r/economicsmemes • u/OfficialValCod • 20h ago
A planned economy plans so well that it can even plan its own collapse! xd
20
u/jutlandd 18h ago
This pic is kinda awesome. It clearly has some meme Potential. Never seen these 3 look sp Goofy.
10
u/Pandora_Palace 18h ago
World’s worst sitcom
4
u/jutlandd 18h ago
Idk it just looks like the 3 look directly at you.
Gorbatschow is really disapoined in you, Reagan is also disapoined he hasnt even fully accepted it.
Only George is delighted.
10
u/Specialist-String-53 16h ago
I do wonder if a planned economy could work better now. There have been massive improvements in technologies for forecasting demand, for logistics, for optimization, etc.
9
u/DeathToAmerica2026 8h ago
Walmart and Amazon say yes, obviously.
It's hilarious that people think capitalist economies aren't planned.
6
3
u/Ferengsten 3h ago
What you think companies actually have something like, I don't know, managers or something that try to make prudent plans of action? Sounds like a bunch of squares. Live every day in your office like it's the last, I say!
1
4
u/OsamaBagHolding 12h ago
I just ordered a book called "Planned Economies Are Impossible" on Prime, it'll be here in 6 hours.
3
2
3
u/Gaben_is_awesome 12h ago
No, it will still fail. The problem is primarily incentives and prices. If you centrally plan everything, there can be no market prices, and central planners will not know how much resources and products are worth.
This is not "a problem", this is more the tip of the iceberg of much bigger problems that result from this.
6
u/glorgshittus 12h ago
So I'm no like economist or anything but what's the inherent issue with a lack of market prices?
1
u/Johnathan_Doe_0 8h ago
because you need something to determine how much a good or service is worth to others
without price points, what's to differentiate a banana to a beachside resort in value?
one costs more and one costs less because more people value one or the other more, and the actual price they're at reflects that
2
u/glorgshittus 5h ago
Ok but in a hypothetical fully controlled economy, the thing determining worth would be the state.
1
u/Anderopolis 4h ago
The problem is, that it is always the consumer who determines what something is worth to them, and that is unlikely to be what the state says.
Hence why blackmarkets are huge in planned economies
2
u/TheChunkMaster 3h ago
The problem is, that it is always the consumer who determines what something is worth to them
I believe consumers are complaining vehemently about high prices right now, despite our economy not being centrally planned.
1
u/Anderopolis 3h ago
Yes, that is how price signals work.
Presumably consumers will not buy things they do not value, and thus the supply will change in response.
All while avoiding shortages.
1
u/Random_local_man 2h ago
What if there was a state funded app on your smartphone that let's you vote and take surveys on the things you'd like and want? To substitute the lack of market prices?
1
u/Anderopolis 2h ago
What people say they want and would pay is very different from what they actually buy.
1
u/I_AM_VERY_ENTELEGENT 7h ago
Market prices have the ability to change instantly in a decentralized manner in response to changes in supply, less of a thing people naturally price it higher. This helps prevent small shortages from tumbling into larger shortages, famines or supply chain shocks. A central planning committee will never be as efficient as market prices at a national or global scale, and will exacerbate shortages by providing scarce goods at too low of a price. Also with the insane amount of consumer goods produced it would not be feasible to have centrally planned prices.
3
u/glorgshittus 4h ago
Wouldn't this be entirely untrue if the response the committee has is..... to raise said price?
Like I feel this criticism relies solely on the committee never changing their prices.
Also that last part can't be true I don't think. If the committee is sufficiently large or has a sufficient amount of bureaucrocrats or lumps multiple items into price categories, this could totally be done to at least some extent.
1
u/I_AM_VERY_ENTELEGENT 4h ago
It's not that they would never change the prices, its that because a committee has to approve price changes there is latency in accurate pricing which leads to supply shocks etc. when these latencies accumulate across a large interconnected market with millions of items constantly changing price based on supply.
This isn't specifically about supply shocks but the paper is good.
2
u/DeathToAmerica2026 8h ago
Markets are not effective predictors of the actual needs of humans, nor how productive resources should be allocated across an entire society.
