Linear programming

The method was then independently reinvented in the United States by Tjalling Koopmans and by George Danzig, who while working on transport and allocation problems for the US Airforce during the war coined the phrase 'linear programming'

– Red Plenty

These are known as ‘linear’ equations, because if graphed they produce straight lines, and it is a property of linear equations that you can only solve them if you have as many equations to work with as there are variables

– Red Plenty

Otherwise, they are ‘undetermined’ – there are an infinite number of possible solutions, and no way to decide between them.

– Red Plenty

Linear programming was not only a quintessentially socialist kind of mathematics, ‘characterized by a constant overlap of theory and practice’, it also offered a new kind of socialist political economy

Half-Earth Socialism

Linear programming offered a systematic way to allocate resources, so that it optimized some metrics of overall national well-being

Half-Earth Socialism

the method is ubiquitous in contemporary applied mathematics, including in planning renewable energy systems

Half-Earth Socialism

Rather than relying on a Platonic elite of logicians, Neurath thought that a visual language could democratize reason by making the essence of an economic problem apparent to non-experts

Half-Earth Socialism

There were two main currents that shaped planning debates in the Soviet Union over the following decade: the theory of mathematical optimization (e.g., linear programming) and the cybernetic theory of control, built around differential equations

Half-Earth Socialism

For all its pedagogical and democratic value, linear programming alone will not suffice to plan something as complex as the global economy

Half-Earth Socialism

Kantorovich’s linear programming will not be enough in itself to create a global in natura economy

Half-Earth Socialism