Stop Blathering and Build

2009 cover (from anticap.wordpress.com)

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1992, socialism was relegated to the ash heap of history. Capitalism and liberal democracy's superiority seemed so marked that Francis Fukuyama declared that political science had reached the End of History.

Yet, less than two decades later, Newsweek's cover heralded the re-ascendance of socialism. In 2018 socialism has become more popular than ever. Its attractiveness to the young and educated seems inexplicable, since socialism is not only an abject failure as an economic system (see Venezuela today) but socialist societies have killed tens of millions of their own people.

One Newsweek anti(!)-socialist opinion writer is frustrated by the faith of today's socialists that the next time will be different:

as much as the authors insist that previous examples of socialism were not “really” socialist, none of them can tell us what exactly they would do differently. Rather than providing at least a rough outline of how “their” version of socialism would work in practice, the authors escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics.

“Charting new destinations for humanity” and “democratizing the economy” are nice buzzphrases, but what does this mean, in practice? How would “the people” manage “their” economy jointly? Would we all gather in Hyde Park, and debate how many toothbrushes and how many screwdrivers we should produce? How would we decide who gets what? How would we decide who does what? What if it turns out that we don’t actually agree on very much?

These are not some trivial technical details that we can just leave until after the revolution. These are the most basic, fundamental questions that a proponent of any economic system has to be able to answer. Almost three decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall—enough time, one should think, for “modern” socialists to come up with some ideas for a different kind of socialism. Yet here we are. After all those years, they have still not moved beyond the buzzword stage.

Your humble blogger is not so doctrinaire that he believes socialism will always be doomed to failure. So convince us, young socialists, without betting the farm. Prove that it works on a small scale. Show that "Medicare for all" and "free college education" works in a municipality before you go state-wide or even national.

Stop blathering and build. (Note: in the 1960's and 1970's sincere believers that capitalism wasn't the answer joined communes to put their principles into practice. All failed, maybe because they didn't have the right tech tools. Maybe you can do better.)

Kenneth Arrow

Receiving the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics (Telegraph)

His passing hardly rated a mention in the nightly news, but Kenneth Arrow's contributions to the fields of economics and political science were unmatched among 20th-century economists:

Arrow wrote the foundational paper of general equilibrium analysis, the foundational paper of social choice and voting, the foundational paper justifying government intervention in innovation, and the foundational paper in the economics of health care.

The idea for which he was most famous, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, showed that no voting system can aggregate the collective preferences of voters in every situation. Each will have a different weakness. He was awarded the Nobel prize in Economics in 1972.

From 2012, here's Kenneth Arrow on the Electoral College:

Oh, we know that there’s been several elections (not many), but there’s been several elections where the Plurality vote was different from the electoral vote. There, we actually have data, like 2000. So we know it makes a difference. I think I’d prefer something other than Plurality Voting. But certainly the Electoral College only adds. It doesn’t subtract. It only adds to the problem. Actually, there’s a lot of strange consequences. For example, in campaigning and power, states that are doubtful have more power than states that are clearly one party or another. There’s no reason for that to matter, to play a role. A vote in California has less and less significance. That means policies are changed.

[Update - 2/24: former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers remembers his Uncle Kenneth.]