The more I think that generally people weren’t bad, just operating on bad or incomplete information and reacting to cries for more democracy with fear because they felt like they couldn’t keep a handle on things.
Elliott Liu’s book Maoism and
Chinese Revolution: A Critical Introduction is pretty good about getting this point across (Elliot is like a libertarian socialist of some sort).
Like from his stuff, Mao was trying, but perverse incentives were set up and bad shit happened. I think this and other stuff is probably shit we can learn from. You know?
Having good information systems will be crucial no matter what we do.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 