>No. It's not obvious to me. But I'm a pretty poor
>leftist. I'm a fan of Hayek and Mises, and hard-headed
>about efficiency.
>jks
>- ---
>Why? What if people prefer to trade off efficiency for
>other perceived
>goods?
I seem to remember an exchange on this general theme. As far as I can tell, Justin *isn't* a "fan of Hayek and Mises" -- he agrees with Hayek's formulation of the socialist planning question (which isn't the same as Mises') and on just about nothing else. Certainly, for example, his recent comments to Bill Bartlett about individuals, group properties and the basis of statistical research in social sciences would get him thrown out of Austrian company.
Also, I've noted in the past that, along the same lines as Chris's
objection above, the concept of "efficiency" that's being thrown around
here needs a lot of work done to get it put on sound epistemological
ground. For example (I think I've used this one in the past, all I do is
repeat myself these days anyway), if a doctor decides to bunk off in the
afternoons to play golf then from the point of view of the hospital that's
inefficiency and from the point of view of the doctor it's consumption.
>From the point of view of society, I think Justin's underestimated the
burden of proving that we should necessarily take the hospital's viewpoint
rather than the doctor's -- and the Austrian economists would *very*
certainly not agree with him.
As I've certainly argued before, I think that there is a general separation theorem provable in this area; that no principled distinction can be made between
1) an "inefficient" organisational structure which uses X units of labour and a capital technology to produce Y units of output, and
2) an "efficient" organisation which uses X units of labour and the same capital technology to produce Y+Z units of output, of which Z units are spent on consumption of leisure.
Or in other words, that "efficiency" is inherently an engineering concept which only has meaning in comparing technologies, and that its application to forms of labour organisation carries hidden assumptions about consumption preferences between goods and leisure. I daresay I can find decent Austrian support for this view.
dd
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