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."

Comments

As opposed to "nutritional principles"?

[rot26]

I bet "Cybernetic Principles" sounded really groovy in 1971, although I'm curious how you can build a computer network, or a computer-anything for that matter, without them.

Re:As opposed to "nutritional principles"?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:As opposed to "nutritional principles"?

[yintercept]

I need to check a history book, but I think both computers and telephone networks existed in 1971. I think maybe there was even color TV. I suspect the reason that people couldn't hook a ton of cool gadgets to the telephone system in the US was more a matter of the AT&T monopoly than lack of imagination.

Most of the ideas that we think are cool today are really just twists or refinement of ideas that have been around for a long time.

Re:As opposed to "nutritional principles"?

[AJWM]

Cybernetics is the application of control processes from biological systems to artificial systems.

You're thinking of bionics. (Although the definition you give isn't exact for that, either). Cybernetics is the study of control and communication in both living and non-living systems.

Here are the dictionary links:
bionics
cybernetics

(Triva note: the term "cybernetics" was coined by Norbert Wiener, "bionics" was coined by Dr. Jack Steele -- my father-in-law)

Re:As opposed to "nutritional principles"?

[TomV]

I bet "Cybernetic Principles" sounded really groovy in 1971

True. But when Staff wrote 'Cybernetics and Management" in 1959, the idea that you could apply Wiener's 1948 observational theories to real enterprises, let alone an entire national economy, has got to have been one of the all-time crazy ideas. Like Team Syntegrity (part of the Viable Systems Model, kicking off from the idea that every imaginable system can in some sense be modelled as an icosahedron), based on Buckminster Fuller's idea that 'all systems are polyhedra' - nuts perhaps, but terribly terribly useful and possibly *the* most complete model of 'organisations' (whatever they are, read the book!) ever constructed.

Here's a lecture(pdf) Staff gave in 1973 looking back at his work in Chile. And nearly two decades later, here's 'world in torment' which gives both a lovely flavour of what Staff was all about and a frightening summary of where the world may be going.

NOTHING has ever hit me with the same combination of 'wow' and 'my brain is burning' than Staff's Viable Systems Model seminars, sorry, Syntegrations. But like the man used to say, 'you need big words for big ideas. And you should find it hard to understand.' And you just knew you were being inspired by one of *the* great minds.

Cybersin ?

[makapuf]

First thought it was about pr0n or Kazaa (or using blink tags), but no.

Not quite the internet

[Brento]

Voters, workplaces and the government were to be linked together by a new, interactive national communications network, which would transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time.

Uhhh, no, that's nothing like the Internet, actually. The Internet links men with chicks, to transform their relationship into something profoundly more equal and responsive than before - the guys shell out money and get pr0n. Nothing socialist about it, and certainly nothing to do with voters.

hey now..

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't look like the deck of the Enterprise. Just seven captain's chairs, and nothing else. And that would suck. One Captain Kirk, given Shatner's overacting, annoying enough. Seven of them would just plain suck.

CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the americans say so lightly that cia organised a coup, and in the same breath ask why people around the world dislike them?

34

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[Anonymous Coward]

For a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the USA is an extremely large country, and only has one neighbour of any relative population size. This helps make the USA far more of a self-contained world than just about any other country out there. It also means that ~97% of television content is locally produced, furthering this.

America is extremely nationalistic and has a national myth of grandious pridefulness 2nd to very few. Most Americans don't want to tolerate anything that gets in the way of that nationalism. It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.

So if the USA is taking out governments in places like Venuzvela, Chile, Greece, Zaire etc, it is because they're 'enemies of freedom', while supporting evil regimes like the government of Turkey for 'the greater good'. I doubt anyone much in America sees the oxymoron of this.

It was much the same with the British Empire. It stood for 'freedom' and 'christian charity' and so on. In reality, the people in power were just cold greedy sociopaths. Same with America. 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.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[LWATCDR]

Funny how can Britsh sit so smug when they Forced China to accept drugs so the English could have their tea. Or the French forget that they sat around or helped send thousands of Men, Women and childern to Hitlers gas chambers, Or ..... At the time the where claiming to be MARXIST. From reading the artical the CIA might have help the coup along but it seems there was a lot of support for it. The economy was in the dumper. Things where not working. At the time the US thought Marxist==evil. At the time if you look at the pain and suffing that the Marxist goverments in the USSR and China had caused the people in there countries it was not that bad of an unsumption. Do I think it was a good idea? Not really but then I have 30 years of history to look at.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[bhima]

Americans also tend to think that their way of doing things is better, in all situations and culture, than any other methods currently in use. This is true for politics, banking & economic policy, patent, copyright, and drug law. In this case the Americans decided they could run Chile better than the Chileans and couldn't. History is filled with other counties doing this, colonialism and the cold war jump to mind. America is simply doing this now, and doing it poorly.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[argStyopa]

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.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[OscarGunther]

How can the americans say so lightly that cia organised a coup, and in the same breath ask why people around the world dislike them?

