Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> JKSCHW@xxxxxxx 07/13/00 11:29PM >>>
I guess I do not see the force of this objection. As I see it, the key point
of the Mises-Hayek line of thought, and I follow Hayek more than Mises, I
should explain, is that there cannot a be universal mind that can grasp all
the information we need about the needs people have, the resources we have to
meet them, and the various means that we might employ to geyta  match,
particularly as the future is hard to know.

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CB: Why a universal mind ? Why not numerous planning minds that find out the needs people have in little bits and slices like the entrepreneurs ? and then collect them all in a collective "mind " ?

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Markets address this problem by creating incentives for entrepreneurs to find
out these things in little bits, focusing on narrow slices of them, while the
operatioon of the market provides some degree of coordination among their
various activities. There is no comparable incentive in planningl indeed, the
incentive in planning is to give misinformation, to overstate your needs and
understate your resources,s o you can better meet your plan targets. Markets
punish waste and inefficiency because if you use more resources or time than
your competitors, you will have a harder time staying in business unless you
find out how to improve. There is no comparable incentive in planning,w here
politics means that inefficient enterprises are kept afloat.

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CB: This seems to ignore the enormous historical evidence that markets also create incentives for entrepreneurs to be wasteful and inefficient at the expense of others, as when they leave all their dirty work for governments to do or clean up, or ruin the health of workers, or create a surplus population etc.  Also, entrepreneurs have incentives to create needs as well as "find them out" . The statement that "the market provides some degree of coordination among their (entrepreneur's) various activities" seems to be sneaking in through the back door a universal mind coordinating the whole. "Coordination" is centralization.  How does the market do this , and why does it have to be unconscious and unplanned ?