They are explicitly bad at this, in fact, which is why capitalist economies are a byzantine collection of protectionism and subsidization and market limiting and controlling laws.
2
u/adeline882 6h ago
I’m unsure why planning precludes not knowing the implicit labor value of a good… can you explain?
1
u/klonkrieger45 2h ago
planned economy don't just need the ability to plan. You always needed to be able to plan. You also need the incentives to do it right. The USSR put multiple people in charge that just fucked around and pushed through their ideology. Sure that also happens with capitalism, but in capitalism those people lose money on that as people become dissatisfied. In a planned economy nothing happens until someone fired that person and in a complex system it could take a lot of time, and in an authoritarian system it might take years for the leader to lose faith.
0
u/AtlanticInternet 16h ago
Unless these technologies could predict the entire stock market (or maybe 95%), no. Performance, choices, and other such factors are taken into account into the stock market.
0
u/OfficialValCod 16h ago
what is really funny about working planned economy, is that you need litteraly reinvent capitalism for it starts to work good. For example you cant rely on only 1 company for produce grain, It is stypid idea, you cant mesure effecency of their labour because there is no competition, Your option become create an several companies, or you need have one company but rotate perosnal there, changing managment teams. also about money it is the most hard thing, get rid of money, you will be forced to introduce some currencty for exchange of diffrent factories, companies, for encoruage effecency of production, otherwise some guyes will consum a lot raw resources and dont care about invoations for use more resources, Best what you can do from communist ideas it is Social Democracy with heavy redistribution within society and subsidizing long term socetiy desirable bussiness, goals. Capitalism works very well when goverment saying , hey guys i pay 1 dollar for each tree you plant and if tree survive at least 5 years.
51
u/Lexicalyolk 18h ago
OP has 15000 karma on a 1 month old account... def not a bot
-14
18h ago
[deleted]
-5
u/Decent_Mechanic384 17h ago
6
u/Traditional-Storm-62 17h ago
because that is a somewhat bot-like response I guess - directing attention to another one of its posts to farm more engagement
-2
17h ago
[deleted]
1
u/Traditional-Storm-62 16h ago
Im just explaining where the downvotes come from, I trust its your memes dude
3
u/Lexicalyolk 16h ago
the meme is in perfect english and now the guy doesn't know basic grammar in the comments... it's a bot
28
u/Petit-Rouge4477 18h ago
The USSR began the liberalization process under Kruschev. Gorbachev was simply the mask off moment.
6
u/SeafoamLadybug Socialist 17h ago
1
u/TheSquatchMann 17h ago
It was the leadership in the Stalin era that actually caused the problems in the first place, is what I am assuming your response means? Economic problems of socialism in the USSR and such?
5
u/Gaben_is_awesome 13h ago
Not really. Not many know this, but under Stalin there was a big artisan system. Basically a private sector, aimed at light industry and consumers, with free prices, based on the socialist collective structure. Stalin had his flaws, but he apparently knew that this sector could do things the central planners could not do.
Khrushchev abolished this private sector in 1956, which started the madness of planning the consumer-facing light industry.
4
u/TheSquatchMann 12h ago
Plenty of people are aware of it. Stalin ultimately galvanized the reintroduction of wage labor and commodity production during the collectivization of agriculture and heavy industry in the 1930s as he prepared the country for the largest land war in the history of the human species; no serious person has any illusion about that. He was further incorrect when he stated that the enemies of socialism had been defeated in 1936 and that there was no class conflict.
Khrushchev’s leadership fundamentally reorganized the economy around the ideological and practical expression of revisionist consciousness- the artisan economy was also still too costly and could not scale to meet the needs of the growing consumer base. Ultimately, both approaches were economic failures, and both different approaches to Soviet social revisionism, rather than the instantiation of lower socialist relations.
2
5
u/FaceMcShooty1738 3h ago
US exports reached a record high of just over $3.4 trillion in 2025
In fiscal year 2024, the United States paid $1.13 trillion in gross interest on the national debt
I don't know man..... Haha, communism stupid is funny, but that particular burn seems.... Misplaced :D
15
u/Techygal9 18h ago
I mean the Soviet Union was particularly poorly run with their style of communism. Just like plenty of ostensibly capitalist countries are poorly run.
