Re: Participatory Planning

[S8800034@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Dear Marlk,
thanks for the discussion of Fel'dman's sectoral divisions--I actually
found them harder to read than his subsequent equations(!), though
I believe I did get their gist.

In the equations, what they enabled him to do was to write two
differential equations, one for investment goods (loosely speaking),
the other for consumption goods, where the first one did not depend
on the second. The first coud be analytically solved, yielding a
pure exponential, which grew at the rate of reinvestment in that
sector. The second could also be solved (even more simply than the
first), yielding an exponential (related to the rate of growth of
the first sector) and a constant (the original level of consumption).

If he had taken account of the fact that such a division can't be
done in practice, then his two DEs would each have depended on each'
other. This could have led him in the direction of limit cycles,
etc., which (Barkley can correct me on this(?)) hadn't at that time
been discovered. In any case, his maths wouldn't have given the
impression--which I am sure is what it did--that a cornucopia of
consumer goods would eventually asrise from throwing all investment
at heavy industry and neglecting light.
Cheers,
Steve Keen