I did find it funny that multiple times it cited the medical resident match making algorithm as a success. Anyone who has gone through this process knows how horrible of a system it is. You essentially open an envelop that tells your job and location for the next 3-6 years. Hospitals + government love the system because they can artificially reduce resident wages, applicants cannot negotiate job offers.
Are you trying to suggest that this is an example of a planned economy? Maybe you should look at definitions of planned vs market economies. You still have design and regulation in a market economy.
The article really wants to drive home how bad "central planning" is, but the problem, as per the article, originates from the fact that the food banks themselves are operating semi-independently from Feeding America. So actually the whole problem originates because you already have decentralization, which is the opposite of central planning. And this is a common situation with a lot of public services when they do a half-assed approach of providing the service publicly. Healthcare is a good example.
As per the article, the issue was that due to the food banks operating independently, the food banks were not relying information about their locally sourced food donations to Feeding America. Their solution is a fake currency, basically a way of rationing food from Feeding America. But of course they wouldn't put it in those terms, because of the socialist connotation of the word, "rationing". Instead they call it "market design". LOL. But the point is, Walmart which is more centralized than this operation, has no problem. So actually central planning isn't the issue here. The issue here is that you have a decentralized operation that necessitates a market mechanism.
Politics informed by ideological economists creates the problem. Economists informed by political ideologies create the solution to the problem that only exists because of their design.
What absolute rubbish this article is from top to bottom.
A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda.
Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin
I have close acquaintances who will take that $50, spend it on drugs, and then starve to death. If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money.
If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5% of the population understands a single high school course worth of financial management.
And then of course you have fundamentally irrational actors as well, like drug addicts. IQ and education don't help there, addictions are monsters that swallow people of all socio-economic varieties.
So you have to either let those people squalor, or find another solution.
> If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money.
Which can be traded for money.
Believe me, I understand first hand how difficult a heavily addicted person can be. Recovery is a huge process that takes more than just giving someone a safe place to live and food.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be 100% effective, just need to be effective enough that it reduces the size of the problem to a manageable size.
Then you can manage the special cases with specialists.
Your efficiency is having the $$ spent on goods worth the $$ given. However, the goal of food banks is to spend money on FOOD and make sure the FOOD is given out to those in need (with little wasteage). Efficiency is being measured completely differently than what you are hoping it is measured as.
Because Feeding America doesn't receive monetary donations in that kind of volume to hand out money. They also don't have a "food box". You clearly are speaking from a ivory tower position and it's quite disturbing.
It's a food bank network that uses the monetary donations it receives to support the logistics of moving hundreds of millions of pounds of food to food banks. The value of that food exceeds their monetary donations.
Overall I thought the article was interesting!
I did find it funny that multiple times it cited the medical resident match making algorithm as a success. Anyone who has gone through this process knows how horrible of a system it is. You essentially open an envelop that tells your job and location for the next 3-6 years. Hospitals + government love the system because they can artificially reduce resident wages, applicants cannot negotiate job offers.
It’s a good thing they had central planning to come up with this system and well defined regulations to ensure it worked appropriately.
Are you trying to suggest that this is an example of a planned economy? Maybe you should look at definitions of planned vs market economies. You still have design and regulation in a market economy.
A highly engineered market can improve resource allocation, but obviously there's no market force actually providing the food being allocated.
The article really wants to drive home how bad "central planning" is, but the problem, as per the article, originates from the fact that the food banks themselves are operating semi-independently from Feeding America. So actually the whole problem originates because you already have decentralization, which is the opposite of central planning. And this is a common situation with a lot of public services when they do a half-assed approach of providing the service publicly. Healthcare is a good example.
As per the article, the issue was that due to the food banks operating independently, the food banks were not relying information about their locally sourced food donations to Feeding America. Their solution is a fake currency, basically a way of rationing food from Feeding America. But of course they wouldn't put it in those terms, because of the socialist connotation of the word, "rationing". Instead they call it "market design". LOL. But the point is, Walmart which is more centralized than this operation, has no problem. So actually central planning isn't the issue here. The issue here is that you have a decentralized operation that necessitates a market mechanism.
Politics informed by ideological economists creates the problem. Economists informed by political ideologies create the solution to the problem that only exists because of their design.
>The system operated in ignorance of what food banks needed.
Clearly the root of the problem. Straw Manning "central planning" is a perverted way to characterize the failure.
What absolute rubbish this article is from top to bottom.
A stupid system was replaced by a slightly more effective one... and it was 'markets and economists' that did it! Pure propaganda.
Heres a more efficient system. How much does the food box they give out cost? Say $50? Just give the customers $50 and let them spend it. No more admin
I have close acquaintances who will take that $50, spend it on drugs, and then starve to death. If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money.
If everyone spent money like a rational, 100 IQ individual with a moderate amount of schooling on basic financial strategies, it'd be a lot easier to manage a population. Unfortunately, less than half of the population is 100 IQ, and in some areas less than 5% of the population understands a single high school course worth of financial management.
And then of course you have fundamentally irrational actors as well, like drug addicts. IQ and education don't help there, addictions are monsters that swallow people of all socio-economic varieties.
So you have to either let those people squalor, or find another solution.
> If you want them to stay alive, you have to give them non-money.
Which can be traded for money.
Believe me, I understand first hand how difficult a heavily addicted person can be. Recovery is a huge process that takes more than just giving someone a safe place to live and food.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It doesn't need to be 100% effective, just need to be effective enough that it reduces the size of the problem to a manageable size.
Then you can manage the special cases with specialists.
Exactly. Continuous improvement where all relevantly stakeholders are taken into account should be the norm.
Your efficiency is having the $$ spent on goods worth the $$ given. However, the goal of food banks is to spend money on FOOD and make sure the FOOD is given out to those in need (with little wasteage). Efficiency is being measured completely differently than what you are hoping it is measured as.
Because Feeding America doesn't receive monetary donations in that kind of volume to hand out money. They also don't have a "food box". You clearly are speaking from a ivory tower position and it's quite disturbing.
It's a food bank network that uses the monetary donations it receives to support the logistics of moving hundreds of millions of pounds of food to food banks. The value of that food exceeds their monetary donations.