So the argument is meaningless if it does not estabalish a priori that markets are
better than any kind of planning anywhere? Rubbish. Nonsense. That is a fast way of
not having to try to answer a very strong, empirically supported, theoretically deep
critique of a nonmarket economy. To see this, consider the answer: you say, the only
way to see if nonmarket alternatives will work is to try. But try what? You say,
planning. I say, look at the USSR. You say, but our planning will be democratic! I
say, that wpn't help (see what I have argued above). At this point you say, that's
meaningless, because otherwise planning would never work. No, say I, and Hayek: the
problem is that planning won't work outside a market framework, to give us the
information we need. An starting to feel like a proken record. I really do appreciate
Jim Divine's contribution, whicha t least comes to grips with real issues and offers
real arguments. --jks
In a message dated Mon, 17 Jul 2000 8:15:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Rod Hay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
<< In that case, the argument is meaningless. We can only know if alternatives to
markets can work if we try. Even then we can only know that that particular
experiment did not work, not that no institutional arrangement can work. If the
proposition is not general, it is merely an empirical hypothesis.
Rod
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>
> Hayek had a deep insight, and, like many peop;le with such an insight, went
> overboard with it. We might take it for what it is worth, while correcting
> for its overstatement. However, his main point was not that _nothing_ could
> be planned, but that _not everything_ could be planned. He was in fact a lot
> less ferocious about markets than a lot of his followers, A big U of Chicago
> Law School libertarian, Richard Epstein, recently took him to task for that
> in a piece in the U Md. L. Rev. My poiint too is that planning cannot
> tiotally or largely displace markets, not that it cannot be used where
> experience shows it works. --jks
--
Rod Hay
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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