>But humility would be more plesant.
I used to be a salesman, I can be pleasant. But it will cost you. Or I can be me.
> > I'm just not sure what the "incentive" is in this
>> market then, if income inequalities are limited
>> and the opportunity to accumulate property is not
>> there. What's the point of making a profit?
>
>Because you have more money than you did before?
But that is only an incentive if I can't satisfy my needs without more money. Or if life is so insecure that it is necessary to accumulate more money than I need, just in case. Is that the sort of environment you envisage under market socialism? It seems an extremely modest objective, little different to what already exists really. Or are you unconsciously assuming that this is the only kind of society that is possible?
>The short paper would not address that concern, but
>you shouldn't buy the propaganda that the only
>markrets that work are neoliberal ones with no
>ceilings or gains or floors on losses. Social
>democracies don't do badly. Mind you, I advocate more
>than SD -- I want to abolish private property.
Well, it isn't just propaganda. There is an inherent competitive problem with jurisdictions that redistribute too much of the surplus value to social purposes. Its a simple problem that anyone can see, it results in a lower rate of profit, compared to jurisdictions like the US that let the capitalists keep more of their profits. You don't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to work out that investors will be tempted to take their capital out of the jurisdictions you describe as "social democracies" and send them somewhere they can earn a bigger dividend. It would be fine so long as all the major jurisdictions agreed not to undercut each other's tax regimes, but some governments can't resist scabbing.
>Also, you have to lok ath the alternative. We knwo for
>damn sure that totally centrally planed economies
>don't wirk either.
And that is the only alternative?
> > I read between the lines, done it all my life, I
>> can't seem to help it.
>
>Ah, so you attribute to me something I don't believe
>and have expressly rejected and call this reading
>between the lines?
Its a rhetorical device. We have to keep the debate interesting out of consideration for others who might want to follow it. Don't take it personally.
> > It doesn't work that way. For a start, producers
>> neither know nor care what the needs are, only
>> what people will pay for something.
>
>But they have to find out what people will pay for, so
>they have an incentive to investiate their needs and
>how to meet them.
You could just take people's word for it, they tell you they want something and you accept that at face value. Prices don't always do the trick anyway. I've noticed for example that some people are absolutely hopeless at managing their finances. The signals they give out via their purchasing habits can't be taken at face value as genuine information about their priorities, it is simply that they can't budget their money. Other people, a minority I am coming to realise have the skills, but for most people your assumption doesn't hold water.
> That doesn't
>> address the question of need, it only addresses
>> the question of what people can pay for.
>
>If the probalem is, some people;'s meed won't be met
>of they lack money, I do advocate a minimum guaranteed
>income.
We don't all have the same needs, everyone is different. Just for example, some people need to consume a lot more beer than me to get drunk. Some people have artistic urges that need to be expressed, some don't. There are a wide variety of emotional needs. Many of which I just don't understand, but I recognise as valid.
The thing I'm trying to get at is that there is no natural link between individual needs and individual contribution (even if you could measure these things accurately) nor need there be. You can't treat everyone uniformly, I'm sure you see that, which is why you are advocating a system where people can contribute unequally and consume unequally. But no market can regulate such a division.
> However,
>> markets can't work unless there is some degree of
>> shortage, because if goods and services are in
>> abundance, the market will send a message to stop
>> producing.
>
>Right, markets are a response to shortage. That is the
>human condition. Abdundance, the Great Roick Candy
>Mountain, the Land of Cockaigne, is a fantasy. We have
>to make choices about how to use our resources.
Sure we would have to ration some things. But not that much. Rationing of goods and services that are in short supply is, by the way, a proven system that people take to very well. So long as it is reasonably fair. It is also much more efficient than a free market.
Some things, such as information, can already be supplied in infinite quantities. So any market in information would have to be sustained by an artificially created shortage (as under the present system). But likewise with goods and services for which it is practical to supply a reasonable abundance. Is that a price you are prepared to make society pay? Artificial shortages of goods and services to create favourable conditions for a market economy?
To me that is irrational, but you don't seem to be an irrational person, so I'm making the assumption that you can't see the problem.
> So markets wouldn't be of any help in
>> an economy where there was enough of things to go
>> around.
>
>True. And if men were angels were wouldn't need laws
>either.
What is your point? You seem to be implying that none of the goods and services that people need can be produced in sufficient quantity to eradicate shortage?
> > For example, in health care, how would markets be
>> useful?
>
>I oppose markets in health care.
Of course you do, every civilised person opposes availability of health care being at the mercy of market forces. But the question is, why do you oppose it in this instance? This is a very imprtant question, you argue that markets are the most efficient method of distributing limited resources, yet you want to exempt some things. By your logic it seems you would be denying the health care system the advantages in efficiency that a free market would offer.
Surely, the following applies to health care as much as it applies to food and housing:
>"No planning board can do as well outside certain areas where supply
>and demand is highly predictable."
> > Look, its quite simple. Manufacturers manufacture
>> to order. Distributors order according to demand.
>> That's the mechanics of how it works now and it
>> could work just as well without a market.
>
>It;s so simple . . so very simple. Bill, this is
>childish. Childs=ish! The smartest minds in Eastern
>Europea nd the USSt wrestled with these "simple"
>problems for decades. You really owe it to yourself to
>at least acquait yourself with some of their work
>before you start talking like this. I was a
>Sovietologist. It's hard to even know where to start
>in explaining why it's not simple. If I recommend a
>short book, would you read it?
There were a few other things going on in the USSR which complicated things. For a start, they lacked the ability to meet basic needs in 1917, so socialism was doomed. There's no system imaginable where starvation can be shared equitably.
> > I understand what you are saying. You don't
>> accept that this is your premise. I accept that
>> this isn't a conscious premise of your
>> philosophy. However, your belief that people need
>> a financial incentive to do things seems to lead
>> back to that.
>
>
>No, the incentive is not to work harder, it's to find
>things out. And thre Hayekian incentive is mostly
>positive -- learn what people want and how to give it
>to them cheap and you will make money! There is of
>corse the threat of bankruptcy if you guess wrong, but
>the driving force is the carrot, not the stick. It's
>not the straw boos with the lash, "You're fired," etc.
No, the driving force is the stick. As Jack London put it, the threat of falling into the pit. The driving force is insecurity. A market economy depends utterly on that. Human beings are quite capable of responding to more positive incentives of course, we are naturally social animals who respond to social pressure and simply want to help each other. But under threat of hunger and want we are just as capable of selfishly trying to survive at the expense of others. And that is just as natural.
A market economy works on the latter side of human nature. A socialist economy would work with the former side of human nature. An economy can not for long be both market and socialist, you can't have it both ways simultaneously, people are either being selfish or they are being co-operative, we can't be both at the same time. You must see that.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas