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I’ve seen another user on HN who grew up in the USSR call it “soviet capitalism”.

A friend of mine also recognized it in this 2015 article (see footnote 1): https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/obamacare



That's a good description. I'll also talk about "corporate feudalism", where you have the Duke of Engineering fighting with the Duke of Product, and the King/CEO must mediate the conflicts. The peasants, of course, are basically property of their various nobles.

But I really like "soviet capitalism", as it points at a key contradiction. Somehow, fans of capitalism, which maximizes surplus value by freeing individuals to make economically rational choices, rarely seem to notice that large corporations never make use of the mechanisms of capitalism, instead relying on central planning. And like the soviet era, corporate central planners often do things that are economically irrational, but useful to their careers and their quality of life.


Theory of the Firm is a huge topic in microeconomics.


I don't understand the contradiction you're getting at. The way capitalism works is that individuals are free to pursue their own interests. The way a corporation works is that they pay you a salary in order to pursue their interests. There's plenty of delegation happening in corporations, but ultimately there has to be some accountability controls since you are acting as an agent. What mechanism do you propose for leveraging individual incentives while still recognizing ownership of the corporation?


You really can't see the contradiction? I'll try again: Many fans of capitalism believe it superior to communism because free markets and high individual initiative produce better outcomes than central planning. However, they also believe in the awesomeness of corporations, which are generally run with central planning and no individual initiative.

Is that clearer?


No clearer, you didn’t answer my question. How would you structure a corporation such that it isn’t centrally planned?


I'm not interested in answering your gotcha question. If you're really interested in alternative ways of organizing work, there's a vast literature on the topic. I'm not an expert, and I'm anyway not willing to play "bring me a rock" games.

My goal was to make a particular point about an unresolved conflict in managerialist ideology. If you're still having trouble understanding the point, feel free to ask specific questions, or to try restating the point in your own terms. But if you're mainly JAQing as an argumentative technique rather than seeking to understand, then I think we're done here.


I don't think it's a "gotcha question" to ask how ideological claims are tied to reality in practice. But lets keep it high-level as you desire.

First, you describe a "key contradiction" that the capitalist economy as a whole would operate differently from a corporation. But it's unnecessarily reductive to demand such consistency. Ideologically a corporation is closer to an individual actor than to the overarching economic system imposed by government. In practice corporations grow from a single individual to huge conglomerates on the merits of their market performance, not from threat of violence, monopoly on employment, or other political power.

Second, you claim, "large corporations never make use of the mechanisms of capitalism, instead relying on central planning," which is a bold claim requiring evidence. There is tons of autonomy granted across the levels of a corporation, and a long history of conglomerates and franchises that cover the gamut of such regimes. If all of these are "central planning" then you need to explain what the alternative would be, otherwise its just a hand-wavy no-true-scotsman claim that can't be meaningfully examined or discussed.


>Many fans of capitalism believe it superior to communism because free markets and high individual initiative produce better outcomes than central planning.

You are incorrect, when you start getting into nuances. When you have the govt doing central planning, there is no way to get rid of them when they under perform. When people voluntarily form central planning organizational structures, they are eliminated by the free market if they under perform.

The difference between communism/capitalism is fundamentally of philosophy not of structure. In the former it's coerced co-operation (which almost always results in central planning) and the in the latter it is voluntary co-operation( there will be many organizational structures and some may have a central planning)

How old are you? (no I didn't make a mistake when I asked you that question)


>When you have the govt doing central planning, there is no way to get rid of them when they under perform.

All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.


Is there? How often does the american federal government shrink? How would it shrink, if it turned out that it was too big?

In a democratic government, you're not electing the central planners. In the american government, you're not electing any of the millions of three-letter agencies that rule your life. You hire a president, and he may or may not do something, who knows.

At least a market has some contact with a ground truth of bankruptcy. If there were several competing EPA's competing for money on the basis of their efficacy, that might be interesting.


>All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.

You are either young and naive, or an idiot. Sorry, name calling is the only way to call out ignorance. Things simply don't work the way you think it does. In theory 'democracy' promises you a lot of things, but you get very little. Most democracies for most part are sophisticated form of oligarchy where the masses are essentially fed what to think, by propaganda, 'debates' etc.


You've broken several the site guidelines in this thread. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here?

Crossing into making an argument personal is especially not ok, and we have had to ask you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21797575.


Dang, you may ban me if you wish. Sorry but my sense of what should be said appears to be fundamentally different from what is in the guidelines, or sensibilities of most people.


At the end of the day, everything is a tree.


Nah. Humans, who evolved in dominance hierarchies, are very inclined to see everything as a tree.


That’s a great term for it. It’s maddening to see it in the enterprise and just downright depressing when it creeps into a startup - like why do you think you’re here? To give enterprise vendors half your ebitda?




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