>As I say, I'm not interested in debate. This discussion becomes very
>wearing. I responded to Charles because he was interested. You don't see
it,
>you don't see it. I cannot make you interested.
But I am interested. I am far more interested in economics than a linguist/programmer/professional student probably should be. And I just don't get this.
I see Hayek and Mises as saying that markets provide information to agents and that to whatever degree the current economic system is efficient in its distribution of resources, it is because of the efficacity of the price system as an informational system. Saying that there is no other _possible_ system that can provide such information and provide adequate incentives to produce efficiency at least equal to that under currently existing capitalism is a much taller order, and I don't see that they've accomplished it. To make that argument is far more difficult. It is, in effect, trying to prove a negative.
I can well imagine Hayek (were he not so dead and were he somewhat less dogmatic in his anti-socialism) arguing that C&C's model is a market model, since prices are not fixed and consumers must choose how to dispose of limited spending power. I doubt he'd much like Parecon at all.
_You_ don't seem to think that the existing institutional framework, with currently existing distribution of ownership and decision making powers is the most efficient one possible (or am I misreading you?) Is it such a leap to conceive of an alternative system which equals the incentive and informational properties of a market? That seems to be the major thrust of C&C and Parecon. Or, is a market defined as _any_ institutional mechanism in which information is limited and distributed and incentives provided in such a way that adequate economic efficiency follows? In that case, non-market socialism is impossible by definition.
>The point you raise below,
>about the existence of planning in capitalism and of disorganization in
>centrally planned systems is well known to all the participants.
I should hope so. And that is why I'm confused. I can't see how anyone can responsibly argue that an economy at least as productive as that of the developed capitalist countries can exist without some informational and incentive institution that does not at least fulfill the function of a market, and I can't see any way to argue that markets are the only institutions that can _ever_ meet those functions, although I'll grant that the onus is on someone proposing a non-market economy to put forward such an institution.
>The issue is between fans of planning, most of whom advocate
>democartic planning, and who see markets as bad, inconsistent with
>socialism, to be limited as much as possible and gotten rid of as soon as
>possible, and, on the other hand, advocates of markets, left and right, who
>think for the reasons that Hayek and Mises urged that the antipathy to
>markets in general is a big mistake.
On that front, I'm probably on your side. The functions markets fill can not simply be ignored. I was under the impression that virtually everyone thought so.
>You don't have to reject all planning to
>agree with them. But, as I say, if you don't see it, you don't see it.
>However, you can ask yourself why almost every single centrally planned or
>command economy has has a long and agaonized relationship with market
>reform, and wonder if the planners in those economies see something you
>don't.
I don't see what bearing that has on it. I am not defending Soviet planning, no matter how non-central it was. I just don't see that it was the strawman Hayek and Mises attacked.
>I will also that your reading of ALbert & Hahnel is exaxtly the opposite of
>mine. In my reading with and debates with them (one of which is available
on
>line, in a one sided way--Hahnel responds to me), I find a flat denial of
>the proposition that markets provide adequate incentives to gather and
>systematize accurate information about needs and resources.
I have not read Albert and Hahnel as closely as Cockshott and Cottrell. (Frankly, I find C&C much more interesting. Albert and Hahnel's version of paradise reminds me too much my parents' church. At least with C&C I can always blow my wad on gambling and hookers if I want to.) However, I do recall Albert and Hahnel's specific denial their plan involves the kind of hopeless information gathering task that Hayek decried.
I really don't see what the problem is. If someone tells me that under socialism everything will be planned, and the workers will fill their quotas and everything will turn out just right, then I'll think they are useless and living in some strange fantasy world. If someone tells me that markets insure that no one need ever plan future production and that if you leave things alone they just work out fine, I'll assume they're registered Republicans.
But in between, there is a large area where it is possible to admit that markets serve a necessary function, but where it is also possible to think some other institution might serve this function as well or better. That is an issue that only time can resolve - I assume feudalists couldn't see how any system without lords could work either. Regardless, the bulk of economic activity is planned by some agents in the system, based on some heuristic that tells them when they are making good or bad plans. I have always understood class revolution to be principally concerned with changing the agents making the decisions and the heuristics by which they evaluate outcomes. It seems to me this is true both for market socialists and for non-market socialists.
Scott Martens