The Pankian Metaphor 3049

so are you arguing that you shouldn't have methodology of ecomonic planning because sweden had did such a bad job ... or are you commented that sweden just didn't do a good job. the issue of sweden attempting economic planning is at least documented (indepdently of whether they were experienced and-or did a good job). ref:

the point of the boston globe article (from the 70s) was that at least sweden attempted to anticipate and be pro-active about some of the problems ... where the new england situation was purely a react after the fact ... as if it was not possible to predict such events in any way. There may be a secondary issue that people are actually too stupid to every be succesful at doing such predictions and therefor it should always be left to market forces adjusting afterwards.

however, it might still be useful to consider hypothetical approach to the methodology (and then measure results, and then afterwards have evidence whether humans are innately unable to correctly perform such operations). again, even if there are short comings as in the comment about ability of humans to never achieve true randomness (it doesn't negate the usefullness):

theoritically you take GNP for the country with best technology available adjusting for existing GNP calculations.

divide that by the number of people ... and that is first order approximation to the best possible average standard of living (modulo temporary abberations by borrowing against the future and-or depleating long term resources).

repeat similar methodology for individual industries (aka industry specific gnp divided by number of people).

set a national economic policy for overall average per person.

companies in industries below that level are incented to move into other businesses. industries deemed strategic below the threshold will be subsidized (either via price supports or augmented employee benefits with gov. payments). However, the gov. fundes for the subsidies have to come out of excess revenues in other economic areas of the country. For that excess to exist ... the non-strategic, non-subsidized industries will actually have to economic operations above the targeted threashold in order to provide margin for the gov. to use in subsidizing the strategic industries.

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