Well, I thought _you_ were raising the point. This point, naturally, with neoliberalism in ruins and the economists in disgrace, everyone except the fruitcakes agrees we need more planning -- though the planning we are current dealing with is largely increased regulation of the financial and mortgage markets rather than any attempt to insert the government into the details of the production process (beyond restoring some health, safety, and environmental regs or enforcement abandoned or neglected under Bush II).
Although I don't like the _way_ this is being done, I think that is exactly the right emphasis. I think that capital markets can be (more, maybe totally) planned without running into a lot of the Hayekian problems and without stifling innovation insofar as that is desirable. Also, while management may bitch and moan, insofar as health, safety, and environmental regulation goes, plus antidiscrimination legislation, that's a whole nother kettla fish from the God's Eye central planner's attempt to guess how many TV sets of what sort will be needed in some relevant market. It's not telling them what to make, just under what conditions they have to do it.
There is far too little oversight, if any, of the bailout money. And some short term telling' what to make and how might not be a bad thing, treat these companies as if they were bankrupt, which they are, and a company in bankruptcy _belongs_ to the govt, represented by the Trustee, supervised by the court, and has to account for every nickel and basically do what they're told. Bankr law doesn't technically apply because these companies have not had to file for bankr because of the bailouts, but there is no reason they can't make a bankr-like kind of close-up-and personal govt supervision a condition of receiving the money. And they should. And they should fire as many of those responsible as they can, and make waiver of golden parachutes and bonuses for anything other than actual success a condition of accepting bailout money (I _think_ that's constitutional) not just as punitive measure, but to get rid of manifest incompetents.
--- On Thu, 3/5/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] IT innovation and "the Markets"
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, March 5, 2009, 12:41 PM
> On Mar 5, 2009, at 1:32 PM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > And of course we do have 70+ experience of socialist
> (nonmarket) entrepreneurship and attempts at innovation in a
> variety of countries -- some fairly advanced industrially,
> like the DDR and Czechoslovakia. The results are not quite
> as grim as Hayek predicted but they are not promising. Janos
> Kornai have a revealing char comparing innovations
> introduced by state socialist vs. capitalist counties. I
> don't have the book here, but I think of of 15 important
> ones the SSC got two, the satellite being one, if I recall.
>
> I'm not sure what the political relevance of this
> debate is today. No one is about to institute anything like
> Soviet-style planning anywhere. We live in societies choking
> on markets that could use a little more democratic planning.
> Who knows where it all could
> lead?___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk