Re: Identifying points of disagreement

[JKSCHW@xxxxxxx]

. > you bring up the capital goods problem for markets, which is not to the
point under the Schweickart model where new investment is planned.

 In terms of Hayek, investment is the key entrepreneurial activity.

You lose me here.

 >> If there is theology here, it is in the otricj attitudes of pro-planning
types--I except Jim again--who do not see that H has located a big problem,
and who forget who, at this stage of history, has the burden of proof.

 >Justin, we are not in court.  I don't see why one side of the other has the
burden of proof.  Nor do I think that proof are possible.

No, we are in the real world, even on the list, in AD 2000, a decade after
socialism has suffered a world-historic defeat from which it may not recover,
at a  time in which virtually no one outside a tiny handful of left wing
academics thinks that there is any alternative to not merely a market
ecoinomy, but a fully fledged capitalist one. Not possible? The burden of
proof, to make a case for socialism in the first place, and (for those who
swear by it) planning in the second, is so manifest that I do not know how
you can miss it. I really don't see it. You all can agree with each other
that planning os great and markets are stupid until your numbers dwindle to
the point where you have heard all your own lines so many times that even you
are bored, but if you hope to make a difference outside that narrowing
circle, it is time to recognize that there is a burden of proof, and it is on
you, and on us.

 >> Do markets work in practice? Ask the Old Man: "The bourgeoisie, in scarce
one hundred years. . . . "

 >Yes, but Marx located the key raw material as slave-grown cotton.  How much
the bourgeoisie achieved by market forces and how much by pure force is a
matter of debate.  Marx also thought that the bourgeoisie would not be able
to accomplish much more -- which was the point of the work you are citing.

Sure, although I think he was wrong about that. Still is. We could do better,
but they are far from at the end of their tether. It is true that how much of
capitalist progress is due to makets is up to debate. But what else would you
attribute it to? Private ownership? That may add some, insofar as it gives
owners an incentive to use resources intensively, but in a corporate world,
that incentive is diluted. Wage labor? To be sure, the source of most or all
"value," but workers don't make the decisions. Then to what except markets is
due the rest of the credit? To nature?

> > That is a straw man reply. The Hayek problem holds for a  central
planning board or collection of such boards. And the problem does not apply
only to a single central planner, which is an argumentative convenience, but
to a system of noinmarket authoritativea llocation that proceeds by way of
targets. It asks: what are the incentives in the system to produce the useful
knowledge that entrepreneurs gather in a market system? Only Jim has started
to try to answer this question in a serious way. I set aside Charles' answer
that under socialism we will be totally different in motivation.

 >If a planner were intentionally stupid and just listed targets without
taking feedback, you would be correct.

See my arguments about the accuracy of the feedback you can expect. Jim, do
you see why I repeat myself?

 >> OK, I'm just an idiot engaged in unproductive discussion.

 >I disagree with the first part of the statement and agree with the second.

I am beginning to think the discussion is unproductive. Obviously I am not
communicating.

--jks