you can talk about shit as much as you like, but the question remains as to why you insist on not answering a simple question, now put four times: who or what is posited as the vehicle of socialist planning? is it the state? is it, moreover, given your adherence to the notion of 'national sovereignty', the nation-state? the rest is just a wide and tedious detour around this issue.
moreover, since you claimed a connection between the planning for the satisfaction of presumably natural needs (more below) and (i take it as implied since you refuse to answer) state planning, what precisely distinguishes this from the synthesis of biology and economics in politics, the vesting of the state with the planning of 'the life of the people' defined in biological terms and its connection to the state's economic planning, that characterised nazism? if there is a way of distinguishing this, then i'd be happy to hear it. but thus far it remains a serious, rather than rhetorical question (in the colloquial sense).
as for this endless but misplaced fixation:
> For the problem is that you think it takes "_complete_ knowledge" for
> planning to be effective, while I don't think it does.
i've said it i think three times now: no, you are wrong. i think the vision of socialist planning posits a complete knowledge, hence (NB:) the use of terms like 'conscious planning'. whether this is possible interests me less than the aspiration to make it so. it is this aspiration, which i've said time and again, i think is dangerous.
> I take it self-evident that at any given time human knowledge is not
> "complete" in the sense you speak of, whether we are planning or not
> planning
yes, we both take it as self-evident. and, despite your intent on disagreeing with me over what is the minor point (the major one being the status and implications of the concept of socialist planning), your own phrasing betrays you. you did not qualify knowledge or its completeness in the previous post. you qualified _planning_. which is why i wrote: "this is why, in each case, you place the qualifications on the side of _planning_, _not_ knowledge." you must think i'm as incapable of reading your posts as you seem to be.
> I'm glad to hear you can comfortably dispense with toilet paper and
food. I suppose you prefer sounding ridiculous than rethinking the
nature of need, knowledge, and planning.<
never said or even came close to implying such a thing. what's ridiculous yoshie is that you resort to lying so easily in a forum where everything is written.
> One has no need to use the word "natural"
> to describe the needs that socialism should satisfy.
what else are, in your words, biological givens? secondly, you resorted to 'biological givens' to define the scope of state (or delegated) planning. third, you pretend that toilet paper is the same thing as shitting in order to wallow ever deeper in the confusion that socialist planning is a simple matter of planning for givens, without certain consequences precisely for the power of the state to decide what are and aren't these givens which must be satisfied and how this is to be done.
Angela _________