Re: Re: Re: summary of calculationdebate

[Rob Schaap <carob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Bill,

I apologise in advance for my rambling work avoidance style ... but let's
assume a 'mixed economy / market socialism' approach to social
transformation - and try to keep it somewhere near the parameters of
conceivable political platforms.

>Two things strike me: changes in the economy, and practicalities.
>
>Changes in the economy: how does a centrally planned system introduce/allow
to
>be introduced innovative industries? Innovation tends to be high risk -
can't be
>sure about inputs until some experience is accumulated; and can't be sure
of
>people buying the product. It would seem likely that a planned economy
would
>find it difficult to not only accomodate but encourage such behaviour.

Well, innovation has the same character wherever it is to happen.  In Oz,
what R&D there is (and there is precious little), is mostly done in the
public sector - Oz business won't touch it unless they get whopping tax
breaks, and then it's mostly market research anyway.  So R&D costs are
pretty directly socialised, and risk diminished by market research ('demand
management' as JKG called it) itself done at public expense.  All I'd be
adding to that would be socialising the profits a little.  And the
difference between public awareness and public manipulation would be
stressed, too - an awful lot of what we call advertising and marketing just
has to go (as those WorldCom stats show, telecom network access would cost
nary a penny but for Veblenesque marketer-opportunists coming in to take
advantage of useless competition and duplication).

A self-controlling sector within a market socialism context would have some
interest in innovation.  Firstly, innovative technique would diminish
aggregate necessary work time.  Innovation in the commodities themselves
would be recommended by cross-sectoral competition (ie. whatever economists
call it when people, say, go for a holiday instead of buy a digital TV), by
ecological considerations (the ecology being a boat we're all in), by vying
for investment funds (I'm envisaging a single public investment mechanism,
charged with, inter alia, 'picking winners' - which markets have been doing
appallingly on Wall St of late, after all), by public acclaim (reckon we can
never get enough of that stuff - Hegel's talk of 'recognition' seems closer
to the mark than Stalin's of 'bourgeois ego'), by human curiosity (when
Francis Bacon caught his death freezing chooks, he wasn't doing it for
money), and by giving a toss about the wider community (which we all insist
on maintaining and instilling in our kids, even though our current system of
material punishments and rewards militates against it) etc.

The thing is, I admit, that there's a lot of evidence about that the
innovator doesn't do as well, as the early adopters, for the reasons you
enumerate.  If a market we're going to have, a once-off reward *to the
company or sectoral collective* from the public investment bureau could help
(we don't want to go the way of IP rights, as that's how capitalism stifles
its own innovatory tendencies, no?).  That way, even the homo economicus
that abides in (hopefully) transitional humanity will always put aside some
of its resources to R&D and innovation.

>Practicalities: with literally hundreds of thousands (millions?) of
different
>products, how are all those prices conveyed to those who need them, in good
>time; how are they negotiated with those affected (I am sure in practice it
is
>not a simply technical exercise: if reductions are indicated, the producer
will
>argue; if increases are indicated the buyer will argue); how are they
enforced?

I reckon we're talking millions, but I don't think we'd suffer too much from
a little less 'choice'.  My consumerism, such as it is, is a product of
1970s Tasmania, when there was but one beer on tap, one type of cheese and
tomato toasted sandwich, one type of meat pie, one type of salt and vinegar
crisp (called 'chips' here, but I never got used to that either) and one
commerciual TV station.  Had no sense of going without whatsoever.  In fact,
the one instance of choice life did proffer the young Tasmanian male
consumer, whether to beggar oneself on a Ford Falcon or a GM Holden
Kingswood, was terrible, as friends would be lost whichever way you went (I
had an old Holden in Tassie for social reasons, and couldn't get the old
Falcon I'd always guiltily wanted till I moved to the mainland - a
four-cylinder car was, of course, a public admission of homosexuality; not
an option in 1970s Tassie - and not to get a car at all was to condemn
oneself to a life of lonely onanism).  Nothing there would come as a
surprise to a Kiwi, would it?

So I'd be happy for a bit of rational choice reduction on the part of the
government.

As for the consumer's state of information - well we'd still have the net -
and everyone would have access to it (like they do in Singapore, and they're
soon going to have in Sweden).  And there's nothing wrong with a sound
central prices policy with respect to staple goods either, is there?
Especially now that the centre has the net and all that computing power
available to it.  And, while we're at it, give the government a monopoly
over transport & communications infrastructure, health care, education,
credit/investment, and fossil fuels, too.  All that stuff has either already
proved itself in a mixed economy context, or recommends itself in light of
Keynesian or environmental logic.  Same with hefty capital gains and death
taxes, I reckon.  That should avoid the spectre of capitalist dynasties
getting big enough to capture the political process.

>At times of crisis (such as war, dire poverty, revolution), such things
will be
>more easily accepted. What about in good times?

I reckon I resent not having an AU Falcon XR6 because people I know, no more
worthy than I, do have 'em.  Reckon I'd be happier with what I had if that's
what others had.  Reckon I'd be prepared to swop a fair bit for a little
respect in the workplace, easier work loads, a secure healthcare environment
and an equitable education system for my little ones, a sense of political
relevance, and a sense that humanity was not ever on a razor's edge, the
disappearance of ads, and, of course, the European Nations Cup on
free-to-air telly!

>Rob seems to be suggesting we should focus planning on a subset of critical
>products: i.e. a mixed planned and market economy? That reduces the size of
the
>problem, but probably intensifies some of the problems above, doesn't it?

Well, you'd have to be careful, but a mixed economy is, I think, inevitable.
 The capitalist world (and not just during times of war) has a history full
of evidence we could study to find out where to draw the line in the sand
between central planning and price mechanism.  I reckon we could draw it
where I've been drawing it without offending the lessons of experience and
the sensibilities of an indignant but nervous electorate too much, doncha
reckon?  The one item of Engels's account of dialectics that comes to mind
here is that bit about quantity becoming quality.  Questions come to mind
like: "How far along this road do you go before 'mixed economy capitalism'
becomes 'market socialism'?" and  "How capacious, fast and reliable must
computing become before the informational qualities of the fabled price
mechanism become completely eclipsed?"

Yours in avoiding lecture-writing,
Rob.