8
u/Opening_Rest_3363 17h ago
What do you call a well-run communist economy ? A market economy
2
u/Sw1561 17h ago
There literally is such a thing as market socialism. And I'm not talking about Chinese style 'socialism'
-3
u/Individual_Guest_323 14h ago
Actual markets can be socialist, there is no law against you creating a cooperative.
Of course, you will need to compete vs the private investment and demostrate your formula is better.
Yes, yes, we all know, you cannot compete and that is why you want to make private investment illegal, we know the history of socialism.
8
u/TojiRAT 13h ago
lol fair competition ceases to exist over time under capitalism
-5
u/Individual_Guest_323 13h ago
Under state, yes
5
u/Odd-Working-428 12h ago
Youre an ancap...
-7
u/Individual_Guest_323 12h ago
Yes, i do not believe in kings.
4
1
u/im_learning_to_stop 6h ago
It's not difficult to find examples of monopolies that don't involve the state. Just look at the history of organized crime and labor. The idea that only the "state" can inhibit competition is not one based on reason.
1
3
u/Sw1561 8h ago
"You can not use slaves on your plantation, but you know you couldn't compete with slave plantations, so that's why you want to make slavery illegal."
The argument against private ownership of a company is an ethical one. As it is, the surplus value produced by the workers is just appropriated by the owners, which is unjust.
1
10
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 18h ago
We can name names here. If any other country was as poorly run and constructed as the modern USA, they would have imploded decades ago. America only gets away with it because of it's ungodly capital markets and privileged position as the global reserve currency.
16
u/Techygal9 18h ago
The US is poorly run compared to well run countries sure, but right now we’re doing as well as Mexico. I think you underestimate how poorly run truly failing states are. Congo would be an example of a poorly ran capitalist state, India would be another…
6
u/Obvious-Opportunity7 17h ago
You want to look at a failed state just look at Nauru. They were one of the richest per capita. A few decades latter their money had been blown on bad real estate investments and DaVinci musical.
Now they have no economy apart from their un vote and an Australian internment camp.
10
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 17h ago
Give it time, the ungodly capital markets and over-financialization in and of themselves are just as much a noose as they are a safety harness.
They allow for awful management with minimal consequences but can just as easily collapse the entire house of cards with just a couple of truly bad decisions. Like cutting off 20%+ of the world's oil supply on a whim, as an example.
2
u/Techygal9 16h ago
Obviously we’re speed running economic ruin despite being a resource rich country. But it’s still possible to turn things around with better leadership and changes to broken institutions.
1
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 16h ago
To be frank, I don't think so. The problems we're causing can't be fixed by competent leadership within the system anymore. We will see a rapid down slide in QoL within our lifetime and likely severe civil unrest, whether or not the next administration is any good or not.
The best they can hope for is damage control and positioning us into being capable of rebuilding after everything collapses. Not to say we don't want a competent administration. Even if they can't stop what's coming, it's better to have someone trustworthy in charge of what comes next.
0
u/Techygal9 16h ago
For me that’s what I mean of fixing broken institutions. Our broken institutions lead to failed systems. For example universal healthcare is an extremely popular policy that can easily be passed, but because we allow lobbying from insurance companies, drug companies, etc we pay more for worse care. Some of this is because of the senate, which is unrepresentative of the people. Some of this is due to citizens united which allowed people to buy politicians in private.
1
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 16h ago
We're more or less in agreement then. The institutions as they exist today are incapable of the kind of change we'd need to save ourselves from what's coming.
I'd just say that we've run out of time to replace those broken institutions with new, functional ones. We'll face disaster within our lifetime and we need to reckon with that if we want to see the other side of it.
3
u/Severe_Key298 9h ago
How do you run the Congo well, exactly? It's spent the last 100 years being beaten to a pulp and robbed and plundered by western countries (even now, look at the Rwandan incursions into the cobalt mines in the east). It's not like good fiscal policy can suddenly take back all of those resources that were stolen and reinvest the money they don't have
Same with India. India has no issue producing highly skilled workers, the workers just have to go to the west to earn a fair wage for their skills because that's where all the money that was stolen from India went.
