the positive critique

Brett Knowlton brettk at unica-usa.com
Wed May 3 14:24:04 PDT 2000



>Brad raises an important question, again, by askinga bout positive
alternative. Doug asserts--I won't say defends, since he offers no argument--the alternative probably preferred by most people on this list, democratic planning. In a recent post that was taken up and then dropped I remarked that Hayek's attack on this alternative has yet to be answered in a plausible way.

What's wrong with prices as a signalling mechanism for democratically planned societies to choose between alternatives? This, as I understand it, is the crux of Hayek's critique - planned economies don't have price mechanism to allow them to accurately determine the costs and benefits of varying proposals. The Albert/Hahnel model (and possibly others) is able to generate these kinds of prices based on the production and consumption plans sent in by each workplace and consumer.

Brett



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