If you're actually interested in economies without price signals and the USSR, I recommend Francis Spufford's really astonishingly fabulous book RED PLENTY about the dream of that. It's a novel with a lot of nonfiction in it, some characters real (like the one (one) soviet economist to win the Nobel Prize for economics), some not, but he does a pretty good job of helping you keep track of what's made up and what isn't. And it's just splendidly written.
Spoiler alert, though: I don't think anything in it will help companies at all.
I'm a bit late, but if you're still interested in "how to manage things without price signals" and "how do corporations operate without internal price signals? Could they learn from the Soviet Union, at least what to *not* do?", then I think you'd be interested in reading about Organizational Economics (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/organizational-economics.asp). Organizational Economics is, briefly put, about exactly that: "Organizational economics is a branch of applied economics and New Institutional Economics that studies *the transactions occurring within individual firms*, as opposed to the transactions that occur within the greater market."
It was even founded by that same concern of "Wait, how do corporations work without internal price signals?", though I can't remember the name of the economist who had that thought and founded the field, their name was in the DK's The Economics Book (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16093522 - basically an easily digestable reference guide of things you can look up more), and I read that book such a long time ago... anyways, they had a similar thought about how modern economies are actually made up of duelling command economies/corporations, rather than lots of individual people competing with each other as Adam Smith had studied, or one giant command economy as the Soviet Union tried to be.
It's a very interesting thought really, one that got me thinking about how corporations are like the Soviet Union but if its central planners/executives and CEOs were empirically determined through a competition to demonstrate one was effective at running a corporation and should be promoted to running a larger corporation (either by just getting promoted, or staying but growing one's corporation till it's large), rather than theoretically determined based off what the hiring committe thinks should work and how you will go on to measure up as a central planner. There isn't as much competition and as many price signals as there used to be, but competition and price signals between our modern day centrally planned economies are still very important...
Anyways, I think Organizational Economics will be right up your alley, or the book author's alley, or anyone who wants to know more about the similarities between the USSR and a corporation.
> The word "risk" comes from shipping jargon for "the commodity being bought and sold at insurance markets.”
This doesn't appear to be accurate? From Etymonline:
1660s, risque, "hazard, danger, peril, exposure to mischance or harm," from French risque (16c.), from Italian risco, riscio (modern rischio), from riscare "run into danger," a word of uncertain origin.
The Englished spelling is recorded by 1728. Spanish riesgo and German Risiko are Italian loan-words. The commercial sense of "hazard of the loss of a ship, goods, or other properties" is by 1719; hence the extension to "chance taken in an economic enterprise."
> It has nothing to do with length or firms.
Nothing to do with length, sure, but "firm" in the sense of a business also comes from "firma" in that sense, so they're not unrelated; my guess is it probably is just the same word and Davies got a bit overzealous with this claim.
If you're actually interested in economies without price signals and the USSR, I recommend Francis Spufford's really astonishingly fabulous book RED PLENTY about the dream of that. It's a novel with a lot of nonfiction in it, some characters real (like the one (one) soviet economist to win the Nobel Prize for economics), some not, but he does a pretty good job of helping you keep track of what's made up and what isn't. And it's just splendidly written.
Spoiler alert, though: I don't think anything in it will help companies at all.
I'm a bit late, but if you're still interested in "how to manage things without price signals" and "how do corporations operate without internal price signals? Could they learn from the Soviet Union, at least what to *not* do?", then I think you'd be interested in reading about Organizational Economics (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/organizational-economics.asp). Organizational Economics is, briefly put, about exactly that: "Organizational economics is a branch of applied economics and New Institutional Economics that studies *the transactions occurring within individual firms*, as opposed to the transactions that occur within the greater market."
It was even founded by that same concern of "Wait, how do corporations work without internal price signals?", though I can't remember the name of the economist who had that thought and founded the field, their name was in the DK's The Economics Book (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16093522 - basically an easily digestable reference guide of things you can look up more), and I read that book such a long time ago... anyways, they had a similar thought about how modern economies are actually made up of duelling command economies/corporations, rather than lots of individual people competing with each other as Adam Smith had studied, or one giant command economy as the Soviet Union tried to be.
It's a very interesting thought really, one that got me thinking about how corporations are like the Soviet Union but if its central planners/executives and CEOs were empirically determined through a competition to demonstrate one was effective at running a corporation and should be promoted to running a larger corporation (either by just getting promoted, or staying but growing one's corporation till it's large), rather than theoretically determined based off what the hiring committe thinks should work and how you will go on to measure up as a central planner. There isn't as much competition and as many price signals as there used to be, but competition and price signals between our modern day centrally planned economies are still very important...
Anyways, I think Organizational Economics will be right up your alley, or the book author's alley, or anyone who wants to know more about the similarities between the USSR and a corporation.
I’ve always been interested in ending the last mile problem of fraud and theft.
Mostly because I’m very annoyed when my bike gets stolen
"Does it make you Matter-horny, baby?"
Surely this is actually a quote from Austin Powers that you snuck in to see if we were paying attention, right?
> The word "risk" comes from shipping jargon for "the commodity being bought and sold at insurance markets.”
This doesn't appear to be accurate? From Etymonline:
1660s, risque, "hazard, danger, peril, exposure to mischance or harm," from French risque (16c.), from Italian risco, riscio (modern rischio), from riscare "run into danger," a word of uncertain origin.
The Englished spelling is recorded by 1728. Spanish riesgo and German Risiko are Italian loan-words. The commercial sense of "hazard of the loss of a ship, goods, or other properties" is by 1719; hence the extension to "chance taken in an economic enterprise."
> It has nothing to do with length or firms.
Nothing to do with length, sure, but "firm" in the sense of a business also comes from "firma" in that sense, so they're not unrelated; my guess is it probably is just the same word and Davies got a bit overzealous with this claim.
> didn’t naming names
Typo
I remember reading that Paddington story when I was a kid! Mr Gruber's "only one thing worse" line was HILARIOUS to Tiny Evelyn.
You might have said this on Discord but why can't we dig up the USSR's findings on how to manage things without price signals?