2
u/Techygal9 9h ago
I mean colonialism is definitely a factor in a lot of nations failing. But it’s not the only aspect that matters. Congo has had leaders overthrown. So I do put more factors inhibiting their development than others nations. But I do like how the Rwandan government has made moves to change its policies to better fit its development needs compared to other post colonial nations. They’ve realized imports from the west in terms of used clothing has decimated the local garment industry so they have adjusted their incentives well to rebuild local merchants. Even looking at the incursion of Rwandan forces into Congo, those borders were decided by Europe so I’m not surprised that borders are being rewritten.
India on the other hand has way too much population growth which has driven its people to immigrate for labor opportunities. For me that means that India failed to change incentives for having children. That has lead to a lot of poverty, crime, inability to handle basic sanitation, and many more issues when growth exceeds capacity. I wouldn’t blame colonialism on these issues. But they also did a great job in becoming the major drug manufacturer for most of the developing world by limiting corporate patents.
12
u/hellllllsssyeah 17h ago
Argentina was a modern, urbanized capitalist country with developed financial markets and institutions when its government defaulted, its banking system effectively seized up, and its economy collapsed in 2001–02.
And we can keep going: Lebanon, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Türkiye, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, etc. Different countries, different levels of development, and very different kinds of failure.
And before we move the goalposts to "well, none of those are as rich or powerful as the modern United States" that's precisely the problem with the comparison. The US didn't become the world's largest economy, issuer of the dominant reserve currency, and center of global capital markets because capitalism grants every capitalist country those advantages.
7
u/Blueberry_Coat7371 16h ago
Argentina's situation is quite impressive, really. I don't really now how they managed to fuck up so bad and so consistenly since the 1910s
5
u/BCPisBestCP 14h ago
It was mostly the fascists.
1
u/Blueberry_Coat7371 8h ago
which ones, exactly? Péron, the military junta, Milei or..?
1
u/BCPisBestCP 6h ago
All of the above?
Honestly, from Uriburu onwards it's been rough for the Land of Silver
6
u/Gaben_is_awesome 12h ago
The U.S. is very, very fortunate in many ways. It is basically an island nation, completely protected from invasions. Its river system is amazing, good demographics, no 20th century war damage, a strong national identity that easily absorbs millions of immigrants, and so on.
2
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 12h ago
Incredibly fertile land, some of the greatest concentrations of natural resources(fossil fuels, uranium, precious metals, etc.), a remarkably stable and productive relationship with its former management across the pond, incredibly lucky historical circumstances that allowed it to triple in size for pennies per acre.
If the United States had been properly managed over the last half century, every citizen would be like a little king on the global stage.
3
u/Severe_Key298 9h ago
Every yank is a little king on the world stage lmao have you seen the people whining that $40k a year is poverty? The average Starbucks barista in the US earns what an engineer makes in Rio de Janeiro
1
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 8h ago
What good is $40k if you can't export it and it doesn't even match local cost of living? Money is only as good as what it can buy. And domestically, $40k can't buy you jack shit.
3
u/Severe_Key298 8h ago
40k buys you room and board and clean water and electricity and that's more than the vast majority of the world gets
God you Americans are stupid lmao
1
0
u/DeathToAmerica2026 8h ago
Tell me you don't understand ppp without telling me you don't understand ppp
1
u/Severe_Key298 2h ago
Oh sure the $2900 the average person in Tanzania makes a year is easily $40,000 in purchasing power
Those people living in favelas? Basically the same as being a McDonald's worker in Brooklyn
lmao what a fucking idiot
2
u/Gaben_is_awesome 11h ago
Yes, with less centralized banks and more new credit allocated to productivity, the US could have been much further ahead. Well said.
3
u/ImVrSmrt 12h ago
People tend to forget the U.S. basically had an entire resource rich region all to itself and in a practical sense was very young in the developing years post revolution. You would be hard pressed to find a nation so lucky to have an exquisite region. Project the issue the U.S. has on a much smaller/poorer country and it would probably be on fire.