Because Americans do; we do not reflect. We consider everything through the prism of self-interest--is it good for the U.S. or bad for the U.S.? This is probably the secret of our national strength: we're so self-absorbed and so confident of success that we don't consider alternatives, but spend our energies moving around or through whatever obstacles are in our way.

It's telling that our national game is poker, while that of the Russians is chess. We didn't beat "communism" (meaning, really, totalitarian socialism) with guile or brains, we overwhelmed it with GDP, like we did the Fascists in WW2.

Americans are supremely pragmatic, which is why libertarianism hasn't taken as much hold as you would expect. The final arbiter seems to be whether it (the tactic du jour) gets the job done. In this light, our willingness to overthrow an ideologically-unfriendly--albeit democratically-elected--regime in Chile is easily understandable. We don't let our principles get in the way of our goals, which we assume are consistent with our principles. Can't stop to think about that now; gotta get shit done.

And yet it's the greatest country in the world. Every day I'm grateful my parents voted with their feet to come here.

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[mesocyclone]

It is easy in retrospect to ignore the forces at work in the world in the 1970s. The US knew that the USSR was sponsoring coups and otherwise undermining countries throughout the world, with the ultimate intent of world conquest. This has been solidly established with the information released since the fall of the USSR, although it was obvious as early as the 1930's (and eloquently described by Winston Churchill just after World War II).

The US (with the constant agreement and assistance of the UK, btw), had a policy developed in the late '40s called "containment" - which meant that it would use its means to stop the expansion of USSR power wherever possible. While leftists love to believe that the Allende regime was one of flowers and love and all that, in fact it had its own repressive and murderous side. It was also greatly helped by the communist bloc.

The reason investment dried up was that companies were not interested in putting money into a regime which confiscated property, as Allende had done. In fact, people in general would be pretty stupid doing so.

The CIA was active in the containment effort, and did indeed sponsor the coup. An interesting thing about this is that Pinochet, who came to power as a result, voluntarily returned the country to democracy some years later... unlike any communist nation except the USSR itself, which did so only after a total collapse of its economy and moral as a result of the inevitable corruption and inefficiencies of communist systems.

Furthermore, the US ceased its meddling after Jimmy Carter took office and congress, full of peaceniks, tore it apart. During that period, a number of communist revolutionary movements, all allied to the USSR or China, took power. Reagan revitalized (to some extend, always hobbled by a hostile congress) the US efforts to contain, and even roll back the communist hegemonic efforts. He was most successful in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The overthrow of the Panamanian government was made after a number of hostile acts against America and Americans by the Noriega, and was not done by the CIA (contrary to other posters) but by main force military attacks. Since that time Panama has had an independent, democratic government and is doing fine.

People hate the US because we are the most powerful nation on earth, economically and militarily, and they are envious. They hate us because our culture is displacing theirs in the mass media (which is their choice, not ours, since there is no US government pushing our pop music and movies and other crap down their throats). They hate us because we are willing to defend ourselves against those who would destroy us, rather than blindly trusting in a highly non-democratic, corrupt and illogically organized international organization (the UN) which succors dictators and tyrants. They hate us because we have an attitude which says that while we may listen to you, we will make up our own minds as to what is in our national interest. They hate us because we admit that we have a national interest of our own. They hate us because we support Israel, the only truly democratic nation in the middle east (with the exception of Turkey, which we also support).

They also hate us because we have been very generous, with the Marshall plan rebuilding Europe after WW-II, and vast amounts of foreign aid over the decades. We are currently spending billions to rebuild Iraq, and, as we always do, we will eventually leave Iraq to its own government.

If we act out of a generous motives, European "sophisticates" laugh at our naivette. If we act out of our own national interest, Europeans attack us for being selfish.

Europeans in partiocular hate us because their source of information tends to be highly biased (for example, the Guardian) and because our power and European lack of responsibility has left Europe almost irrelevant to international affairs, except when it can force us to obey the UN, where a minor country (France or Russia) can veto any action that it dislik

Re:CIA sponsored coup d'etat

[DunbarTheInept]

Firstly, the USA is an extremely large country, and only has one neighbour of any relative population size. This helps make the USA far more of a self-contained world than just about any other country out there. It also means that ~97% of television content is locally produced, furthering this.

