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Old 08-06-2016, 07:50 PM   #15
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I believe "arbitrary" _is_ a part of the definition. Inefficient is just the result in all of our experience and corrupt is very common. If Centrum is none of these things then lumping it in with what we call "command economies" is misleading.
It is not however part of the definition which goes thusly: "an economy in which production, investment, prices, and incomes are determined centrally by a government." Now it is in fact pretty inherent that no realistic government is capable of doing that in very rational manner because no realistic government possesses the required understanding of the integrated economic consequences of every move they make and because even a dictatorship or oligarchy is going to face political pressures to make suboptimal allocations.

Centrum IS a command economy. Any society in which everyone is employed by a single entity which monopolizes all goods and services is. If you believe that a command economy can't be one which managed well (an idea that I feel inclined to agree with)...then the conclusion is obvious. Centrum's economy is not managed well and we've just never seen that because we've never been there. Mind you there a lot of parallels that have capabilities that are impossible in reality. And Centrum does have an advantage over real command economies in that it can subsidize inefficiencies using access to "unlimited resources" from outside.
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