Small interesting pieces of the book moloch
"Planning exists because [the market] process has ceased to be reliable. Technology, with its companion commitment of time and capital, means that the needs of the consumer must be anticipated—by months or years…. [I]n addition to deciding what the consumer will want and will pay, the firm must make every feasible step to see that what it decides to produce is wanted by the consumer at a remunerative price…. It must exercise control
over what is sold…. It must replace the market with planning
…The need to control consumer behavior is a requirement of planning. Planning, in turn, is made necessary by extensive use of advanced technology and capital and by the relative scale and complexity of organization. These produce goods efficiently; the result is a very large volume of production. As a further consequence, goods that are related only to elementary physical sensation–that merely prevent hunger, protect against cold, provide shelter, suppress pain–have come to comprise a small and diminishing part of all production. Most goods serve needs that are discovered to the individual not by the palpable discomfort that accompanies deprivation, but by some psychic response to their possession…"
"In Sloanist management accounting, inventory is counted as an asset “with the same liquidity as cash.” Regardless of whether a current output is needed to fill an order, the producing department sends it to inventory and is credited for it. Under the practice of “overhead absorption,” all production costs are fully incorporated into the price of goods “sold” to inventory, at which point they count as an asset on the balance sheet.
In other words, by the Sloanist accounting principles predominant in American industry, the expenditure of money on inputs is by definition the creation of value."
"if firms could respond to local conditions, they would not need to control them. If they must control markets, then it is a reflection of their lack of ability to be adequately responsive"
"…Consumer needs, if they are to be supplied efficiently, call increasingly for organizations that are more flexibly arranged and in more direct contact with those customers. The essence of planning, under conditions of iincreasing uncertainty, is to seek better ways for those who have the needs to influence or control the productive apparatus more effectively, not less"
Basically, under the definition of "Britannica money"(
https://www.britannica.com/money/market), the market is "Market, a means by which the exchange of goods and services takes place as a result of buyers and sellers being in contact with one another, either directly or through mediating agents or institutions.". So, markets are not inherently capitalist, since even in a socialist/communist economy people would still produce products and use those products. according to Marxists.org, " “A market” is therefore an extended social formation in which the needs of people are met by the labour of other people through a network of exchange relations connecting everyone who is part of the given market.", And that, with the passing of time, it was established new meanings to the concept so it could better reflect reality, being the great depression one of the breaking points from the model of the 19 century, where the Sloanist model of production (also know as Taylorism and fordism, if i understand that corectly from the book), that there was an equilibrium beteween buyers and sellers , was replaced by the idea that the govnerment should more and more create the conditions of the market to develop, to avoid the constant fluctuations and especulations of the "Free market", also know as "keynesianismo".
The book argues that this process of the govnerment creating the means for corporativism, the formation of economic oligarchies and the development of mass production, begun much earlier, in the Industrial revolution. The factories and manufacturers had the purpose of producing the maximum amount of products in the least amount of time, but they could not control the demand of the market. They needed to create an ecosystem where there would always be demand to justify mass production. That is where the State comes in.
Without the State, there would be no railways, which enable the expansion of markets so that goods could travell long distances. Those railways were never profitable in the first place, and the cost to implement them at the time was iimpossible to pay for any company without govnerment help. One of the most important components of the industrial revolution was not created by an "Free market" as the fake news of the shitty neo-liberals would like you to believe. It was manufactured.
So it is the case in all the history of capitalism. Whenever porky poop his pants, the state goes there to clean it. And is the people that pay the price, as demonstrated by the book with some other examples.
The proposal for a decentralised economy, wich would not be focused to macro-economics way of viewing things, about the mass productions of goods, but focused to small comunities to serve their needs and their goals, is what is being proposed. Since, as argued in the book, is the natural path of the development of sciences discoverie and the development of the industry. Our world order is not the natural course of things, but manufactured to serve the interests of capital, to consume more and more raw resources, create an industry based not in creating durable and lasting products, but each year create "New" products, that are basicaly the same as the old ones, to create consuumerist demand. Producing a bunch of shity stuff and buying a lot of shity stuff is no good. That is why GDP measures are shitty too
I think this is too long, i will stop typing