--- Ted Winslow <egwinslow at rogers.com> wrote:
> Rakesh said of Justin:
>
> > Your socialism is closer to JS Mill's pseudo
> socialism than Marx's.
Quite true. But I am not going to discuss it here. Such discussions have proved fruitless and unproductive.
>
> How can a Hayek based defense of "market" socialism
> be made
> consistent with the following from Mill?
>
> "whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a
> rule, prefer
> themselves to others, and those nearest to them to
> those more remote,
> from that moment Communism is not only practicable,
> but the only
> defensible form of society; and will, when that time
> arrives, be
> assuredly carried into effect. For my own part, not
> believing in
> universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in
> admitting that
> Communism would even now be practicable among the
> elite of mankind,
> and may become so among the rest." Mill,
> Considerations on
> Representative Government,
> <http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/xmil1861.htm>
I think Mill failed to appreciate the kind of problems discussed by Hayek and Mises. The problem H&M pose isn't that people are too greedy (the issue that Mill addresses in the passage quoted), but that they lack the information and computational capacity to make proper decisions on a totally nonmarket basis.
I just say this to explain Ted's puzzle. I am not going to defend my view here. People interested in what I've said can look at the archives, also at my exchange with Handel, available on the web.
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