Mat replied:
>The thing is that everything can't be measured in quantitative terms and
>personally I have a problem with some of the attempts to measure what
shouldn't
>be. Consideration of pros and cons is not the same thing as reducing all
>factors to quantitatively comparable terms, i.e., $. Things like "rights" or
>doing what one believes is the right thing come into play. If we based our
>decision on CBA, we might still have slavery or child labor. All life
shouldn't
>be governed by "economic logic" of that kind. We make decisions all the time
>without "measuring" in the technical sense of CBA, and I don't think it is
all
>some kind of utilitarian ordering either. Since so many of the outcomes are
>decided in advance, and numbers fudged around until they get the results they
>want, CBA ends up cloaking power and politics in the guise of a scientific
>analysis. Better to work on the political process, informed by many factors,
>including but not limited to those related to costs.
I've decided to put in my 2 cents here. I think this is a little unfair to Max. There is nothing wrong with the concept of efficiency. If you have a certain amount of batter, its better to get 5 pancakes from it than only 3, keeping other things constant. It seems that this is really Max's point.
I agree that the right uses "efficiency" as an excuse to ram its agenda down our throats - cutting welfare and social services generally, trying to privatize social security, etc.
But just because they've usurped it for this purpose doesn't mean we should throw out the concept, does it? If capitalism is ever successfully replaced with something better, we should use efficiency as one criteria (among many, and not necessarily the most important criteria) in evaluating alternative economic visions.
In fact, I've found that "efficiency" is usually one of the most common reasons given for opposing an alternative to capitalism. Capitalism is seen as somehow ruthlessly efficient, that the free market ensures every penny is spent "optimally," or "efficiently" (although most people can't really expound on what optimal or efficient mean). Capitalism has its flaws, they may admit, but everyone would be poor in YOUR society.
In this sense I think its very important to 1) have an alternative vision, and 2) be able, in a broad sense, to make the argument that a) capitalism isn't as efficient as all the economist claim it to be, and b) that alternatives to capitalism could come close to or even surpass the level of economic efficiency we have now.
Brett