many people out enjoying the river. At the first bend, I passed a father with his five kids floating on tubes. Around another was a group from Brazil on a large, chartered raft. There were fly fishermen in waders, catching and releasing some very nice trout, a group from one of the local universities in rafts, and people in lawn chairs along the riverbank just enjoying the sun and beauty.

But the river didnt always look this way. Turns out that in the 1950s and 1960s it was dammed, channeled and straightened to make way for a new highway, at the cost of much of its beauty. It looks like it does today, including the gentle current for kids in tubes and deep holes for trophy trout, only because of a major restoration project in the 90s, funded with $45 million in federal dollars. Now its a public treasure for thousands of us to enjoy.

Richard Saltzman My wife and I recently returned to the U.S. after a 29-year short-term work assignment in England. While there, we frequently heard from friends and family back home about the high cost of medical treatment, especially for prescription drugs. But we were paying 9 ($12) for a prescription, no matter what it was, so we thought the talk was overblown until I got a $123 prescription in preparation for a colonoscopy once we were back in the states because, I was told, there was no generic substitute.

Later, a nurse at the hospital told me there was a $6 alternative, but some people dont like it because they have to drink more of it. In a free market system, shouldnt that be my decision? A month later, my wife had the same procedure and was prescribed the $6 version. Now I am relieved that next year, when I turn 65, Ill be able to get Medicare (socialized medicine).

James Smithson When I landed in a wheelchair 10 years ago, (dis)courtesy of multiple sclerosis, I learned that uneven joints on the sidewalk can jar your teeth out, pulling a big door toward you can be downright impossible, and some stores display so much stuff in the aisles you cant get through. Thankfully, someone is usually nice enough to help me get an item from a top shelf, open a door or get through a crowded restaurant (pre-COVID-19).

But niceness cant get my 400-pound wheelchair up a flight of stairs. And thats where government programs come in. In 1990, President George Bush (the first one) signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to start establishing national standards for things like handicapped parking spaces, automatic doors, public restrooms and, my favorite, wheelchair ramps. Because, lets face it, people in wheelchairs dont have enough economic clout to motivate stores to build ramps and movie theaters to leave a few spaces for wheelchairs, or enough political clout to motivate municipalities to make public buses accessible or lower the curbs at street corners. The free market just doesnt address those kinds of issues, so selective government programs become necessary.

Since the 1940s, far-right pundits have labeled almost anything that protects vulnerable citizens or our shared natural resources socialism. But if government efforts to promote public goods are defined as socialism, then its clear we need a little of it. Without it, we wouldnt have national forests in which to camp, hunt and hike. There would be no national parks, which typically bring almost $1 billion a year into Utahs economy alone. There would be no interstate highways to get goods to market. There would be no public schools, access for the handicapped or affordable health care for the elderly.

We shouldnt be so quick to assume that socialism is always a bad thing.

A recent report by the Brookings Institute states, Not one economically advanced society can be described as purely capitalist; every one of them is a mixed economy that includes some elements of socialism.

And none of the examples weve given has resulted in a loss of freedom, undermined individual productivity, or led us down a slippery slope to communism.

James Smithson is a retired researcher.

Richard Saltzman recently retired from international finance.

James Glenn is looking forward to retirement and conducts international research. They met 20 years ago in London over plates of Indian takeaway. All three currently live in Utah.

Read the original here:
Commentary: Too many are misusing the word 'socialism' - Salt Lake Tribune