justin: I don't think the Austrians ever thought that equilibrium analysis
was possible or even a useful model. I certainly don't.
me: right! it was the *other* side (Lange-Lerner, etc.) that did think so!
justin: I think that planners can use tacit knowledge;
that plans work as well as they do, when they work, shows that they do.
mE: ok, well that was my original complaint against hodgson's book. he accepts
the austrian position that market participants have a monopoly on the tacit
dimension. your reply was that you accepted the austrian position. hence my
challenge.
justin: Whether plans offer as good sources gfor information, tacit and
otherwise,
for rational economic decisions, is another question. --jks
me: key word there is "rational". the problem with "rational planning" is not
the "planning" part, it is the "rational" part. of course, as i tried to point
out in the quotes i offered from Lachmann, Austrians are very interested in
"planning", just household, firm, individual plans, but not the planning of
other social groups--communities (unless privatized?), state, nation, etc.
i want to know what the logical reason is for permitting some social groups to
plan but not others. i thought the Austrian argument was that the successful
plan negotiates a terrain in which meaning is not always obvious, so
interpretation requires discovery which requires both tacit and explicit
knowledges, and tacit powers are denied agents of the state. if policymakers and
planners can draw on tacit powers than this is not the case, and we would be in
a situation in which these different spheres are not treated as so separate and
different, rather states, markets, and other settings are intersecting and
overlapping and there are probably some kinds of problems more conducive to
being solved through certain institutional mechanisms under certain conditions
and others through others or even combinations. but there would be no LOGICAL
reason for privileging market mechanisms a priori. and there would be no
justification for the dichotomous treatment of "markets" and "states."
but the key to your position may be revealed in your response to Peter's
question about alpert and hahnel: your focus on incentives. but then if that is
the case, the argument is not about what institutions are most conducive to
tacit knowing.
