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This project is funny because the outcome was so inevitable: 1. Every large corporation in the world has tried a similar "Let's get a bunch of statisticians to

• stephen_cagle 27d ago
  So, seems like the logical way to run a business would be to create a bunch of internal metrics but never let any of your reportees know what they are. Or even better, "leak" that there might be metrics (that are in reality false), and then see who allocates resources towards maximizing them. Favor allocating resources to those who hit your internal metrics, favor de-allocating resources towards those that hit your "honeypot" metrics. This all kind of depends on having direct reportees who have a great degree of latitude in how they spend their resources I suppose.
• tech_ken 27d ago
  Back when I read "Cybernetic Revolutionaries" I followed it up with "People's Republic of Walmart" and came away with a bit of a different conclusion to your point 1. IMO lots of US-based hyperscalars are managing what are effectively command economies, and it's allowed them to ex. scale their infrastructure so aggressively these last ~2 years.
  • p_l 27d ago
    FMCGs work very much like command economies, including specialized tooling to shift production between customers when orders fall through. Unlike USSR they simply do it on shorter timescales, too, and with better customer feedback. Something Cybersyn actually targeted, as it's closer to Toyota Production System (as much done at lowest level in small decision loops) than centrally managed GOSPLAN or large american FMCG giants
  • lobf 27d ago
    Please elaborate.
    • tech_ken 27d ago
      I'd honestly recommend checking out the People's Republic of Walmart; it's a super short read and anything I say would be basically a warmed up rehash of whatever I remember from it. Basic point is just that operations research/supply chain management was heavily developed by the USSR to support the central economy and now it's used by every major retailer (among others) to manage supply chains that are massively larger than anything the USSR ever got close to.
  • redhed 27d ago
    Yeah, the economy is basically a bunch of oligarchical/dictatorial command economies, or what we like to call companies. It's funny, a lot of leftist people use them as examples of how a larger command economy could work (usually the reaction a lot of leftists I know had to People's Republic of Walmart), whereas it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like.
    • tech_ken 27d ago
      > it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like. I was wondering the same after PRW lol. Recently I had the chance to ask a friend of mine who worked in Google Infra (years ago) if they had ever tried to 'liberalize' their infrastructure planning; something like having internal business units bid on space, power, and compute instead of distributing it top-down. He said that yes, this was actually something like their original operating model, and the outcome was that YouTube basically bought up every piece of hardware in the company and then leased them out to other verticals at a profit.
      • redhed 27d ago
        That's pretty interesting. I always found the idea of democratizing a company pretty easy to understand (can easily just mirror civilian governmental structure in some sense), but creating an internal free market system harder to wrap my head around so pretty cool to see an example of it.
    • TimorousBestie 27d ago
      > whereas it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like. There are a few small examples that come to mind (co-ops and communes mostly), but I can’t think of any that have been successful at scale. Running an internal market would be almost pure overhead, so if it worked it would really have to be efficient to be worthwhile.
      • redhed 27d ago
        I understand that line of thinking and honestly think it's possible you're correct. On the other hand, this is exactly historical rhetoric that was used against republicanism/democracy, with people saying the only successful examples were city states and that it was impossible to scale. Maybe we just need a corporate "America" that figures out the correct governing structure. If anything I think it's possible it might only be possible with extremely large firms while small firms stay autocratic to stay dynamic.
  • Animats 27d ago
    Right. WalMart and Amazon are closer to command economies than Gosplan ever was. They're not choking on the scale of what they do; they're thriving on it. Gosplan, the USSR's central planning system, ran on monthly reporting and annual plans. WalMart at one point ran on daily reporting and weekly plans. It's probably even faster now. The problem of getting accurate data started to be solved when bar codes and RFID tags came in. It's possible for a factory to fake "we made 431 washing machines today." It's hard to fake "we made 431 washing machines today, their serial numbers were scanned as they left the factory, scanned again as they arrived at the various distribution centers, and scanned again when they were shipped to a customer, and scanned again when the customer received them." It's not airtight, but faking it requires a sizable fakery operation which tends to be detected eventually. Much real world activity is driven by all that "where's my stuff" data, and if the data is way off, people notice. For large classes of products and services today, there is no real price competition. There just aren't enough players to make a market. The magic number seems to be four, from an EU study. Less than four major players in direct competition, and prices don't go down.
• altruios 27d ago
  > But because it was destroyed in a CIA-backed revolution How many times has that actually happened in real life (opens history book) (oh-no.gif)...