Re: Occam's Razor

[BILL MITCHELL <ECWFM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Herb replied to my argument that he was straddling paradigms with:

>	You are reading stuff into my statements that aren't there,
>Bill. I don't accept the equity-efficiency trade-off (Sam and I have
>written lots of stuff on this recently), and there is no such
>principle in game theoretic models of the economy. And 'reciprocity'
>doesn't mean equality or equal trades or anything of the kind.
>Reciprocal altruism means one agent helps another (or refrains from
>hurting another) so long as the other returns the action.

Herb, here is what you said to about the things you want to explain, just to
refresh the list and which elicited my reaction.

>relevant to this. The things I want to 'explain' are (a) what
>determines the organization of production; (b) to what extent to
>>issues of efficiency as opposed to distribution come into play in this
>>determination? (c) are there market failure that lead to the
>>suppression of forms of firms that are efficient but not compatible
>>with the current rules of the game in market economies? (d) are there
>>new rules of the game that would allow other forms of association in
>>production to emerge without thereby reducing productivity or
>>efficiency? Etc. Reciprocal altruism is all I believe is necessary to
>>address these questions fruitfully.

Now i do not want to trip up on a semantic issue but i read the words like
"issues of efficiency _as opposed_ [my emphasis] to distribution....."

to mean that you see some sort of trade-off or separability b/tw eff. and
distn. so you just cannot say you do not believe in an eff./distn. distinction
as an answer to my claim that capitalism is a specific type of production
system. the pursuit of efficiency is not a black box matter of technical
coefficients and cost functions. rather it is first and foremost a matter of
class power and is inextricably tied in with the distributional issue.
efficiency, which i prefer to call capitalist efficiency to distance it from
the superficial and incorrect concept in orthodox economics, is about
distribution. an efficient capitalist system delivers surplus value in a
realised form (profits) at such a rate that the capitalists are content to
continue to invest and pursue capital accumulation to widen and deepen their
power over labour. it might be at high wages or low wages depending on the
historical development of the economy in question.

efficiency requires a capitalist education system to prepare workers for the
fetishism of heirarchy and to believe in individual attainment and competition
among their own class. to accept ethnic and gender and other "personal"
distinctions which hide the class association. I read a great account of this
in a book called "Schooling in capitalist america" once upon a time.

reciprocal relations do not come into this b/c when it comes down to it, the
workers work for nothing and do not know it b/c the wage form disguises it. If
you want to say you interested in reciprocity (so defined above) then i think
you are falling short of any sort of explanation. so you can account for
unequal trades as long as someone is stupid enough to let another take more
from a deal than they get themselves, for whatever reason. but you cannot
account in this framework for a class of people who are not really able to make
a decision as to whether they will not hurt someone else in response to the
other class of people's action, b/c the dynamics of the capitalist system work
intensively to hide the real content of the relationships from the former
class.

workers are educated and conditioned to believe in the myth of the wage form.
so they make decisions at a superficial level which are contrary to the real
essence of their status. ask a worker - would you work for nothing every day?
and they would say, don't be stupid. and yet they do it day in and day out.
reciprocity is a sham in this sense. that is what i was getting to in response
to your assertions, Herb.


You also raised another interesting point which i would like to follow up.

>	I never said that market processes lead to Pareto efficiency.


The advantage for the orthodox school of tying down their whole scheme with
pareto efficiency and optimality is that they can say this system or that
system is so such, in relation to our benchmark of P-O. it allows qualitative
statements to be made and market outcomes to be compared as best, not as good
and bad etc. and of-course, the basis of the paradigm is that allocation is best
if a free market is the norm. This allows them to make missionary statements
about how society should be organised and all the shit we have had to put up
with.

Now you are advocating markets as a system of allocation. But Herb you have
lost the authority of P-O and all that goes with it. You are unable to compare
the market outcome with anything else. Of-course, the authority of P-O is a
sham. but it has been a powerful sham. if you say P-O does not come from market
processes then how can you be sure that they are the way to go. Again you want
some of the paradigm but are not prepared to accept the bits that at least tie
it together in some sort of logical manner. unacceptable but logical.

that will do for now. its a nice discussion at any rate Herb. and i have read
Democracy and Capitalism twice and remain unconvinced.

kind regards
bill
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