Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hear, hear.

CB

>>> timework@xxxxxxxxx 07/13/00 09:48PM >>>
Or, if one wants to get even more rigorous about the contingency of the
Hayek-Mises critique of planning, one could go back to the feeble
1908 Baronial cornerstone upon which the whole papier-mache edifice is
constructed. Barone's calculus implicitly assumes (as does Mises') the
perfect commensurability of units of labour of a particular kind. What
this means in practice is if I currently work 8 hours a day and wish to
double my income doing the same kind of work, I simply work 16 hours a
day. Triple my income? No problem -- work around the clock.

The fact that duration and intensity of work are interdependent variables
displaces "price" from its ideal regulative function and thus has to be,
that is, MUST, be ignored by the Barone/Mises/Hayek critique of
planning. It is only by turning several billion blind eyes to the ubiquity
of price-fixing in the history of market economies can one even dream of
price as a neutral regulative principle. If prices aren't ALWAYS AND
EVERYWHERE ultimately fixed, who the heck is Alan Greenspan and what the
heck is he doing fixing the price of credit and worrying incessently about
the cost of labour?

But, you see, this particular critique of Barone/Mises/Hayek is
INADMISSIBLE -- must be incomprehensible -- because it is decisive. It
would shut down whole industries of Hayek chatterers, both pro and contra.

There's also an important partial truth to the Mises/Hayek critique of
planning: socialism cannot be calculated. That truth is partial in the
sense that it is simply part of a larger (and systematically
disregarded) critique that economy is itself beyond calculation.


Temps Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant