Posted on 03/28/2008 9:03:45 PM PDT by Arec Barrwin
THE NEW YORK TIMES March 28, 2008 Santiago Journal
Before ’73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising discovery. Salvador Allende’s Socialist government had quietly embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile’s economy using a clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.
The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer, a visionary Briton who employed his “cybernetic” concepts to help Mr. Allende find an alternative to the planned economies of Cuba and the Soviet Union. After the coup it became the subject of intense military scrutiny.
In developing Cybersyn, Mr. Beer changed the lives of the bright young Chileans he worked with here. Some 35 years later, this little-known feature of Mr. Allende’s abortive Socialist transformation was remembered in an exhibit in a museum beneath La Moneda, the presidential palace.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You are WORTHRESS, Arec Barrwin.
Cheers!
I Lived in Chile and My Neighbor was once a Mayor of a Town in southern Chile... but he showed me Maps of the red and Blue houses of a Santiago suburb the Houses Depicting Communist and Capitalist.... Allende Had Built Ghetto Housing around Santiago and on Sept 18 he was to make the Call on Radio to have the Poor takeover the Country.
Pinochet did his intervention... Sept 11th...
Castro was supposed to stay two weeks but he spent 6 months staying at the Cuban Ambassadors House now managed by the Swedes..
The Isreali’s were Practicing against wooden Targets in Northern Chile near Iquique at the desert Underground Airbase.. The Missle shot into the Moneda... went in the Window and it is amazing that how it took out the Inside so Clearly... Isreali’ trained their for years to come...
so many stories.....
Chile and Argentina Virtually Invented Inflation accounting but with Chiles Robust Computer networks actually made the UF ( unidad de Fomento) a Household name and saved their economy from the detiorioration of assets by Inflation.. which later led to Privatising their social security (AFP) and National Health scheme..(sermena)
Normally happens only after fatal system errors or multiple crashes.
Yep. By that time, you practically need to rebuild before loading capitalism.exe and the human_rights tool kit.
The only winning move is not to play.
L.A.N.D.R.U. went back to 1967 and was pretty good at managing whole economies (by keeping them static).
Its solution for overpopulation was unbearably crude however.
Hilarious story. Marxists have always believed that socialism is “scientific,” and they never, ever stop trying to find the right “formula” for it.
Then scan for malware and viruses. Most files you will have no problem purging. The free market will reboot as necessary.
My, my. Such an interesting story 35 years after the fact. ((gag, gag))
Proving, once again, that no investment on software can make a machine based on false assumptions work; as on the famous Babbage exchange (”Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question).
It’s interesting that the NYT published an article that mentions Allende subverting a workers’ strike, and that it doesn’t hide the fact that the goverment had a chance to royally screw up the country before the coup. Usually that kind of articles are like “Allende has just took the presidency, oh no, there’s the evil CIA, it’s over”.
btt
If this little story had any basis in reality, and the software had any use in a command economy environment, why didn't Cuba, East Germany, or the Soviet Union pick up the concept during the next twenty years and use it to transform themselves into economic powerhouses?
The great Marxist Fallacy: "It will work, and any failure is because the right people weren't applying it." This fish story is a variation - "The right people were applying it, but the mean counterrevolutionaries didn't allow them to succeed."
For every failure there is always an excuse. Never face reality.
Maybe the hardware was impressive for its day.
It looks like somebody was watching too much Star Trek, though.
The Guardian tried to sell the Cybersyn story as a proto-Internet. It wasn't that.
However, Stafford Beer did leave a strange legacy:
David Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Blair's new head of policy, Geoff Mulgan, have all cited Beer as an influence.
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