The question is: incentives for what. The Austrian argument that I accept
foicus not on incentives to work hard and avoid shirking, but on incentives
to gather accurate information. I think you overstte the importance of the
tactic dimension in Hayek: you are relying a lot on Polyani. I consider
myself a sort of Hayekian, and Hayek's theme was incentives to get accurate
information much more than inarticulable "how to" tacit knowledge. The
Hayekian point is that plans need accurate information, but pure planning
systems create incentives to generate inaccurate information. I am a
pragmatist and not a bigor about planning: we know empirically that some
things can be well planned--medicine, the military, utilities,
education--and maybe better than markets can do. Those things we should
plan. But we also know from experience that many things cannot be effective
planned,a nd I think Hayek was right about why not.
--jks
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.
>
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