Researching “third way” democratically-run economies with Clojure (Script)

For most of the twentieth century, the main models of organizing an economy were markets (“capitalism”) or state-run command planning (“socialism” / “communism”). But since 1991, there has emerged research into a “third way” of organizing an economy, described with the term “democratic planning”.

This slideshow presentation was given online for the Chicago Clojure Meetup on October 28, 2021, and based on work in the new book “Democratic Economic Planning” by Robin Hahnel (Routledge, 2021) by software engineer (and “Democratic Economic Planning” contributor) Mitchell Szczepanczyk. Mitchell demonstrates research on the feasibility of one model of democratic planning, with Clojure-and-ClojureScript-powered computerized simulations of an economy.

To explain the full context of this research, Mitchell will ask viewers to join him on a whirlwind tour on a variety of topics — including economics, 20th century history, the history of ideas, different computer programming languages, and mathematics, in addition to Clojure and ClojureScript.