..
>Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>>That shows I have not expalined Hayek clwarly enough.
>
>Yes you have. I've heard all this a million times, though mostly from
>unreflective cheerleaders for capitalism.
My point was that Hayek was talking about incentives to gain knowledge, not incentives to work harder.
Repetition doesn't equal
>accuracy or finality, though. The price system tells lots of stories.
I am no more reflexive Hayekian than I am a reflexive Marxian. Planning work in some contexts. We know from empirical experience that planning works very well in health care, and markers work moderately poorly. Oik (your exaple below) is the kind of thing where planning could probably work fine--it's a fairly simply commodity, the industry does not depend heavily on innovation. NB the oil industry is heavily subsiduized indirectly by military expenditures and a commitment (in the US) to autos over public transport. As for the stock market, I don't think that capital markets work vcery well at all, and I would have investment largely planned under a Schweixkartian system. I have explained thsi before. Consumer goods and producer goods should be pretty much wholely marketized, though.
jks
>Let's look at the oil market over the last 30 years. Prices zoomed
>after 1973 - fed ideas of scarcity. Another spike after 1979 - a
>panic over scarcity. Collapse after 1986 - complacency sets in.
>Drilling explodes, then collapses. Should we believe these signals?
>The long-term reality of the oil supply barely changed despite the
>gyrations. Couldn't thoughtful planners, with long-term supply and
>demand information, do a better job?
>
>Or how about deregulating airfares? That was supposed to liberate all
>those wondrous Hayekian forces. Hasn't quite worked out that way, has
>it?
>
>Oh and the stock market. Prices move more freely there than just
>about anywhere else. March 2000: prosperity forever. July 2002:
>despair. What changed in the course of those two years that justified
>the price movements and the associated interpretations?
>
>Doug
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