All this is true. (It's also why people in the USA are rarely bilingual. There's no practical use for a second language for many Americans. Anyone who learns a second langauge is just doing it for the sake of rounding their education, not becuase they actually expect to need to use it. I think this has a lot to do with it the attitude as well, since learning to "think" in another language helps make someone less insular in their views. I learned a little French in school but never needed to use it for anything, so I don't rememeber enough of it to use. I have to travel over 1,000 miles to get to the nearest place where English is not the primary language, and that's just Quebec, which has English as a secondary bilingual language so that doesn't count as somewhere where another language would be helpful. And even if you think of Central and South America (the next nearest places) those only have two languages over such a vast area - Spanish, and Portugese. Over here in the Western Hemisphere, we don't have a lot of variety of languages.)


America is extremely nationalistic and has a national myth of grandious pridefulness 2nd to very few. Most Americans don't want to tolerate anything that gets in the way of that nationalism. It skews the mind into thinking that Americans are superior and that foreigners are inferior, no matter what the ears hear and the eyes see.

This paragraph, on the other hand, is total bunk. We are very distrustful of our own government. Although we are very prideful of our history, this pride does not extend to whomever is currently in power in the government. Foreigners often fail to understand this and make the mistake of assuming American pride equals slavish loyalty to the current leader. It doesn't work that way. Most of those opposed to Bush still believe in that prideful view of our history just as much as those that support him do.

And as far as the "Americans are superior" attitdue - it is held by a vocal minority. They have every right to say what they want and we don't go out of our way to suppress them, but they do make for an embarassing misconception of what Americans are like to the outside observer.

If we are guilty of anything, it's complacency, not egotism. It is very common to hear people who never bother voting complaining about how they have no power and don't like the current leader.

In short, I'm not denying that many people in the USA fit your image of them. I'm denying that those people constitute the majority.

Chilean Enterprise

[grub]

"Computadora, te, gris del earl, caliente." :)

Not Orwellian at all

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:Not Orwellian at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I shall go on.

Cybersyn is the implementation of Stafford Beer's "Viable System Model" which is modelled on the working of the human nervous system.

Totalitarianism would be like if the brain demanded to know every detail of what the hand was doing.

The body doesn't work this way - hand control (for instance) is decentralized, with part being controlled by local "muscle memory", part being controlled where the nerves meet the spinal cord, and part being controlled at different levels of the brain. In order to prevent information overload the information passing upward is filtered at every stage to remove redundancy and irrelevancy.

In Cybersyn, the workings of actual factories was monitored by a couple of IBM/370s (if memory serves) but only statistically, to throw up warning events if the stats went out of whack. These warning events would be passed up to the "industry level", where they would mostly be absorbed since the industry may be operating within tolerances even if the individual factory isnt. Only if the industry had problems would signals be passed to the "master control room".

A highly moving aspect of the whole tale is that the "master control room" is a logical neccessity, but when Beer pointed it out on a system diagram to Allende, his immediate assumption was that the box represented THE PEOPLE.

Actually the Cybersyn implementation couldn't be as decentralized as Beer wanted, because Chile could only afford two computers which, by their nature, had to be centralized processing units. In today's world things would be a lot different, and no doubt Beer would advocate open source as the one way to enforce that the government couldn't be collecting information it shouldn't.

Re:Not Orwellian at all

[StaffordBeerIsMyHero]

I shall go on. Cybersyn is the implementation of Stafford Beer's "Viable System Model" which is modelled on the working of the human nervous system. Totalitarianism would be like if the brain demanded to know every detail of what the hand was doing. The body doesn't work this way - hand control (for instance) is decentralized, with part being controlled by local "muscle memory", part being controlled where the nerves meet the spinal cord, and part being controlled at different levels of the brain. In order to prevent information overload the information passing upward is filtered at every stage to remove redundancy and irrelevancy. In Cybersyn, the workings of actual factories was monitored by a couple of IBM/370s (if memory serves) but only statistically, to throw up warning events if the stats went out of whack. These warning events would be passed up to the "industry level", where they would mostly be absorbed since the industry may be operating within tolerances even if the individual factory isnt. Only if the industry had problems would signals be passed to the "master control room". A highly moving aspect of the whole tale is that the "master control room" is a logical neccessity, but when Beer pointed it out on a system diagram to Allende, his immediate assumption was that the box represented THE PEOPLE. Actually the Cybersyn implementation couldn't be as decentralized as Beer wanted, because Chile could only afford two computers which, by their nature, had to be centralized processing units. In today's world things would be a lot different, and no doubt Beer would advocate open source as the one way to enforce that the government couldn't be collecting information it shouldn't. (Repeated because this topic finally made me get an account)

Re:Not Orwellian at all

[tessaiga]

Beer is the most freedom-loving person you could hope to imagine.

