
Project Cybersyn, a 1971-73 Chilean Experiment in Computer-Assisted Economy - patrickk
http://www.damninteresting.com/nineteen-seventy-three/
======
vpeters25
"General Augusto Pinochet remained the de facto dictator in Chile until 1988,
when he acquiesced to pressure from the citizenry, the UN, and the Catholic
church to reform the constitution and hold a new presidential election. The
Chilean people declined to re-elect him. He stepped down in 1990 and left the
country"

This is inaccurate. Pinochet had a new constitution written and it was passed
on the 1980 national referendum (see
[http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de...](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de_1980)).

The Chilean constitution of 1980 included a "transitional" amendment stating
that, if passed, Pinochet would be president for the next 8 years after which
another referendum would be called with the following options: \- Yes:
Pinochet would rule for yet another 8 years with the "junta" remaining as the
legislature. \- No: Pinochet would stay for 1 year after which a
democratically elected president and congress will take over the executive and
legislative branches of government.

"NO" won that referendum (I was just old enough to vote NO). So Pinochet,
respecting the terms of the Constitution he wrote, called for democratic
elections for President and Congress.

Also, Pinochet could not run for the 1989 presidential election because his
own constitution prohibited consecutive presidential terms.

One interesting note: Pinochet was so confident he would win the referendum
they didn't think they would need a building for Congress. They had to rush
design and construction of the Congress building to the point only the main
chamber was completed on time for the new president's oath ceremony.

------
JVIDEL
The biggest problem every communist country had was indeed coordination. The
USSR was famous for this, in fact the Nazi invasion was a success at first
partly because of Soviet disarray: you had spies warning about the impending
attack for months while factories churned tanks but not supply trucks, and the
army trained soldiers but didn't make enough rifles for all of them.

And this happened on a day-to-day basis: you had factories making 10,000 units
when only 1,000 were needed, or worse when the demand was of 100,000. Food
supply was always a problem and still is in countries like Cuba and NK. I have
friends a bit older than me that lived under such conditions and still
remember having to wake up at 4AM to grab a nice spot at the store line. "Show
up late and there was no food left" they said.

This Chilean system was without a doubt the right solution for the problem,
too bad that it was destroyed before it could do what it was meant to do.

~~~
jorgeleo
I don't understand how communism is related to the article. Allende was
socialist, not communist. They are different political systems.

~~~
Retric
One of the S's in USSR the 'classic' communist country stood for socialist.
Granted the Communist party in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is
probably what really confused most people.

~~~
jorgeleo
Then I guess 7 = 11 because the store 711 puts the together...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism>

They can put whatever they want in their name, and even mix and match the
terms in their propaganda... reality remains that they are different political
doctrines.

------
davidw
Related reading:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem>

~~~
naturalethic
OP's article reminds me of Molineux's critique of the Venus Project: "Marxism
with robots"

------
ecmendenhall
Here is a short presentation with another perspective on the Cybersyn project
which should be of interest to designers and quantitative visualization types:
<http://compscifi.com/>

It argues that the design of the Presidential control room and its simplified
visualizations of economic information created an illusion of omniscience and
control over the economy by using visual cues from modernist design and
science fiction. But behind the scenes, the project was mostly run by humans
exchanging data over teletype machines and hand-pasting information to slides.

There's a wonderful example of the project's simplified model of the economy
around 7:58. Do you think this captures the complexity of the Chilean economy
with enough fidelity that policymakers could have made reliable predictions
about the effects of their interventions? (I don't. This is why:
<http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>)

I have great hope that agent-based modeling and simulation will become useful
tools in economics, but they are only useful when we accept that they are
wrong. We should approach synoptic tools like Cybersyn that promise power and
control over complex social systems with extreme skepticism.

------
sanxiyn
I found this: <http://code.google.com/p/albastryde/>

ALBAstryde takes its name in part from the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas (ALBA). The second part of the name is linked to its historic root,
Cyberstryde, which was the software behind Cybersyn, the cybernetic network
which was set up under Salvador Allende in Chile 1971-73 to make information
about industrial production instantly available to workers and government.
ALBAstryde is being developed to be first used as a base for the software of
the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Nicaragua.

~~~
fitoria
I collaborated in this one, more information here:
[http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-
innovat...](http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-innovative-
agricultural-information-system-using-open-source-software)

~~~
andrewcooke
how did it turn out? was it used / reused / spur on something else? what
lessons can be learned from what happened? (thanks).

~~~
fitoria
I just checked and they have no data for this year sadly :-( but they did used
it for 2 years, I don't work for the ministry but I did worked for the NGO
that made it so I don't know how well did they use it.

------
mbustamante
i'm Chilean and this is a huge problem here in Chile. Allende's government is
constantly remembered as "what is what could have happened if US had not
intervened?"

~~~
stfu
Even so I usually get shunned by that opinion, I honestly believe that Chile
is one of the examples where American interventionism has worked. Sure, there
are a lot of question marks about the methods, but the long time effects are
astonishing.

This is even more amazing taking into consideration its geographical location
and the situation of its neighboring countries. Friedman should get another
Noble Prize just for being one of the few economists, who were given this
fascinating opportunity of putting his economic views at work - and providing
evidence that it does.

