China’s Innovation Machine

This chapter sets the context of China’s innovation machine. It introduces its characteristics, including massive numbers of innovators embedded in China’s manufacturing and supply chains that offer efficiency, flexibility, and resilience; the emergence of the digital economy; and pragmatic government policies that have seen the nation progress from a period of catch-up with world leaders to a position of leadership in some fields. It explains the importance of Chinese culture for innovation and the ability of the nation to operate with ‘multiple institutional logics’ of state control and market forces. Challenges confronting China’s innovation machine are outlined, including in some areas of advanced technology and basic research, the fracturing of globalization, and the reascendancy of central planning.

The People’s Algorithms: Social Credits and the Rise of China’s Big (Br)other

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals and political leaders dreamed of a modern nation inhabited by politically aware citizens. For them, this involved the production and circulation of social facts enabling citizens to make sound judgements. This theory of making citizens continued in the socialist era (1949–1978). Yet, it has changed profoundly with the advance of state-guided neoliberalism. Instead of creating enlightened citizens, the new paradigm of governance aims at producing an ecology in which citizens are expected to align their desires and aspirations with the state-sanctioned social order. Focusing on China’s emerging social credit system, this essay illustrates how central planning and neoliberal belief have come together to construct a new social and economic order using numbers, algorithms and credit rating.

Use of Information Systems in an Intensive Form of Mental Health Home Treatment

This paper reports findings from a case study on the use of information systems in Germany’s mental health home treatment. Data were collected following an ethnographic approach, three themes were identified: (i) misfit of systems, (ii) whiteboards as central planning tools, and (iii) patients and their environment. We conclude by highlighting the specific nature of home treatment.

La educación desde la perspectiva de la Escuela Austriaca de Economía

The current Central Planning of the Education is not only a consequence of intense political activism of the European social democracies (specifically in Spain), moreover is consequence of the absence of a clear ideological opposition by the socio-political liberalism. Therefore, the Austrian School of Economics has nowadays an obligation, rediscover and redefine the theoretical basis of freedom of education to deconstruct the current social democratic model of Central Planning of Education. There are two essential reasons: the first one, because it means a improvement for the full freedom of the private education market, more agile, less costly and more effective to coordinate the individual preferences to learning with the needs of the markets. The second one, because ethics demands defending an educational system based on liberal principles, without the meddling of a statist education. Key words: Education and Liberalism, Education and Socialism, evolutionary and anarcho-capitalism basis of the Austrian School for a free education. JEL Classification: I20, I21, I28. Resumen: La actual Planificación Central de la Educación no es solamente consecuencia del intenso activismo político de las sociales democracias europeas (muy en concreto de la española), también es consecuencia de la ausencia de una oposición ideológica clara por parte del liberalismo sociopolítico en general. Por tanto, reencontrar y en su caso redefinir las bases teóricas de la libertad de enseñanza, como es el caso de la Escuela Austriaca de Economía, para de-construir el actual modelo socialdemócrata de Planificación Central de la Educación, es hoy una exigencia. Dos son las razones fundamentales: la primera, por lo que significa de mejora para la plena libertad de los mercados privados de enseñanza, más ágiles, menos costosos y más eficaces para coordinar mejor las preferencias individuales de aprendizaje con las necesidades de los mercados. La segunda, por la eticidad que significa defender un sistema educativo basado en los principios liberales, de ausencia de coacción educativa estatista. Palabras clave: Educación y Liberalismo, educación y Socialismo, bases evolucionistas y anarcocapitalistas de la Escuela Austriaca para una educación en libertad. Clasificación JEL: I20, I21, I28.