Ah, this must be where the phrase "free as in Beer" I keep seeing on Slashdot comes from.

It's a Conspiracy - I tell you.

[Crypto Gnome]

Just for a grin, I searched google.

Looking there, you can find beer.

Looking there, you can find Stafford
eg It's in the UK The United Kingdom is well known for its relationship to beer.

Oddly enough, searching for both Stafford and beer returns no links about the proliferation of fermented ales in a certain part of the United Kingdom.

All right-handers, eh?

[Two99Point80]

So much for the "extra something" we lefties can bring...

Re:All right-handers, eh?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

So much for the "extra something" we lefties can bring...
Not at all -- you can still fetch coffee for your dextrous overlords.

--

Re:Kissinger

[Epeeist]

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?

Didn't work

[jabbadabbadoo]

"...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"

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)

Re:Didn't work

[StaffordBeerIsMyHero]

What they got was a real-time view of a country falling under CIA coup. Quite a different thing, and says nothing about the functionality of the system (which was fine).

Re:used by Chile's revolutionary government

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on just a minute there.

There was nothing revolutionary about the Chilean government in the years 1971-1973 other than that they were voted in by the first democratic process the country had ever seen.

This is in contrast to the Pinochet government installed by the CIA in response to this unauthorized installation of democracy, whose crimes are well known.

Re:Kissinger

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Who said we took it lightly?

[MyNameIsFred]

Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

Re:Who said we took it lightly?

[Timesprout]

And the US Administration has so obviously learned their lesson that they would never dare interfere with another South American country ever again. Yeah Right!!!

Re:Who said we took it lightly?

[fenix down]

Nobody can stop the CIA. The president only gets their attention when he tries to fuck with their funding. Even then they have a good degree of freedom based on the fact that they're employing the top 100 worst potential terrorists in the world at any given time. Just threaten to fire some of the field operatives and they've got the funding back plus a bonus. That's what happened when Carter tried to fuck with them. Unfortunately he didn't cave fast enough and they fired a few guys that started up the hijacker training camps in Libya.

Re:Who said we took it lightly?

[EinarH]

Did they act to stop it? Yes.

Did it have any effect?

List of US-sponsored/CIA involvment in coups/invations in Central America from 1975:
-Nicaragua 1979
-El SAlvador 1979-1989
-Grenada 1983
-Panama 1989

And CIA has been linked to paramilitary organizations, coups and secret operations in Puerto Rico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela (as late as 2002).
The list is pulled from the back off my head and prob. not complete.

So did the act to stop CIA from doing this have any effect at all?
IMO, no.

Re:Sept 11 reference?

[10Ghz]

Why shouldn't it be mentioned? Or are you saying that if someone mentions that "Yes, US has overthrown democratically-elected leaders and put brutal dictators in their place", it just shows that those people are "anti-american"? I mean, they are merely stating a fact? Do we have to glorify USA all the time, and if we fail to do so, we are "anti-american"?

I for one find the whole deal in Chile a perfect example of american hypocrisy. Democratically elected leaders are OK only as long as they agree with USA. If they don't, they are bad and must be got rid of. That puts the whole "US's crusade against tyranny and dictators" in to a whole new perspective wouldn't you say?

Chile....?

[Epistax]

I can't say why but I kept reading that as SEELE.

/massive, ultra-nerdy reference

Ministry of love...

[Noryungi]

Hmph. At the risk of sounding like a leftie:

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.

Why is this "Orwellian and Big Brother[ish]"? You seem to forget that the "CIA sponsored coup" was actually a pretty bloody affair itself... More than 3000 people "disappeared" (tortured and fed to the fishes), some because they were just suspected of left-of-center sypathies.

But don't take my word for it, read the following:
Amnesty International 1, Amnesty International 2, Amnesty International 3, Human Rights Watch, and even this week's Economist, etc... I could go on, but you get my drift.

Re:Ministry of love...

[hummassa]

With the difference that Allende wanted a richer, democratic Cuba, and Pinochet is a father-of-the-people tradition-country-family do-what-I-say-or-else-i'll-throw-you-from-a-plane- above-the-Andes bloody murderer. Leandro, go talk to some chilean people. Every chilean person I met (righties, no less, I'm not talking lefties like if there was any alive today) feared Pinochet as much as the devil. They didn't like the lines to get toilet paper, too, but they wouldn't choose our friend el generalissimoAugusto.

If this is Orwellian

[panurge]

(An epithet meaning "Old-Etonian with assumed name, badly behaved Englishman with chip on shoulder dying of tuberculosis in post-war Britain, but I'll assume the usual ludicrous use of the word to mean "totalitarian") then what does that make MRPII and ERP systems? Are you suggesting, since the control available to managements nowadays is so much greater than this little low-bandwidth system, that big business is ultra-left wing and ultra-totalitarian?

