Project Cybersyn
en.wikipedia.orgI stumbled on Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer as a freshman in college, and loved the idea of an auto-optimizing business.
Back then I had questions about exactly how such a system could be implemented, the algorithm was very hand wavey, but I assumed surely they must’ve figured it out before writing a book about it.
As an adult with 20 years extra experience, I’m fairly confident that, no, aside from the high level concept, they had no idea how to build such a system. That coup was probably the best possible outcome for Beer - it gave credibility to his ideas without actually testing them.
There is an argument to be made that that companies like Walmart and Amazon operate as planned economies. They use the same cybernetic principles, real time data monitoring and feedback loops, to solve logistics and planning. These implementations do give credibility Beer's ideas.
There is even a section about this in the wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn#Contemporary_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Wal...
Any larger corporation does this, since at least decades.
It's called "strategische Konzernentwicklung" in german, meaning "strategic development(forecasting) of the corporation" and its markets. A global insurance company I've worked for had something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ... in 2001. I've been involved in planning, installing and operating it. But not the responsible patsy :-) . Which didn't went that smooth, because most users were higher management, and needed holding hands for all the 'complicated stuff', like loading in data, and playing scenarios with those. Also bulky 3D-glasses, and jerky updates, making most people dizzy when standing. All in all several million of Euros for fancy Silicon Graphics hardware and supercustom wall displays and projection, with not so fancy OS and applications. Excel was percieved as more 'productive'.
The demo Formula 1 simulator had its fans, though :-)
Doing this within one organization, with modern technology, is clearly possible. Attempting this across an economy, in the 70's, where a key premise is "assume you have clean realtime data across all industries," is a fool's errand :) That the ideas sound similar is like arguing Stockfish is based on the original Mechanical Turk. Only true in a superficial sense.
The fact it could have worked probably weighted in the decision to sponsor the coup and the regime that destroyed its legacy.
A real shame.
The amount of effort spent and blood spilled to make anything that even remotely smells like socialism fail is one of the greater tragedies of the 20th century.
Much more effort and much more blood would have been spilled if socialism ever "succeeded".
I have personally not listened to it but there's a recent podcast that covers this story and I've heard it's really good, it's called "The Santiago Boys" it's referenced in the article.
Wasn't aware of the podcast, thanks will have a listen!
I covered this, in full, in depth and detail, on one of my streams.
https://www.youtube.com/live/UI8u4BLGJA0?si=JssmdJFR6uW55t1P...