1. First, you define as the goal of socialism to maximize human freedom, but then you switch gears to maximizing output or efficiency of producing it. What is the connection? Your piece has not established it.
2. I am not sure what maximization of human freedom means in empirical terms. I can envision operationalization of concepts such as "maximization of human potential" (e.g. most of the people achieving most of their life goals) or maximization of human well-being (e.g. most people healthy and happy lives), but I cannot see what are empirical designates of freedom.
3. Your piece makes the case for socialism as "organization" rather than "organism" but it does not take advantage of any literature in organizational theory. There has been tons on that written from the point of view of transaction cost economics (basically arguing that formal organizations offer substantial savings in transaction costs vs market based transactions) and sociology of organizations (basically arguing that social have the same effect.) Check it out - it can strengthen your case.
4. Your characterization of Soviet planning can also be improved. First, it was not as different from "capitalism" as propaganda on both sides claims. The Soviets used a lot of organizational borrowings from capitalism (cf. Gerschenkron, _Economic backwardness in historical perspective_) There is also plenty of case studies. Second, the main problem of Soviet planning was not that they tried to do too much, as you suggest, but internal problems with allocation of resources due mainly to factors identified by organizational sociology.
5. You write several paragraphs to show that technology is a public good (non-rival and nonexcludable) - which could be accomplished in one paragraph - but when you establish it, the argument does not go anywhere. So what that technology is a public good?
6. I like your argument that non-excludability is not a property of goods but that of social relations. I would extend that claim to rivalry as well. Rivalry is a function of supply, which in turn is socially determined. For example, food can be rival if it is in short supply but non-rival if it is in ample supply. Same thing for education, housing, health care, transportation, etc. Even goods that are non-fungible (e.g.work of art) can be non-rival under certain social arrangements (e.g. public ownership and free public access to all works of art.)
7. If I read your piece correctly, you seem to start from an individual and try to make a case for social organization by showing the necessity of cooperation. That is a very bourgeois way of thinking (not that it is inherently wrong, it just does not rub me the right way.) An alternative way is to start with assumption that the basic unit of production and consumption is not individual but collectivity. That is to say, virtually all thing the humankind have ever produced have been produced collectively, not individually. Collectivities differ in the division of labor and distribution of surplus, which determine what individuals do and receive under different social arrangements. That assumption will make it much easier, in my view, to make the case for the original goal of your piece - namely to show how socialism can maximize human well-being. Moreover, you can do so without having to claim that more production is better. Instead, you can argue that more balance is better.
Wojtek
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Julio Huato <juliohuato at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is posted on my blog:
>
> http://juliohuato.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/scale-and-socialist-planning/
>
> All comments will be welcomed.
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