Re: Participatory Planning

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Response to Mark Knell:
     Hayek certainly did pinpoint certain serious problems with
command socialist central planning.  But in a nonlinear dynamic
world of multiple equilibria (am I broken record or what?), his
evolutionarily self-organizing markets may be distinctly sub-
optimal by any measure, and not immune from "coordination failures,"
indeed are wide open to them.
     This remains the argument for _some_ kind of planning, whether
of the Cockshott-Cottrell participatory kind, or some more general
macro steering, or of investment, specifically of infrastructure or
in a more detailed manner.  There is no easy out here, as the
breakdowns and confusion in the "post-socialist" world show.  In my
opinion, Hayek "checked out" right at the moment of his "ideological
triumph" and before its hollowness would be fully revealed.
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University
PS:  We are in the midst of two foot snowstorm here (2/3 of a meter)
in the Shenandoah Valley, putting us ahead of Vermont as well as
Australia.  Everything is shut down for the nth time this winter.