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Cybersyn And Early Uniminds
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian Website is running a story on Cybersyn. An experimental computer network based on cybernetic principles that was used by Chile's revolutionary government between 1971 and 1973 to provide a real-time, decentralized form of economic analysis in the nationalized sector of the Chilean economy. The network has been described as Chile's Internet. There is a photo of the control room which looks something like the deck of the Starship Enterprise.
The whole thing was the brainchild of Stafford Beer, a sort of British Buckminster Fuller. All very Orwellian and Big Brother, the whole experiment was brought to an end by the CIA sponsored coup d'etat on the September 11th, 1973."
At last! A /. article on my pet subject!
The system contains strict limits on what information is passed upwards - this is how it was able to function on 1970s computer hardware over 1970s WANs. The absence of totalitarian control is a crucial design factor. There just isn't the bandwidth, nor would you want it.
Beer is the most freedom-loving person you could hope to imagine. He designed Cybersyn to enhance freedom, not to crush it. He sadly died last year.
For a full account of this system, read Beer's book "Brain of the Firm".
I hear he has to consult his lawyers these days before he travels.
Wouldn't want to be tried before the International Criminal Court now, would he?
Yeah, but, well, it didn't work. What they got was a real-time view of a country going down the drain.
I propose tagging the network RTDTDA.NET (Real-Time Down The Drain Analytic Network)
Its not just the whole winning the war thing that prevents him from being prosecuted. The International Criminal Court (ICC) which was setup to try war crimes was opposed vehemently by the United States and it got to the point that the US refused to take part in any peace-keeping forces globally unless the US was exempt from the actions of the ICC. Just the other day in fact they blocked the adoption of a UN resolution to boost protection for aid-workers in conflict zones because the bill proposed that killing an aid worker would be considered a war crime in accordance with the Rome Statute of the ICC. They basically refuse to have any US military or political leader, past or present, held accountable for any of their actions in the global sphere. It must be a weight of your mind though, when considering whether to invade a country completely unprovoked...
I wont post links. Google for '"War crimes" USA ICC' and you'll find more than enough reputable links to support everything I've said.
It's fascinating to look at these early efforts at controlled economies and think how much better the US economy could be with a bit of technological innovation. And by innovation I don't mean another few decades of intense patent litigation.
The lack of a national electronic currency is a glaring absence. You can hardly expect e-retailing to compete with cash when e-currency consists of credit cards issued by usurous, predatory corporate behemouths. But a conservative government has no reason to disturb the status quo of all things. A national e-currency would disrupt the existing financial industry to no end and that potential negative is much more important to a conservative government than the possible positive of helping the economy as a whole. Why trade what works for some today for what might work for many tomorrow.
So, I understand that it's a political impossibility today, but when the government finally does awake to its responsibility to create a usable currency as it is laid out in the Consitituion, the possibilities are great. It could make a viable welfare state a reality.
The currency could be manipulated in ways previously unheard of. People could be paid simply to live their lives and still there would be no need for inflation. Businessnes could prosper at the same time. It wouldn't have to be anti-business at all. America could never thrive without business, but it wouldn't have to. A planned economy and a thriving business world could easily exist side by side.
I realize these ideas are still quite blasphemous, but should we reach a point of crisis trodding the well worn path, it's nice to know that there are alternatives that could be introduced before things got too bad.
-kgj
Cybernetics is the application of control processes from biological systems to artificial systems. So you can build a computer network with no reference to biological systems, and you have built that network without cybernetics. This system, however, was built on cybernetic principles.
Well I consider WWII to be as much recent history as the 70s. And I do not think the deaths in the USSR or China under Marxist rule to be outside of recent history. Okay then how about the Congo and the attack on Eygpt by the Britsh and the French? The French sinking of the the Greenpeace ship?
Allende might not have been that bad of a man but his country was in chaos from within. If he had failed and it looks like he was going to a strong arm Marxist with ties to the USSR could very have been the one to replace him. The CIA and the US goverment at the time would have prefered someone that was indebted to them. I am sick of the selfrightous Eurotrash that over looks their own history then claims that the US is evil and knoww nothing about hisory.
As I said was it a good idea? not really.
P.S. If you want to start talking about the Genocide of the native americans be my guest. Since I am one of them I just want you to start at the begining, with the Spanish.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This was modded "INSIGHTFUL"? Too bad there's not a "+1 POLEMIC" rating.
First paragraph - pretty much spot-on.
Second para, 1st sentence - still ok, but drifting into empty spitefulness
2nd P, 2nd s: hard veer into nonsense.
"I doubt anyone much in America sees the oxymoron of this" - Based on what, your own HUMUNGOUS generalizations? Your fervently-held political beliefs?
I think you were right at the beginning. *MOST* of America really doesn't have anything to do with the world, and doesn't want to. Why? Because they don't have to. Provincialism all over the world is being invaded by American products, advertising, and culture (such as it is). SELF-EVIDENTLY, Americans (with no cultural heritage to speak of) don't really mind this.
Thus the furious protests against "globalization" - yes, American culture is shallow and self-serving, but at least it's more benign (as was the British Empire before it) than pretty much any conceivable global alternative, as well as a LARGE number of "local" dogmas, no matter where you are from.
"And the people cling to the national myth out of their personal fears, and in part because the people against the national mythos are for sociological reasons often even more dysfunctional than those for it."
I do confess this is a great statement.
-Styopa
Thank you.
It's disturbingly simple. I'm not going to pretend that I thought this up myself, but I've added a bit to the original idea that I saw in The Economist last year.
The idea is that with a centrally controlled electronic currency, you'd have a degree of control over the economy that nobody in the pre-digital world could begin to imagine. In that sense, it's a completely revolutionary break from earlier economic theories because in the past there was no way to anticipate its possibility and thus no way to speculate on its potentials.
So, to get to your question about how you control inflation while handing out money to the masses in a massive welfare state, it's simple: the currency automatically deflates. This novel electronic currency would have a time-to-live like an internet packet or one of PK Dick's mutants. This type of system would simply have been to complex to imagine in the past, but now that's no longer necessarily the case.
The beauty of such a system is that it forces circulation. If you don't circulate, you lose it. That basically eliminates speculation which, along with inflation, is another historical source of troubles for welfare states.
Now, in the original article in which I saw this idea, they speculated that such a system could only come into place with the total destruction of the existing economy. That's where I took off in a different direction.
Thinking about it for awhile, I wondered if this same idea couldn't become both the basis of a vast welfare state and, at the same time, an enormous business stimulus.
Rather than waiting for the existing economy to collapse, these welfare credits could be introduced in parallel and only businesses would be allowed to exchange them into hard currency, thus leaving the existing business infrastructure intact. Businesses could still use hard currency and anybody could get into business. But the welfare recipients would have to be satisfied with their deflating currency. The only thing it would be good for it propping up businesses. Businesses that tried to cheat the system by providing exchange services would simply be restricted from accepting credits. So, the punishment system is simply to withdraw the reward.
If anything, you'd think this system would provide an enormous incentive for people to get into business and businesses would become more efficient and productive than ever. At the same time business standards rose, the vast majority of the people who couldn't make it in this ultra competitive enviroment would still be cared for.
It's pro-business socialism. People are so used to thinking either or, but I'm not sure it has to be that way. Perhaps we're struggling too hard when the answers are quite simple.
This is not even to get into the idea that a lot of America's woes are really about over production and over consumption to the detriment of living standards which are problems that might potentially be addressed more reasonably in a welfare state than in the system we're using now.