Sent from my iPad
On Oct 12, 2012, at 2:21 PM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> The continued existence of human order depends on stopping growth. Growth
> and human freedom, even human survival, are incompatible.
>
> How can a rational pricing system, or any pricing whatever, stop growth?
>
> Carrol
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On
>> Behalf Of andie_nachgeborenen
>> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 12:10 PM
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Hayek, was Re: Stalinism (was Eric Hobsbawm)
>>
>> Exactly. Life is hard, commodity fetishism is the cost of rational pricing
> and
>> reasonable prosperity. Live with it. As Mises put it in his first paper in
> 1920 laying
>> out the idea, you could choose to dispense with rational pricing (sensible
> use of
>> resources), embrace waste of resources and record, and live in poverty.
> That's not
>> an attractive option.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Oct 12, 2012, at 11:14 AM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> My objection to Hayek is that he wants to use markets to provide
>>> information, therefore reinstituting commodity fetishism. It's no use
>>> getting rid of capitalism if the labor of one person continues to be
> equated
>>> (implicitly or explicitly) to the labor of others. Pre-capitalist
> markets
>>> exerted no tyranny: the labor of one nation was not cheapened by the
> labor
>>> of another. Hayek's markets are specifically defined to exercise that
>>> tyranny.
>>>
>>> In other words the core objection to Hayek is precisely what Andie cites
> as
>>> the core advantage -- the use of markets to convey information.
>>>
>>>
>>> Carrol
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
>>> On
>>>> Behalf Of andie_nachgeborenen
>>>> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 8:01 AM
>>>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Hayek, was Re: Stalinism (was Eric Hobsbawm)
>>>>
>>>> Nothing in Hayek requires private ownership, a point I have made to
>>> generations
>>>> of spluttering libertarians. Hayek's problem is with planning, not
>>> ownership. His
>>>> attempted save by appeal to the need for entrepreneurship, with which I
>>> agree
>>>> heartily, fails because nothing in Hayek's argument requires the
>>> entrepreneurs be
>>>> individual private owners rather than employees of a cooperative,
>>> regardless of
>>>> where title lies.
>>>>
>>>> Multiple equilibria are irrelevant. The problem is a model that makes
>>> equilibrium a
>>>> goal based on false premises. Hayek, like Marx, is great in part
> because
>>> he tried to
>>>> capture the laws of motion of real economic systems, not axiomatic
> models
>>> with
>>>> demonstrably false premises.
>>>>
>>>> Lange's reply that they never tried what I advocated is ridiculously
> weak
>>> given
>>>> what they did try produced every problem Hayek observed/predicted in
>>> spades.
>>>> You can believe that pigs will fly if you like. I will continue to
> insist
>>> with Heyek that
>>>> they have no wings.
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 12, 2012, at 7:39 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
>>>>> Thu Oct 11 07:51:12 PDT 2012
>>>>>
>>>>> [WS:] The existence of the mythical equilibrium is a red herring here,
>>>>> since as Ormerod demonstrated in his book "Death of Economics"
>>>>> multiple equilibria can be calculated in sufficiently complex system.
>>>>> The crux of Lange's argument was that planners do not need to know
>>>>> more than private capitalists, as both in real life proceed through
>>>>> the process of trials and errors to adjust their prices. So that
>>>>> undercuts the supposed omniscience required in planning but not
>>>>> private capitalism - in fact neither requires it to improve
>>>>> efficienc
>>>>> Lange argued that both planning and capitalism are on equal footing in
>>>>> this respect. What makes planning superior is the planning ability to
>>>>> overcome constraints imposed by private ownership of property, which
>>>>> leads to either periodical crises or equilibria skewed away from
>>>>> optimum toward consumption of the rich. I do not think that this
>>>>> argument can be dismissed that easily.
>>>>>
>>>>> As far as the price mechanisms under planning postulated by Lange -
>>>>> they were either not implemented or if they were, they were later
>>>>> circumvented by political and social mechanisms (informal economy,
>>>>> etc.) So as Lange aptly observed, the reasons of the central planning
>>>>> "failure" lie not in planning but in sociology and politics.
>>>>>
>>>>> Alas, there is one thing that is not considered in these arguments -
>>>>> the capacity to externalize costs. That capacity is much greater in
>>>>> capitalism - under which private firms can not only dump costs on they
>>>>> public sector in their own countries, but also on other countries
>>>>> thanks to imperialism. In planning systems, the capacity for cost
>>>>> externalization was pretty much non-existent. First, the public
>>>>> ownership of the means of production meant that public sector would
>>>>> have to externalize to itself, which defeats the purpose. Second, the
>>>>> planned economies lacked the capacity to externalize on other
>>>>> countries because they were not imperialist (EE) or because their
>>>>> imperialism had strategic rather than economic nature - i.e. its goal
>>>>> was to maintain political influence against the west, rather than
>>>>> economic exploitation. In other words, while western imperialists
>>>>> externalized their costs on their satellites, Russian imperialists
>>>>> absorbed the costs of satellites to maintain their allegiance.
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Wojtek
>>>>>
>>>>> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
>>>>>
>>>>> ^^^^^^^
>>>>> CB: I would to identify with Comrade Wojtek's remarks . Soviet Union
>>>>> far from an evil empire was an anti-imperialist system
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