Lots of previous threads for those interested:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cybersyn%20points%3E5&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Cybersyn%20points%3E5&sort=byD...</a>
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.
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.<p>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?
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.
The insightful overview of Cybersyn in The New Yorker <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machine" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/planning-machin...</a>
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.
"The Dream Machine" [1] also covers a lot of the history and vision of cybernetics. Well worth a read.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Computing/dp/014200135X" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Co...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.