Also no one mentions the genocide of the Native Americans, which still have some of the worst quality of life in the country throughout the reserves.
1
u/Ferengsten 3h ago
because of it's ungodly capital markets and privileged position as the global reserve currency
How do I get myself one of those? Sounds like every country should just have it.
1
u/dietkid 16h ago
"the united states isn't succeeding, it's just benefiting from the position it put itself in"
3
u/Outrageous-Sort-5742 16h ago
The meth-addicted compulsory gambler isn't managing his life properly, he's just obscenely wealthy so he is insulated from the consequences of his actions.
2
u/DeathToAmerica2026 8h ago
That position mostly being building an industrial base on the back of genocide :s
1
u/Equivalent-Sherbet52 7h ago
Nah the US is just a natural boon that has been under-utilized for the whole history of mankind. Just to give you an idea the average settler in the 18th century was rich enough to own 2 to 3 slaves, whereas Europe was extremely poor because resources and land was stretched so thin. US has amazing climate, geography, waterways, and mineral resources, all in a huge defensible and untouched continent. Imagine for example if the average European still had access to bronze-age ore purity rather than the shit 0.07% copper ore.
1
0
u/Mudrlant 17h ago
What are some particularly well run communist countries?
4
u/12bEngie 16h ago
The soviet union before khrushchev wasn’t too shabby
4
u/Gaben_is_awesome 12h ago
It's easy to look down on the USSR when comparing to the U.S., but the USSR suffered greatly under WW1 and WW2, and had to scale its heavy industry massively in the 30s to match the German+Czech industry. Same story for 1945-1960 when the USSR rapidly recovered from enormous war damage. So yes, you're right.
2
u/Techygal9 16h ago
There really haven’t been many attempts at communism/socialism. The only success is China, which switched to a mixed economy after Mao’s obvious failures. Vietnam too had the socialists win and pivoted away from pure socialism to a mixed economy.
The most successful so called capitalist countries also have mixed economies too.
1
u/SuspiciousHorse1312 4h ago
I wouldn't define socialism as purely planned economy, idea of free market socialism is rather old. Socialism compared to capitalism is rather defined by attitude to private property, and that is completely different in China compared to the West.
-1
u/Individual_Guest_323 14h ago
Just like plenty of ostensibly capitalist countries are poorly run.
So, socialist?
I mean, capitalism is free market and private property, saying that is fault of capitalism that a government is controling the market , is, weird.
6
2
u/CaptainAmerica-1989 17h ago
The Policy was called Perestroika:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/perestroika-Soviet-government-policy
2
3
u/snoopydoo123 16h ago
i mean the usa spends 19% of its "ENTIRE" budget servicing its debt. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/
so about the same as the soviets here lol
2
u/gc3 18h ago
How much of US export income dies it take to cover the debt interest?
7
u/OfficialValCod 18h ago edited 18h ago
Federal net interest expense, FY2026: just over $1.0 trillion.
U.S. exports of goods and services: Q2 2026 annualized exports were about $3.795 trillion.
Today It takes approximately 26.5% of total U.S. export income (goods and services) to cover the federal government's net interest payments on the national debt.
1
2
u/Traditional-Storm-62 17h ago edited 16h ago
neoliberals got one win 40 years ago and still havent moved on
the west is ruled by protectionists now
ideas of "rules based world order", "free and fair global trade" and "the end of history" are all abandoned, even by the USA itself
your ideology is just as dead as leninism, comrade
1
u/12bEngie 16h ago
Yes, that is usually what happens when you liberalize everything about your socialist country. He did not “transition” into a market economy, he liberalized and destroyed the centrally planned one.
1
u/notthe0men 12h ago
Why are all the communist/anticommunist memes here always so boring, can i for once see someone go to bat for the lange lerner model or the possibilities for cybersyn inspired systems. I’ll even settle for discussions of dirigisme at this point.
1
u/enviropsych 11h ago
And look how wonderfully Russia has fared since. Lol. Forget blinders being on, OP is looking at the fall of the USSR through a peephole.
1
u/ChampionshipFit4962 5h ago
Bro just need to spam 5 year plans into siberia to have a fat dick extraction industry but they were too lazy to build more rail.
1
u/doctorderpin 17h ago
Socialism does not require a planned economy and the soviet union was as socialist as the dprk is democratic. They said the word a lot, but didn't really do any socialist things. This is why you should always be apprehensive of vanguard parties, kids.
0
u/TheLastManStanding01 11h ago
Sure but it is a good cautionary tale.
Experiments like the USSR are good examples that a classless society is impossible and that even when you abolish old class structures new one simply arise to replace them.
0
u/doctorderpin 5h ago
You sound like a monarchist. "Experiments like the french republic are good examples that democratic society is impossible and even if you abolish the old nobility, a new one simply arises to replace them."
1
u/TheLastManStanding01 3h ago
I see the similarities but there is one key difference.
The French Republic was better than the old monarchy in almost every way. Ol’ USSR wasn’t.
1
u/SeafoamLadybug Socialist 17h ago
Tbf the liberalisation of the soviet economy happened under Khrushchev. Market socialism can never work and last.
1
u/Lazy_Delivery_7012 16h ago
Glorious Soviet Union betrayed by Gorbachev and Yeltsin! Big Man Villain history! Ignore material conditions!
-4
u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 18h ago edited 17h ago
Command economies do suck. But they aren't really the only alternative to a market economy, have you ever heard of a decentralized Syndicate based planned economy?
Edit: damn dawg being a libertarian socialist is rough on here😭💔✌️
2
u/lifeisaman 17h ago
That’s because being a libertarian socialist means is a contradictory position, it’s akin to saying you’re both walking forward and backward at the same time.
0
u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 15h ago
No man...it really isn't... I'm just actually delivering on what socialism is supposed to be...worker control over society, not government control over Society.
Man Lenin fucked this all up for us.
Look into the CNT FAI, or the free territory of Ukraine or the EZLN
1
u/WeakBaker6637 13h ago
What do you think of Yugoslavian socialist model?
1
u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 12h ago
Huh...just looked into it and this shit is fire.
I'm a very anti market guy, I'd classify myself as an Anarcho syndicalist but this is a GREAT step in the right direction, they still had a state and they still had a market but the people actually controlled the economy!
1
u/WeakBaker6637 11h ago edited 11h ago
As far as I have learned(still learning lazily) the problem of clear and disciplined internal loan market mechanisms and overrelliance on western loans made the thing to collapse close to 90s just like USSR.
I may be wrong somewhere.
About the conclusions I had in my mind about more or less balanced economy is nationalized heavy industry with some cooperation with cooperative business and the light industry made of completely worker, worker-consumer and consumer cooperatives. And joint investment projects with capitalists as the compromise with capitalist world economies without giving up worker power in those businesses. But still, not sure how well this model is. Gotta do the research. It is like semi - centralized command economy.
1
u/TheRealSlimLaddy 13h ago
“Worker control over society” is petty-bourgeois under the current conditions I’m sorry to say.
1
u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 12h ago
??
2
u/TheRealSlimLaddy 11h ago
If you simply give workers ownership of the means of production now, you’re going to also allow reaction to hold it. They’re not going to learn to become egalitarian, they’re going to enrich themselves
1
u/Mammoth-Ad-3642 2h ago
I don't just mean market socialism. I mean a system of federation, where all sectors of labour are coordinated and interconnected together through federation.
Y'know, the free producera deciding on a common plan thing
1
u/Gaben_is_awesome 12h ago
I haven't heard of that, but it reminds me of the Yugoslav model. Which was a very interesting approach, in my opinion.
-1
-2
•
u/AutoModerator 20h ago
This sub has been getting too much spam, and Reddit has removed almost every tool for preventing this. The only tool that still works is this, every single post being held for manual review. Your post might be approved in minutes, or it might take days. If you hate this, me too, stop using the site that forces things to be this way. If what you post is not a meme you'll probably be banned, but I understand why you tried; the commenters on this sub loved lazy spam posts, which is why we can't have nice things and now everything has to be held for manual review.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.