I was talking about science, not planned economy in general. Planned economy is problematic for many of the same reasons for which capitalist production in large corporations is problematic. (And capitalist system which wouldn't have many large hierarchically controlled corporations doesn't exist.)
My point is, there existed different systems of doing science, which weren't measured as much (to the extent that would cause overproduction of articles that no scientist has time to read), because they had different preference than "scientific efficacy by an objective metric". For example, preference for somebody being authority in a scientific field for life. Or preference for academia to be a place for outcasts. Or preference for democratic decision making about what to scientifically pursue. These are all non-capitalist preferences.
> I was talking about science, not planned economy in general.
I was talking about metric hacking, which isn't exclusive to science. I could have been more explicit though. But I still think you unnecessarily brought in a red herring by bringing up economic systems and I could have responded more appropriately. But our discussion is off the rails now.
> My point is, there existed different systems of doing science, which weren't measured as much
Science has always been about measurements and philosophy. It is the balance. The issue is about the over metrification as to what the science means. You're definitely right to point out these issues within capitalist frameworks. You'll find many of a comment from me complaining about how we do this within corporations as well. KPIs rule everything even when they mean nothing. Quarterly profits over long term profits. Yes, these are metric hacking and incredibly short sighted things. But at the same time it would be naive to assume that there are not parallels under communistic rule[0]. There are plenty of examples as there are under all the systems that I mentioned.
The problem here is that you're willing to look at flaws in a system you disagree with (which you may notice no one is claiming the capitalism is flawless nor are many even countering your critiques. Pay close attention), the problem is that you're unwilling to look at the flaws within your preferred system. There are no globally optimal solutions to problems such as these, and thus there is no flawless system. The irony of this is that by ignoring such flaws you're actually performing the very metric hacking we are complaining about and it would not be unreasonable to call this hypocritical. Think about comedians if we need an analogy: you can't make fun of others if you aren't willing to make fun of yourself even more. With belief systems it is similarly more important that you are more critical of the ones you prescribe to than the ones you disagree with. After all, don't you want to improve upon them? We can have discussions of which is better and which is worse but that needs context and honesty about the downsides of each system. But no discussion can exist if you're unwilling to admit to flaws.
[0] It's hard to give a specific example because the Scottsman card has already been played elsewhere. A difficult part of conversations in this whole abstract "communism v capitalism" is that no one agrees on the fucking fundamental definitions and so arguments are abound. IMO the capitalists seem to have lower variance but I digress. For an example, if you are one of the people that considers modern China communist then we can point to them. They're doing the same shit as we are in the US in terms of papers, but I'd honestly say worse simply because there's more of them doing it. If you don't think China is communist, then well I'm not sure we can really make comparisons if no true communist regime has existed and it's probably not worth talking about "true communism" if it is so vulnerable that every attempt has failed within a few decades (sorry, can't just blame it on the CIA. They play a role and did fucked up shit but they aren't wizards either).
> But I still think you unnecessarily brought in a red herring by bringing up economic systems and I could have responded more appropriately.
But I didn't brought economic systems into it, others did. I was drawing on my own father's personal experience (as well my observations from the transition) in academia, which is that the metrization is not an inevitability for doing (even good) science.
Anyway, I also admitted the system's flaws. Again, I have heard the stories (BTW, the communism wasn't black and white either, different countries had different problems, even in Czechoslovakia there were about 4 different periods during 40 years of communism).
I don't know what system China uses internally to measure scientific output. Perhaps they adopted the Western system based on free market competition of scientific institutes for grants and students, and that's why they are also gaming the metrics. In that sense, their current system is based on capitalism.
Addendum: I would say since free market competition for labor is the main distinguishing feature of capitalism (together with its dual - private ownership of capital), it's not surprising that such a system is most prone to gaming this competition. It also manifests in the economy at large as "bullshit jobs". There are other parallels of current organizational problems in science with current form of neoliberal capitalism - rise of large actors (for example universities that are single-mindedly focused on publishing at the expense of everything else), abusing precarious labor (for example treatment of PHD students), etc.
My point is, there existed different systems of doing science, which weren't measured as much (to the extent that would cause overproduction of articles that no scientist has time to read), because they had different preference than "scientific efficacy by an objective metric". For example, preference for somebody being authority in a scientific field for life. Or preference for academia to be a place for outcasts. Or preference for democratic decision making about what to scientifically pursue. These are all non-capitalist preferences.