Re: Finishing the debate

[JKSCHW@xxxxxxx]

Since we do not seem to be able to communicate, I am dropping the subject. A final explanatory word:

1. The Soviet Union "failed" years before it collapsed. It had promised a better alternative to advanced capitalsim and failed to deliver. It would have failed had it not fallen and if it still existed.

2. I offered what I considered to be evidence and arguments that the problems with Soviet planning were due to planning and not to lack of democracy. These were three in main: (a) the fact that the Hayek calculation arguments predict exactly the problems that happemned with Soviet planning, and those arguments do not depend on lack of democracy as a premise; (b) as a corollary, the argument that democracy woukd make the planning problem worse, because the planning system could not handle information adequately, and democracy would, ex hypothesi, increasre thea mount of information to be handled; (c) the empirical fact that Soviet planners themselves saw that the system was plagued with the calculations problem--not necessarily so called, as many of them never heard of Hayek; this is easily confirmed if you refer to any study of Soviet planning, e.g., Michael Ellson's Socialist Planning, 2d ed., Abram Bergson, Soviet Planning; Ed Hewett, Reforming the Soviet Economy. Apparently!
!
 you consider tese arguments not be arguments. OK, we don't have the same conception of what counts as an argument.

I am done here.

--jks

In a message dated Sun, 23 Jul 2000 10:16:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

<< Let me see if I understand you correctly, Justin.

I got the following assertions distilled from year earlier notes.
Planning works for an underdeveloped country.  The Soviet Union did not
fail because of planning, but it could not have kept up with the West.

I mentioned earlier that I believed that the Soviet Union grew faster
than the United States in all years except when it was being invaded.

Jim Devine has been repeating what many of us believe that the planning
in the Soviet Union, to the extent that it was deficient, failed because
of an absence of democratic input into the plan.

You argue that the problem was planning per se.

You have no evidence to refute what Jim said.  He has none that can
refute your perspective.  What we have are just different
interpretations of the same phenomenon.

Merely to repeat that the Soviet Union failed because of planning
doesn't get us anywhere.  Just because nobody to my knowledge has become
convinced by your argument doesn't mean that they weren't listening,
anymore than your adherence to your own views proves that you weren't
listening.

Some people who have not responded to things that you wrote, just as you
haven't responded adequately to those people who brought up the
informational problems that Hayek ignored.

Please, unless we can cover some new ground let's drop the subject.

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

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

 >>