The Socialist Calculation Problem is solved!
Da, Gospodin*, eto pravda. The Socialist Calculation Problem has been solved. We just tell the kulaks what to do!
More than 10 per cent of farmland in England is set to be diverted towards helping to achieve net zero and protecting wildlife by 2050, the Environment Secretary will reveal on Friday.
Swathes of the countryside are on course to be switched to solar farms, tree planting and improving habitats for birds, insects and fish.
The plan is solved by having a better database!
In a speech at the Royal Geographic Society in Kensington, Mr Reed will say: “Using the most sophisticated land use data ever published, we will transform how we use our land to deliver on our Plan for Change. That means enabling the protection of prime agricultural land, restoring our natural world and driving economic growth.”
Otlichnaya!
This does run up against certain problems. As with Mr. Shalizi and his “In Soviet Union Optimisation Problem Solves You!”** We do not have sufficient computing power, we’ll not for a long time yet, no AI isn’t going to solve that problem. Further, there’s still the conceptual problem - what is the utility function we’re trying to optimise? This is something we don’t know and given that difference between expressed preferences and revealed is something that - conceptually you understand - isn’t logically solvable.
Our own objections include all of those but also one at a further level of abstraction.
Society is what we do, we the people do, which then aggregates up to the level of the whole society. We object to the very idea of top down planning as a category error. The correct solution is therefore to go the full New Zealand on farming. Simply withdraw government, the centre, planning, from it altogether. Also, obviously, all subsidy. Each piece of land will then be used for whatever is most fit - by the desires and standards of the owner, as informed by the prices available for what, if anything, is produced. Yes, this will mean most hill farms returning to scrub for the first time in 3,000 years. George Monbiot will be pleased.
Next week the tractor production statistics…..
Tim Worstall
*Of course, it is not Comrade for we are planners, not communists
** Everyone should read this. https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/