No, I don't think so either. Most sane people would think that giving a business the information it needs to stay in business is a good thing. And if you actually RTFA, you will see it describes how the system was able to keep the Chilean economy functioning during a national strike. It made the economy more resilient. Isn't that what software is supposed to do?

I feel a major rant coming on, but it's off-topic.

Re:If this is Orwellian

[frank_adrian314159]

Are you suggesting, ... that big business is ultra-left wing and ultra-totalitarian?

No. Actually it's ultra-right wing and ultra-totalitarian. The only difference is that employees of this totalitarian system have the possibility of disengaging. Remember that Henry Ford was an early economic advisor to the Bolsheviks and businesses are still run in much the same way as in his day - the tools may have changed, but in the final analysis, it's still all about command and control.

Pakistan..

[k98sven]

So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

So.. could someone please explain to me why the USA is now best-friends with Pakistan?
Musharraf ousted an elected civilian regime and replaced it with a military dictatorship.
This was harshly criticized by the international community, including the USA.

Come 9/11 and we're suddenly best friends?

This entire "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and
"ends-justify-the-means" mentality is exactly the same reasoning that
caused the USA to back Pinochet in Chile.

Re:Pakistan..

[doktor-hladnjak]

So.. could someone please explain to me why the USA is now best-friends with Pakistan? Musharraf ousted an elected civilian regime and replaced it with a military dictatorship. This was harshly criticized by the international community, including the USA.

I'm not sure I agree with the whole Pakistani bloodless coup. However, I know a lot of Pakistanis and they seem to imply that a majority of their fellow citizens had no problem with the coup. A lot of Pakistanis felt the "democratic" government had become corrupt and/or functioned extremely poorly.

Granted, I still think Musharraf needs to move towards democracy, because dictators in the long term especially turn out to be a bad situation for a nation.

As for why the US is friends with Pakistan... Well, that's probably because of a few big factors (in no specific order): 1) has a very long land border with Afghanistan 2) has a government that is not controlled by religious extremists (although they have influence) 3) is very undeveloped due in large part to scarce foreign investment and is willing to be on the US's good side to get more aid from western nations 4) it has the bomb.

The US will eventually have a planned economy.

[ahfoo]

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.

Re:The US will eventually have a planned economy.

[ksheff]

Electronic transfers in and out of bank accounts via debit cards or ACH transfers isn't good enough? Also, guess which is the most expensive way for a retailer to take payment? Cash! It's more difficult to keep track of due to 'sticky fingers' or just plain incompetance. One also has to take the time and risk of transferring it to a bank or hiring an armored car service to pick it up.

Our economy is as vibrant as it is because it's not planned. Bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient when it comes to such planning. Federal, state, and local governments waste billions a year because of it. There is no real way that any bureaucracy can anticipate the actions of a few hundred million people.

Whether you like it or not, usary and the increased value of money over time is a good thing. It gives incentives to those with capital to temporarily give it to those who need it in order to grow businesses, own a home, etc. Otherwise, the poor would have an extremely hard time rising above their situation and the rich would stay rich unless they were robbed. That's one of the reasons behind the massive amounts of unemployment in the Arab world. Their religion forbids usary and as a result entreprenuers have a much harder time getting capital. The concept of 'micro-loans' in India is helping industrious people pull themselves out of poverty. Again, this is something a centrally planned, top down economy can't really anticipate, no matter how wired it is. Stop watching Star Trek.

Re:The US will eventually have a planned economy.

[bhima]

Having recently moved from the US to Austria, I can safely say the US banking system sucks. The electronic banking aspect is incompletely implemented and only those parts which are convent to institution are implemented. On a side note, the customer service here in Austria is also stellar compared to the standard fare in the US. Just another in a long line of incidents demonstrating the fall of the US...

Captain!

[cybermace5]

"Sir! Employment dip approaching 132 mark 7!"

"On...screen! What...could it...Sensors?"

"Sir, it appears to be a second-class hiring anomaly. They are pointing fingers, I suggest evasive action. Our treasury is not capable of withstanding a direct attack."

"Understood. It appears that...we can...not win this...one. Change our course to...braised shrimp and roast duck. Maximum warp!"

Montioned in Shockwave Rider

[handy_vandal]

The Chilean events get a mention in John Brunner's excellent novel The Shockwave Rider (Ballantine, 1975):

When the short-lived Allende government was elected to power in Chile and needed a means of balancing that unfortunate country's precarious economy, Allende appealed to the British cyberntics expert Stafford Beer.

