
Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics - misnamed
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/project-cybersyn/
======
sctb
Lots of previous threads for those interested:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cybersyn%20points%3E5&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cybersyn%20points%3E5&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

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norea-armozel
I'll never understand the fascination that governments and companies have with
top-down modeling of demand. It just doesn't work when you really get down to
it. You get gluts or shortages when chasing demand which leads to waste like
what we have in clothing and electronics. Also, it's built around the idea
that everyone should act like rabid consumers all the time (leading to the
problems I mentioned). Ultimately, the right answer is to not have the kind of
global market but rather multiple markets where some global trade does occur
to cover shortages or to allow specialization in production. Things like
Cybersyn and it's modern corporate equivalents just promote booms and busts
and other nasty things like pollution.

~~~
momerath
Cyberneticists are not ignorant of your viewpoint. You may be right
'ultimately', but you might find your views refined if you actually dug into
the arguments. Stafford Beer addresses "variety reduction" in the first of
these lectures:

[http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-
lectures-d...](http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-1973-cbc-massey-lectures-
designing-freedom-1.2946819)

Edit: as a quick software-design analogy, I think Cybernetics gets labeled
"top down" design, by people who think there are only top-down and bottom-up
to choose from. It's more of a middle-out strategy.

~~~
norea-armozel
I mostly come from the POV that the last two centuries of industrialization
has polluted our thought processes about how production should be handled.
Specifically, that we should produce certain goods at all. Like how many smart
phone brands should even exist? I know some will say whatever the market will
bare but the reality is that the market as it stands is highly subsidized in
one form or another. Especially when you consider the price to transport goods
is ridiculously low. And I'm not talking about taking bauxite from South
America to Vancouver to refine it since they got cheap hydroelectric power.
I'm talking making iPhones and other assorted junk to excess. The fact we
overproduce clothes and dump them on Haiti and other countries proves my point
about top-down centralized industrial efforts (I don't think all top-down is
bad, tbf). They can only do that because transportation is artificially low,
trade treaties favor the 'Great Powers', and poor countries don't really have
a means to defend their markets from predation. Ultimately, it's not that we
shouldn't try to automate markets and production but that we should ask
ourselves do we need consumerism? I think the answer is no for me. I'd rather
have a few good products well made than have the latest LED infested bauble.
Get me one good smart phone that I can use for the next twenty years, not many
Okay/meh smart phones every other year. I guess that's what I'm getting at.

------
fixxer
The idea of trading individual control of companies for a cabal in a James
Bond villain esque room sipping whisky and smoking cigars sounds idiotic.

I suppose todays equivalent would ditch the cabal for a computer. Would you
trust a computer to map out every dependency in the economy, down to the
factory floor? Would you want to live in that world?

~~~
captainmuon
> Would you want to live in that world?

Depends... if that amounts to a central agency micromanaging every aspect of
economy, then certainly not. We all know how that ends.

But if it means there is a central intelligence (democraticly controlled, like
by a parliament and not a dictatorship!) that can override individual business
decisions in important corporations, then sure.

It is well known in economics that decisions that make sense for individuals
(corporations, persons) can be detrimental to society as a whole. A pareto-
optimum by no means has to be the "best" or "most desirable" optimum.

It would be nice if someone could say, after appropriate research and debate,
"Hello Amazon, it is great that you are running so well and expanding so much.
But we as a society have decided that we can live without further delivery
speed improvements in this year. OTOH, we think your workers deserve a bit
more money. Please reallocate $N to their salaries."

Or, "Dear energy companies, after reviewing all the facts, we have decided
that technology X (nuclear, fracking, ...) is not worth the risk to us. We'd
rather accept a loss of 3% or stagnation for N years in wealth. Please
reallocate resources to build more Y (solar, wind power, ...)"

~~~
blahi
>But if it means there is a central intelligence (democraticly controlled,
like by a parliament and not a dictatorship!) that can override individual
business decisions in important corporations, then sure

We have that. It's just corrupt. Like everything humans do is doomed to be. So
please, enough centralization already.

------
queirozfcom
I just hope this website keeps its up to date reporting on projects like this
so that we have time to leave the country before this "new brand of socialism"
starts working its "magic" in the country. We've seen this before.

~~~
guard-of-terra
In the Memorial in Santiago de Chile there's a stand about people who had to
flee to other countries after the coup. _They 're all over the map._

~~~
queirozfcom
This technique you just used. It's called a 'straw man'.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Isn't fighting socialism (in 2016) a huge straw man by itself?

Socialist countries has all kinds of trajectories, as capitalist ones do.
Moreover there's no capitalist and socialist countries anymore but a spectrum
of economic regimes.

~~~
PerfectDlite
> Socialist countries has all kinds of trajectories

All of them pointing to the ground, though.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Norway and China beg to differ. People argue that whole EU is socialist these
days, and some of countries are quite successful.

~~~
alvarosm
The EU is tanking thanks to socialism. Norway has oil to fund its pseudo-
socialism. China is doing "well" since it _ditched_ socialism.

~~~
lawless123
I'm in the EU everything is quite fine outside of alt-right blogs. The only
ones really tanking are the UK.

Capitalist nations like the US aren't exactly doing great yet.

------
gtt
The insightful overview of Cybersyn in The New Yorker
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-
machin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine)

------
Symmetry
It was interesting as a historical artifact but the whole approach just seems
so painfully naive. Starting with putting 7 people in a room to command things
and calling that approach 'non-hierarchical' because that was the buzzword du
jour at the time.

------
davedx
"The Dream Machine" [1] also covers a lot of the history and vision of
cybernetics. Well worth a read.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-
Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-
Computing/dp/014200135X)

------
partycoder
With Cybersyn, the Allende administration hoped to solve the problems they
created by intervening companies. Unfortunately, to replace a capable business
owner with a politically loaded government interventor will punish the company
productivity. No matter how good the intentions are (e.g: wealth
distribution), political meritocracy does not translate into entrepreneurial
competence.

Under Allende's administration, Chile economically became similar to what
Venezuela is today, with ineffective resource distribution and widespread
chaos. In part, the Chilean economy collapsed with the help of foreign
sabotage driven by concerns about the growth of Soviet influence and local
allies that later supported the 1973 coup, part of a series of Latin American
coups now known as Operation Condor.

The military junta focused in reverting the policies that Allende impulsed,
notably the confiscation of foreign owned mining assets. To achieve that, they
abolished the congress, wrote a new constitution with specific provisions to
protect investors from Communist-style confiscations.

~~~
guard-of-terra
_To achieve that, they_

...tortured people by thousands, threw the least desirable into the sea from
helicopters.

That's not becoming cool irregardless of how many positively sounding weasel
words you put around "coup" and negatively sounding ones around "Allende".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
"Capitalism: the system you're _dying_ to try!"

------
fixxer
Allende won the Presidency with 36% of the vote in a three horse race.

~~~
Frompo
Allende won with 37% and a 83% turnout, Nixon won with 43% and a 62% turnout,
giving Allende 30% of the popular vote and Nixon 27 %.

I'm not sure what this tells us about Nixons right to have Allende deposed
though.

~~~
fixxer
I'm not defending Nixon; fuck that guy.

I will, however, say that Allende is oft depicted by the left as some
universally beloved leader that only the aristocracy despised. I have not
heard this from my (many) Chilean friends (and they aren't part of that
aristocracy). Also, it is hard to overthrow a leader when they actually are
universally beloved. It happens because the people let it.