Something like Startup Chile gives me hope that this spirit of
unconventionalism stays relevant even today.

~~~
funkaster
I'm sorry... are you actually saying that the intervention in Chile "worked"?
What do you actually mean by "worked"? If you mean "they fixed the economy
only after screwing it up themselves" then that's called "cleaning your own
mess" and not fixing something. Sure, it wasn't the best thing and Allende's
government had many faults, but it wasn't the big mess they try paint it.

Being a chilean, I would say that the chilean economy and the whole system is
in a very bad shape: huge inequalities, screwed up health system, educational
system about to collapse, etc... Most of them we can thank Friedman and his
free market policies... so don't tell me that the intervention in Chile was a
good thing or turn out to be a good example, there are many, many counter-
examples you can find of how bad things are now because of the intervention
and forced policies in the economy.

~~~
stfu
This is what I mean by worked:

 _It leads Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness,
income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of
corruption. It also ranks high regionally in sustainability of the state,
democratic development and state of peace. However, it has a high economic
inequality, as measured by the Gini index._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile>

~~~
funkaster
That doesn't mean at all that it worked. All that information means is that
Chile, _now_ is in a good position _relative to the rest of Latin America_.
Taking conclusions and saying that the reason Chile is the way it is now is
due to the US intervention is naive and simplistic. There are so many factors
involved in that fact, that it makes little sense to make that argument.

Using the same co-relation you're trying to use, I could say that the
intervention was a bad thing, because while Chile is not bad, we could be
doing a lot better if it weren't because of the problems we had to face. That
is also not the case, and again, too many variables involved that you're
freely taking away.

~~~
stfu
I absolutely agree that certain key numbers are always simplifying the
complexity inherent in an economy. But it appears to the outside, that
fundamentally there are no particular reasons that would make Chile any
different to other Latin American countries (e.g. historic trade positions,
natural resources, etc).

~~~
onetwothreefour
You don't know what you're talking about.

~~~
guylhem
You seem biased. He offered a valid argument.

------
andrewcooke
there's a related book come out recently -
<http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html> \- that looks very interesting. the
author, francis spufford, seems like a very smart guy (he recently wrote a
very good (imho, as an atheist) article on being a christian, related to his
latest book - see [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-
ath...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-athiests-
defence-of-faith))

[but i think this has been posted and discussed here before]

~~~
gwern
_Red Plenty_ was great, although it's not quite what I had expected. Anyway,
anyone even remotely interested in central planning must read Cosma Shalizi's
[http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-
optimiza...](http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-
problem-solves-you/)

(I'd say that's much more interesting than the Chile stuff, but that's just
me.)

~~~
andrewcooke
that's great, thanks (i think i found out about red plenty from crookedtimber,
but i had never seen that post). do you know of any other books that are
vaguely connected? i once read "machine dreams"
[http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-
Scien...](http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-
Science/dp/0521775264) and enjoyed it hugely, but have never found anything
even remotely similar.

------
motters
In the last couple of years I've been reading the books of Stafford Beer, and
he had some interesting ideas which were way ahead of his time. It's debatable
how well Cybersyn and Cyberfolk would have worked in the early 1970s, using a
single IBM computer plus telex systems. Today we would call this type of
system SCADA, but Beer's ideas extended beyond factory control into the
overall economy and political process.

At the time Cybersyn was portrayed in the British and some of the Chilean
newspapers as a totalitarian "big brother" system, but that wasn't how it was
designed to work. Beer saw the economy as a closed loop rather than a top down
hierarchy, and he knew about and was hostile towards the Soviet GOSPLAN type
economy.

If you're interested in Cybersyn then there is a recent book by Eden Medina
called "Cybernetic revolutionaries" which describes the system and its
development.

------
draggnar
Stafford Beer, the architect and excellent storyteller, presenting the
cybernetic paradigm:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu.be)

Also, a quick explanation of the viable system model:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu.be)

------
jorgeleo
I am Chilean and there is a minor correction to the article:

"He attempted to phone the general of the Air Force and the new commander-in-
chief General Pinochet, but they declined to answer" Pinochet was not the
commander in chief of the Air Force, but of the military. The Air force was
part of the Junta, and as such supported their leader Pinochet.

Otherwise excellent article.

~~~
andrewcooke
it's poorly written, but because it says " _they_ declined to answer" it's
likely that the author means "the general of the Air Force and the new
commander-in-chief General Pinochet" to be a list of two people.

(but still, your english is better than my shameful spanish, and i have lived
in chile for many years...)

~~~
jorgeleo
I stand corrected

------
ollieglass
Are there any technical details available of how the system functioned? And
has anything similar been attempted since?

~~~
fiatmoney
Not well. It was essentially run manually, with humans stitching together
telexes and slide projections.

There's an interesting video here. <http://vimeo.com/8000921>

------
jipumarino
As an aside, I can recommend the alternate history novel Synco, from author
Jorge Baradit, based on the Cybersyn project. <http://www.amazon.com/Synco-
Jorge-Baradit/dp/9563040562>

------
shaunxcode
I have been obsessed with this ever since I read an article in the guardian
(uk) circa 2003 of all places. If you want a better picture of the political
situation check out "a promise to the dead" (by ariel dorfman
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097260/>).

You can also read designing freedom (written right after the coupe) to get a
solid idea of what stafford beer was driving at
[http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book....](http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book.pdf)

------
benologist
This was really a fascinating read.

------
neoyagami
Sometime i hate being in the backyard of EEUU