Who announced that as few as ten significant quantities, reported from a handful of key locations where adequate communications facilities existed, would enable the state of the economy to be reviewed and adjusted on a day-to-day basis.

Judging by what happened subsequently, his claim infuriated nearly as many people as did the news that there are only four elements in the human genetic code.

-- John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider

a chilean perpective

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to know about the chilean guy who was behind this, and what he is up to now, check this article.
For those of you already complaining about how a bloody coup thwarted this clearly great idea, please read that article. It is very politically biased, but it shows how this guys ideas have evolved over time, and I would dare to say he wouldn't think of building such a clearly useless system now.

A system like that cannot take individual human actions into account, it cannot deal with subjective market decisions, it cannot handle human relations. A professor at Universidad de Chile (the one the submitter mentions) told us about this system years ago, and how it seemed to be such a great idea for managing coal production (for example)... until it had to deal with a coal miners strike...

If you want to know why such a centralized system will never be useful check econlib, you might learn a thing ot two.

By the way, I'm chilean.

Al Gore

[brakk]

So, Al Gore worked for Chile's revolutionary government in the early 70s?

Another Connection in your Observations.

[purrpurrpussy]

Britain is a fairly populous and rich country that has NO neighbours at all. At the time of the empire all propoganda was internal. The Irish were not to be trusted. A highly "internalised" country if ever there was one.

Now our media comes from 2 places. Ourselves and the US! Great! That's a healthy balanced view of the world.....

Re:Another Connection in your Observations.

[vidarh]

Expansion, yes. But consider the average British person during the empire's height - were they likely to be aware of the viewpoints of other subjects of the empire outside Britain, or those officially sanctioned by the British elite, and by extension the British media of the day?

That is the point. The US is very much in a position today were only a relatively small minority of US citizens are exposed to any degree to foreign opinions of them except as digested by US media, whereas in most smaller nations that is much less likely to happen.

Poverty can do it - you'll likely find many third world nations where the majority of citizens are largely unaware of the politics of the rest of the world, but then most of these countries have little impact on the world.

Apart from the US, there are perhaps a handful of countries where the general populace are so isolated from foreign culture and viewpoints and that have anywhere near the influence on the world. Russia doesn't really apply - while powerful, it is also politically and culturally extremely influenced by a lot of surrounding countries and the West. China, possibly, given that the majority of the populace is relatively isolated from surrounding countries or any influence from the west. India certainly not - it's a melting pot of a wide variety of political and cultural influences, drawing both on the West and influence from a variety of it's neighbours.

I'm not sure how much I agree with the idea of US isolationism, but it's an intriguing idea, and superficially it would seem to explain a lot of why US opinion generally seem so completely unfazed and unaware of what happens internationally

Re:USA overthrowing governments

[10Ghz]

Personally, I've nothing against the idea of pre-emptive self defense...

OK. Could the rest of the world then invade USA? I mean, USA seems to be the biggest threat to world peace these days, invading other sovereign countries at whim. I mean, there's nothing wrong with pre-emptive self-defence, right?

Venezuela anyone?

[zenyu]

Your assumption is wrong, that the American people ignored the actions of the CIA. Many people in the US objected to the CIA sponsored coups. The events in Chile along other CIA sponsored coups were the primary reason that the American people forced the government to put the CIA on a leash. So did the American people recognize that something wrong was being committed in their names? Yes. Did they act to stop it? Yes.

There were hearings, the Republican administration withheld information from the Congress that showed how personally involved Nixon was in the murders. The sickness of the CIA was obvious enough that it was still put on a leash, but it continued to exist. Fast forward to today...

Condaliza welcomes the CIA's new dictators in Venezuela hours after the coup. Democratically elected leader was lucky enough to be forewarned due to one Constitution loving patriot in the US government who leaked the sad plot days earlier. The military regiment he left in the basement of the presidential palace arrests the Venezuelan 'leaders' of the coup. Bush team lucky enough that some New Yorkers are killed, providing enough confusion that a majority of American's still don't realize the other oil rich country we decided to implement regime change in was Al Qaeda biggest enemy. America supports the dictator of Pakistan, Al Qaeda's biggest friend, rinse, repeat.

It is such a strange thing that as citizens we overwhelmingly want democracy to spread but so many of us vote for a neo-con puppet, the same people who write about establishing a Pax Americana and consolitating power with pretty lies. Anyone remember "Iraq will be a cakewalk", want to compare today's, "We knew Iraq would not be easy"...

