>I question whether this would always, or even usually, be the case. From
>the point of view of GDP, yeah. But we're assuming that this is a
>socialist society, and we're not worried about being GDP size queens. If
>the quantity "n" in your example represents an easy afternoon on the golf
>course for a doctor, then from his point of view, it's not wasted at all --
>it's been spent producing leisure. More generally, I think you and Hayek
>are going to be hard pushed to come up with a principled distinction
>between having workers slack on the job, and produce Y units of output for
>X units of input, and having workers work hard, produce Y units of output
>for X-n units of input, then spend n units of input on producing leisure.
>To me, this resembles a separation theorem, like the Fisher one.
>
>So, I think, this means that I can avoid the implicit challenge to a
>planned economy that it wouldn't be *optimally efficient*, in some
>technical sense of "optimally efficient". I can get away with establishing
>that a planned economy could produce enough to satisfy peoples' needs,
>given the available inputs, and say that the rest is being spent on
>leisure. And slacking on the job definitely is a form of leisure, and
>often a rather agreeable one (can anyone tell I've just come back from
>lunch?). So unless planned economic systems are actually so inefficient
>that they are incapable of producing enough resources for everyone in the
>economy to have the necessary means to enjoy their life, Hayek's point and
>yours can't be established, and the modern left is right to ignore "waste".
You put it quite nicely. Even capitalist management often allows for slacking off, shrinkage, etc. Policing every move of a worker & exercising perfect discipline (no "wasted" moment, no "wasted" movement, no "wasted" resources) may be the dream of a capitalist Panopticon, but where there is power, there is resistance, as Foucault says (and even capitalists know this). Whether the market or planning or a mixture of both, the techniques of extracting "optimal efficiency" which look good on paper are likely to turn out to be inefficient practically. I think that communist planning should include much elbowroom, so to speak. There is a Japanese adage "muyo no yo," which may be translated as "usefulness of uselessness," "utility of non-utility," or something like that. In a future of emancipated work & abundant free time, I hope we'll enjoy much _muyo no yo_. (Here's my utopian/millenarian speculation, Carrol!)
>I'm treating the definition of "enough to satisfy peoples' needs" as if it
>were unproblematic, because the last time the issue was raised, we got
>twenty posts on the necessity or otherwise of toilet paper, half of which
>bounced off my firewall :-)
A wise move, my dear. Let us save ourselves from Tedium & Te Deum. You disappoint me, however, by saying that you were prevented by the Flemings Panopticon from enjoying my scatological humor (will this post bounce also???)
Yoshie