> Are you claiming that I'm appealing to authority by offering a link?
No.
> I
> sketched out the basic argument and offered you a place to find more
> information -- and Wikipedia (where I linked) has an explicit policy
> of "neutral point of view." A page you can change yourself, if you
> think it flawed. I don't see the authoritarianism in my action.
I made no comments at all about you. I merely said I was more interested in somebody actually debating it and logically defending the arguments made, as I have already read enough information to form my own conclusions, including the arguments made by proponents of parecon.
> When you wrote, "I have never seen a logical explanation of..." I
> assumed you were interested in changing that state of affairs.
Yes, indeed. I have formed my opinions, I would like somebody to try to prove them wrong in the interest of developing them further.
> (As a side note, speaking of "debate," I'm personally persuaded that
> debate is a largely irrational institution where you and I have the
> role of disagreeing with each other.)
I'm not sure how to interpret these kinds of comments. Without debate, how can I test my understanding of things? Without understanding, how can I effectively contribute to worker's self-organization of production?
>>> Personally, I expect an advanced industrial economy will require large
>>> amount of planning, no matter what. Ours certainly does. Therefore I
>>> don't expect that market economies are necessarily desirable.
>> No doubt planning is needed, planning and markets are not mutually
>> exclusive. As I mentioned in a different thread, commons-based
>> free-producers can find their equilibrium scale by interacting with the
>> market.
>
> Do you mean price equilibrium through the "laws" of supply and demand?
No, here I am referring to the market helping to establish the level of planning and scale of productive enterprises.
> If so, then yes, I understand that aspect of markets, and that they
> often come to some sort of equilibrium. Whether that equilibrium point
> (when it exists) is a good one is another issue...
As mentioned, my comment above was not about equilibrium price, but not withstand, in terms of the price of Capital, I have no idea what you mean by "good."
In the case of Capital, the closer the price of Capital is to cost, the better for labour because it allows the worker to produce and retain more product.
> I assume you're a proponent of mutualism?
I am not a scholar, so I lack the breadth or depth to claim to be a proponent of any particular body of theory.
When proponents of mutualism make arguments that make sense to me, I incorporate them.
Why do you ask?
>> Yet this is not true, as there is no such thing as buyers and sellers,
>> but rather a network of traders. Today's seller is yesterday's buyer and
>> had to negotiate to secure inputs. When inputs can not be secured by
>> force, how can costs be externalized?
> In each individual market transaction, aren't there typically two
> roles, which we call "buyer" and "seller"? Note that I wrote, "in any
> given transaction." Who played what role yesterday seems irrelevant to
> what I mentioned.
The fact remains that agreement has already been obtained for all inputs before this transaction can take place. Again I ask, when inputs can not be secured by force, how can costs be externalized?
Please feel free to answer with an example.
> If you want, we can generalize the definition of market transactions
> past 2 to "a small non-negative number of simultaneous participants,"
> each playing the role of "trader." I kind of doubt that the
> fundamental analysis seriously changes though in any useful way, at
> least in this stage of the conversation.
Present your argument in anyway you like, so you long as it explains how an exploitive class can develop in the context of free production.
Once again, I have reached the 3 post limit. Look forward to more tomorrow.
Cheers.
-- Dmytri Kleiner, robotnik Telekommunisten, Berlin.
dk at telekommunisten.net http://www.telekommunisten.net freenode/#telnik