Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom covered it pretty comprehensively: The structural issue with communism is that it is a command economy, and central planning cannot work because the planners always have imperfect information. That may result simply from the impracticality of nation-scale information gathering, or deliberate misinformation from ambitious bureaucrats trying to distinguish themselves by juicing their numbers. In computer terms, capitalism is a massively-distributed system in which the economy is directed by the interactions of all economic agents at the network edge, rather than centralized in one, huge server.
So, as far as greed and corruption go, just like in the computer analogy, I think it’s far easier for individual agents engage in it given an ideal free-market capitalist system(*), but the consequences tend to be localized and contained. In a communist system, it’s very difficult for any arbitrary individual in society to engage in corruption and greed, but for the well-connected party insiders do it, the consequences can be dire, and intractable.
(*) I say ideal capitalist system, because the fatal flaw of capitalism is a mathematical one: The math shows that even with a starting condition of equal opportunity and conditions for all people, a few people end up with most of the wealth (and therefore power) just by pure, random chance.
Hayek was debunked even by Capitalists, that’s why the Austrian school is largely abandoned even among liberals. His ECP has several issues, of which I’ll elaborate on a few.
Hayek assumes a lack of incentives within Socialism/Communism. Even learning the basics of Socialism and Communism can debunk this, but Hayek makes it core to his arguments.
Hayek ties all sources of “rational economic decision making” to price signals, ie profit vs loss. This is similarly incorrect, you can have a demanded service without profit. Some examples include single payer Healthcare, high speed rail, and other free at point of service programs.
Hayek pretends command economies are functionally entirely different from market economies, which is also false. Amazon is entirely internally planned, and often relies on computer automation for planning. A Socialist system would have worker ownership of a larger Amazon.
Largely, you run into issues with corruption when people aren’t accountable. The issue is, in Capitalism, Capitalists are far less accountable than people in a Socialist system might be, as there’s a level of democratic control inherently within Socialism that is lacking in Capitalism.
Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom covered it pretty comprehensively: The structural issue with communism is that it is a command economy, and central planning cannot work because the planners always have imperfect information. That may result simply from the impracticality of nation-scale information gathering, or deliberate misinformation from ambitious bureaucrats trying to distinguish themselves by juicing their numbers. In computer terms, capitalism is a massively-distributed system in which the economy is directed by the interactions of all economic agents at the network edge, rather than centralized in one, huge server.
So, as far as greed and corruption go, just like in the computer analogy, I think it’s far easier for individual agents engage in it given an ideal free-market capitalist system(*), but the consequences tend to be localized and contained. In a communist system, it’s very difficult for any arbitrary individual in society to engage in corruption and greed, but for the well-connected party insiders do it, the consequences can be dire, and intractable.
(*) I say ideal capitalist system, because the fatal flaw of capitalism is a mathematical one: The math shows that even with a starting condition of equal opportunity and conditions for all people, a few people end up with most of the wealth (and therefore power) just by pure, random chance.
Hayek was debunked even by Capitalists, that’s why the Austrian school is largely abandoned even among liberals. His ECP has several issues, of which I’ll elaborate on a few.
Hayek assumes a lack of incentives within Socialism/Communism. Even learning the basics of Socialism and Communism can debunk this, but Hayek makes it core to his arguments.
Hayek ties all sources of “rational economic decision making” to price signals, ie profit vs loss. This is similarly incorrect, you can have a demanded service without profit. Some examples include single payer Healthcare, high speed rail, and other free at point of service programs.
Hayek pretends command economies are functionally entirely different from market economies, which is also false. Amazon is entirely internally planned, and often relies on computer automation for planning. A Socialist system would have worker ownership of a larger Amazon.
Largely, you run into issues with corruption when people aren’t accountable. The issue is, in Capitalism, Capitalists are far less accountable than people in a Socialist system might be, as there’s a level of democratic control inherently within Socialism that is lacking in Capitalism.