Re: summary of calculationdebate

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Excellent, Rob.

Rob Schaap wrote:

> G'day Michael,
>
> You write:
>
> >The only advantage that the entrepeneur has over the planner
> >is that there are a lot of them rather than a single planner.
>
> Well, that, according to the price-mechanism theorists is one of two
> decisive differences.  The other being to do with the nature of motivation
> for entrepreneurial activity.

You are correct.

> The former could be addressed via some sort
> of decentralisation of economic power (the 'infantile' left communists had
> suggestions to make about this - if memory serves, Labour Commissar
> Shliapnikov wanted sectorally based economic management, based on the
> relevant trades unions - and Trotsky's wistful observation that the system
> of soviets was too underdeveloped at the time of the revolution includes
> some reference to such a system's potential for sectorally diversified
> management - incidentally,

Again, correct.

>
> What we have to remember, as many of you have, is that we're not pursuing
> the optimality Mises and Hayek saw immanent in their precious
> price-mechanism.  We don't see any evidence at all that it is anything like
> optimality in it, and shouldn't allow ourselves to be bullied into trying to
> concoct a system to match the system they claim exists.

Exactly.  I tried to make this point in a new book, Transcending the Economy.

> The bar is not set
> that high at all, in our benighted reality (to which Pen-pals are making too
> few references, for mine), and we shouldn't be afraid of a few Campari
> shortages if we can convincingly show ways of getting more grain to more
> Sierra Leoniam stomachs, more AZT to more Zambian bloodstreams, and more
> useful employment to more of Flint's unemployed.  I mean, when you take a
> five-second peek at the world, the priorities have a way of disclosing
> themselves rather starkly, no?  As for the danger of dictatorial
> nomenklatura; there too our current system does not offer any real
> alternative - they're just hidden behind tendentious definitions of freedom
> and democracy, is all.
>
> Let's change our point of view to thinkable structures and mechanisms to fix
> a few things that press today, rather than (as perhaps we're inclined to do
> as our particular and enviable beings mess around with our consciousnesses)
> build these castles in the air.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx