Because markets are the only sensible means we know to arrange the production of consumer and production goods. I oppose markets in labor and capital.
>
> Justin simply believes that markets are an
> efficient means of distribution, he doesn't grasp
> that markets nurture exploitation and are
> inextricably linked to production for profit.
Of course they are linked to production for profit. I not only grasp the point, I insist on it. That's what markets go, give people incentives in the form of profits to satisfy the needs of others. And I am highly aware that markets pose the threat of nuturing exploitation. Your charming arrogance in assuming what I am aware of and not is amusing. You don't grasp that I have written extensively on precisely this topic -- never published on it. Got canned before I did.
But I do have a line on the risk of exploitation in a market socialist economy. The main point is that if property is publicly owned and inequalities are limited, so that there is no capitalist class to capture the lion's share of the profits, then the exploitation that exists is not going to be systematic. If you want, I can email you a talk paper I gave in a conference on the subject a decade or more ago, it's pretty good and pretty short.
He
> thinks there is some way to separate markets from
> these bad apples.
Right. The "way" is called ;abolition of porivate property," what Marx described as the theory of the communists summed up in a single expression (The Manifesto).
Oh, and of course Justin's
> thinking is something of a prisoner of the
> protestant work ethic, he fears that without some
> system of coercing people to do productive work,
> that nothing will be produced at all and we will
> all starve.
I don't know how many times I have to explain that this is not and has never been a rationale I have advanced in favor markets. I suppose with people who listen as carefully as you do this will not be the last time.
I am a Hayekian. Hayek's idea was that markets are information systems, not straw-bosses. The point is that people cannot know enough if they have to plan how many buttons and how much broccoli they will need -- but mnarkets give people who are interested in making profits spedcial incentives to find out without central coordination. No planning board can do as well outside certain areas where supply and demand is highly predictable.
Hayek did not believe, and neither do I, that we will
all preish of laziness if we are not threatened with
starvation through unemployment. Are we clear on this
point now? I don't expect agreement, jsut
understanding of what the point is.
>
> As always, it all comes back to how we see human
> nature.
>
> I agree with him that "The worker is not entitled
> to the SV he produces merely because he
> produces it" though. The meek will not inherit
> the Earth, they will slave on to the end like
> faithful sheep. The capitalist is entitled to SV
> because the capitalist takes it, but mostly
> because the working class let them. Likewise, the
> sheep cocky is entitled to the wool off the
> sheep's back because the cocky takes it and the
> sheep doesn't stop him.
>
> If we want to stop being shorn like sheep, we have
> to stop acting like sheep.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
>
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