A not Unminor problem for the Left

[Gordon Fitch]

JKSCHW at aol.com:
> ... 
> Hayek calls attention to incentives to gather accurate information. It is not 
> raw compuing power that concerns hiim. It is incentives to get the costs 
> right. Market systems create those incentives because individuals profit by 
> accurate information about particular things. Planning systems do 
> not--everyone is better off if the information is accurate, but since each 
> individual bebefits if it si not, we have a classical n-pesron prisoner's 
> dilemma or collective goods problem.
> 
> This should be obvious. but it doesn't seem to be, at least it isn't 
> understood on the left. I have been waiting for 20 years for someone to face 
> thsi directly and I am still waiting. Maybe you, DD?

A search for the truth has not been the dominant element in
markets I have observed.  It's true some of the people want
some of the truth some of the time, but then you have monumental
counterexamples like Microsoft's success or the recent Internet
bubble -- social processes in which something other than truth
is obviously in play.  There are powerful motivations to lie
in a market, and powerful motivations to buy lies as well,
evidently.  Possibly truth is not only expensive but liable
to be bitter.  Markets might be more popular precisely
because they are better at producing illusions.

The problem with efficiency is that it doesn't say anything
about what's coming out the end.

Gordon