Things are not helped by crappy papers like the NYT, whose international pages seem to be about as accurate as the "Voice of America" propaganda machine. Remember the protest in Venezuela? They showed a picture and story about the anti-government protest, but said nothing of the pro-democracy rally that had many many times the number of participants. Enough to remind me of the hundreds of thousands of protestors in New York last March which were not mentioned on the nightly news in New York, but a pro-Iraq rally consisting of 20 people the next week got a 3 minute segment. But I have to assume even those who vote for the likes of the current administration do read an international paper on the internet once in a while, and so have noticed what crap we are fed by our papers and TV news outlets.

While the Bush's may have stolen the last election, I'm more ashamed that it was so easy for him to actually win support of 48% of eligible voters who showed up at the polls, than less than half a million Democrats his brother illegaly removed from the rolls and a few hundred voting machines he rigged to swallow bad ballots in black districts and to spit out for revote in conservative white districts.

Until the CIA is dissolved and amnesty is given to lesser functionaries to provide evidence against the worst criminals in the agency, I won't believe we've taken Chile to heart. If the government needs better data on what's happening in the world let them subsidise the news media to cover foreign news properly.

Re:Venezuela anyone?

[Geezle2]

This sounds a lot like the reaction from Japanese associate of mine to comments about the Rape of Nanjing. Offering up proof, in the form of photographs, eye witness accounts and even official Japanese government documentation of the events only triggered furious denial with claims that the photos were staged or doctored and the reports were all from Japan-haters anyway.

The point is that he didn't want proof, despite demanding it, and there was no proof that could change his mind about what REALLY happened in Nanjing.

I short, I don't think you want proof either. Proof and evidence for points 1 and 6 above are readilly available. Documents related to the role of the Nixon administration in the overthrow and assassination of Allende where declassified a couple years ago. Try googling on "Kissenger+Allende" for starters.

Don't demand that everyone else has to try to manouver the facts past your nationalist blinders. . .Just remove you head from your ass and look around. Do a little bit of the work yourself. It is not like these things are real big secrets. Sure, Fox and CNN don't force feed this stuff to you but that is to be expected.

Re:Allende and the CIA coup

[StaffordBeerIsMyHero]

I'm not sure what you're saying here.

There is a possibility that the elected Allende government would have deteriorated into chaos or civil war or totalitarianism. There is a possibility that it wouldn't. The article you quote obviously assumes this would be the case, by using right-wing economic models. If you use left-wing economic models this isn't so clear. Obviously all we are seeing is a difference of opinion, not "confusion about exactly what Allende was".

I find it difficult to justify CIA intervention in the internal affairs of another country, no matter what any economic model predicts.

I was hoping somebody would ask.

[ahfoo]

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.

Have you actually ever talked to anyone in Chile?

[TheNarrator]

I have been to Chile many times. I've talked to people who live there. The 1970s coup was very necessary. The whole country was an economic disaster and there were massive food shortages and the country was quickly being taken over by the radical left supporters of Allende and their Cuban backers. Businesses were being nationalized and the chilean supreme court had ruled that the Allende government was violating the constitution in trying to impose communism, though they were ignored.

Over 15 years, 3000 people were killed, but this was remarkably humane compared to the communist revolutions at the time. Around the same time in Cambodia, 3,000,000 people (That's 1000 times more people) were executed by a fanatical communist regieme. In the aftermath of Vietnam there were 10s of thousands killed in political executions.

Communists hate Pinochet because he was the only person to ever remove a communist government from power. Up to that point it was assumed that the world would soon be 100% communist because slowly but surely every country was turning communist and no country had ever gone back.

Today in Chile many people marvel at the non-Chilean's media's obsession with the Allende Coup. Today Chile has the best economy in Latin America, and the least corrupt, most well run government in the region that actually does a great job at promoting things like public health.

I was there during the 2000 election between Lagos and Lavin and if you read the Chilean or Argentinan press you saw story after story about Lagos and Lavin's varying postitions on the economy, education, etc. If you read the international press the whole thing was Pinochet vs Allende , Pinochet vs Allende. It's as if you were reading about the 2000 U.S election in some newspaper and they were framing the whole thing as an election where the primary issue was the Vietnam War.

Re:Have you actually ever talked to anyone in Chil

[vidarh]

The 1970s coup was very necessary.

If so, then why didn't the opposition arrange demonstrations, arrange strikes without massive CIA intervention and actually manage to keep the strikes going, and demand changes?

Fact is, Allende was democratically elected, and the opposition, even with CIA help, didn't manage to raise enough support in the population to get anywhere near overthrowing his government before they decided to start murdering innocent people.

If Allende was so bad for Chile, why couldn't the CIA stay out of it and let Chileans decide for themselves and throw him out of power?

And why did they support a fascist dictator if the goal was to "save" the Chilean people from suffering?

You try to justify it by pointing to Khmer Rouge, but "forget" that Khmer Rouge and Allende had wildly differing political platforms. You also conveniently "forget" that the "communist" Khmer Rouge was finally stopped not by the US, or any of it's cronies, but by "communist" Vietnam.

Allendes regime was different from either in that it didn't murder the opposition or anyone that ever looked like they might consider possibly opposing them, and was democratically elected. If you want to equate Allende and Pol Pot, I would submit that Mother Theresa was really Stalin in drag, and claim that it is just as plausible.

Try telling the hundreds of thousands of people that had close friends or relatives killed because of Pinochet that the coup was "necessary", and that you think the CIA and a small group of military officers, none elected officials, had a right to take that decision on behalf of the Chilean people.

If you truly believe that, then would you also support the removal of the US government if some small group, say Al Quaeda, decides that they think it is necessary to do so on behalf of the American people?

If not, then who do you think have the right to decide that it is "right" to overthrow a foreign democratically elected government?

Re:Have you actually ever talked to anyone in Chil

[durandal61]

I will respond to a selected few comments you have made.

I have been to Chile many times. I've talked to people who live there. The 1970s coup was very necessary. The whole country was an economic disaster and there were massive food shortages

I have lived in Chile since 1989, one year before Pinochet miscalculated the support he would get in a second plebiscite and was replaced by a "democratic" government.

The people you have talked to have told you one side of the story. As a matter of fact, you seem to have listened very carefully to them, as you have repeated the far-right-wing speech quite accurately.

Communists hate Pinochet because he was the only person to ever remove a communist government from power.

Might I point out that calling someone a "communist" in Chile amounts to saying that they do not glorify the military government and its actions? Note carefully that the criteria for being a communist has not changed. The difference is that from 1973 onwards you were "disappeared", tortured and often shot, while today you are just looked down upon by the right wing sector of society.

I bid you to take a few moments to think about your words: might it not be more likely that so-called communists resent the military government for having tortured and killed fathers, mothers, friends, family members, and, well, innocent people?

To this day, there is no understanding among the two sides in Chile. Day after day, year after year, the 11th of September comes and goes, and there is no understanding. So-called "communists" are told to their faces that the disappeared "do not exist", that they are a "marxist myth", or that they all ran away abroad. People mindlessly repeat the mantra that Allende's government was a disaster (it was, but not without considerable help from the USA and the Right), that it would have been much worse, look at Chile now, what a miracle, and so on.

Go on, I challenge you to read up about the Chicago Boys, about the amount of money spent manipulating Chile's media, about the right- and CIA- organized trucker strikes, about what Pinochet did to the public health system (AFP and ISAPREs).

Show your commitment to being well-informed, and form an opinion based not upon conversations with one side of an extremely polarised society, but on historical documents.

For your convenience, here are a few links, starting with an interview with Noam Chomsky: Secrets, Lies and Democracy, The Lawless State , U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile. Please, take some time to Google a bit (or, heaven forbid, go to your local library ;-)

Capitalist Nes Network.

[Geezle2]

In the US, the broadcast news networks are all anti-Bush and pro-internationalism in their coverage. The same is true of CNN. Only Fox and conservative talk radio present the other side.

Really?? I have yet to see an anti-Bush story on the Capitalist News Network (CNN). Considering that the guy is little more than a chimp in a suit and tie it is almost impossible not to ridicule him nonetheless ALL of the networks put a great deal of effort into making our village idiot look Presidential. Perhaps they are not as quick to apologise for, rationalize and justify Bush II comments, actions and policies but they certainly never call them into question either. Sure, they don't pull their punches but that is just because they never throw any punches in the first place.

This is actually a huge problem that could do serious damage to what remains of the principles of democracy in the US. For democracy to work the press has to be critical of those in power. Big business media in the US is not only consistently failing in this regard but shamelessly cheerleading for monkey boy's regime.

Yep, there are big problems with the media in the US but the 'Liberal bias' that you imagine is not one of them.

Number Two...

[qtp]

Not "proof", but ever is.

Here is an article ,originally publushed in The Observer, that makes a good case for U.S. involvement in the Venezuelan Coup D'etat that overthrew the Chavez Presidency.

It is fair to note that the article is accurate in it's disparaging remarks about both Otto Reich and Elliot Abrams.

The similarity between the ecconomic and historical events leading to the April Coup (US interference with trade, propaganda published by White House spokesmen in the US media, and demands that the democraticly elected President of Venezuela step down) are very similar to the events that occurred before the assassination of Allende in Chile.

This may not be the acual smoking gun, but this is.

US military personel and Intelligence Officers have been getting very upset when ordered to take part in poorly planned exercises that don't match ideals they joined up to defend.

two down. I may have to take a break soon, I do have a life you know.