Centralization

[Bradford DeLong]

>It's been a long time since I read Hewett and Nove and the like, but 
>as I remember, the planning mechanism wasn't anything like the rigid 
>top-down caricature it was rendered as in the West. There was 
>"market" feedback - not in price form, but more in volume form 
>(e.g., no one bought the hideous shoes). And there was more 
>interplay between center and periphery than the caricature says. In 
>a better world, they'd have experimented with opening up the 
>process, democratizing it, adding in lots of computers too, instead 
>of junking it, which was a disaster.
>
>Doug

They *are* experimenting with the process. How do you think something 
like AT&T or Toyota manages its own internal division of labor? I 
think the right point is not a Hayekian "planning is impossible" 
point, but instead a question of accountability: what (or whose) ends 
is the organization serving?

Brad DeLong