>>not simply be ignored. I was under the impression that virtually everyryone thought so.
JKS typed:
>Maybe, but hard line planners, and I count A&H in this lot, think you can do it without markets--prices, profits, bankruptcy. I don't
Without markets or profits yes - without prices or bankruptcy no. I know
you don't want to debate -- but I don't think it is debate to correct a mistatement of a position you are criticizing. A&H spend a lot effort to get prices right. And enterprises that fall belowe a certain efficiency are dissolved - pretty much the same as bankruptcy yet?
In general, I think they pay more attention to issues Hayek (and Mises) raised than any other advocates of planning. That is they pay attention to question of incentives, both to do work, and to gather information. They pay attention to the question of getting prices right. Their system has more or less a one to one correspeondence with markets. For every mechanism markets provide you can find a corresponding Parecon mechanism.
This does not exempt them from criticism on Hayekian or even Misian grounds. It simply means that your criticism must be that the mechanisms they suggested would not work, or worse are absurd...
Now you also, in another post, brought Mondragon up as an example of market socialism. A critisim often made of market socialism is that it is unstable with a tendency to turn into capitalism. In terms of Mondragon, I think we can point out the Mondragon factories now hire wage labor without giving them membership in the co-ops. Within Spain it now engages in joint business ventures that own non-co-op workpalces. Also Mondragon own plants in low-wage nations which it operates as conventional capitalist workplaces, with no plans to ever convert to worker ownership. http://www.dollarsandsense.org/issues/nov97/mon.html
I agree that a discussion of parecon may not be productive on this list.
I would simply say that this is not a license to take a potshot at it, and then move on, unanswered.