Peter
"Forstater, Mathew" wrote:
aren't 'incentives' built in to goal-oriented activity? the 'incentive' is
realizing the goal(s). my understanding of Austrianism is that the issue of
'information' is not that it exists out there but we have no incentive to gather
it, but that it is not so easily accessible, and that is where discovery,
interpretation, etc. come in. i do not accept the notion that prices are
"information repositories" in the sense sometimes put forward, but even if we do
the "hermeneutic insight" (actually in the case of Austrian economics
historically, it should be the "phenomenological sociological insight" as Schutz
is the important figure, not Gadamer) is that the meaning of a price change is
not immediately apparent, but needs to be understood, which requires
interpretation, especially consideration of the context of the price change
(much in the same way that the meaning of a word is not always immediately
apparent and needs to be interpreted in its context, in other words, prices are
"signs"). I recommend Ebeling's work on the subtle differences between Hayek,
Lachmann, and others on this--see his chapter in the Kirzner edited Lachmann
festschrift (or memorial, I forget which).polanyi influenced hayek. polanyi is where hayek took the notion of "spontaneous
order" (and polanyi himself developed the idea out of discussions with adolph
lowe, who developed his own related but different idea of "spontaneous
conformity"). of course, the idea of unintended consequences goes back much
farther, in this context to at least the scottish enlightenment ("of human
action, but not of human design"). if we are not just interested in the history
of thought here, but in the possibilities of an alternative political economy,
then I think we should be thinking about exploring the possibilities for
consciously enhancing creative discovery and imaginative problem solving in BOTH
SPONTANEOUS AND DESIGNED ASSOCIATIONS (I prefer "associations" to
"orders"--there's plenty of disorder), in other words asking the question: MUST
SPONTANEOUS ORDER BE UNINTENDED (AND CAN PLANNING BE IMAGINATIVE AS WELL AS
INTENTIONAL)? These are the issues I have been grappling with a number of
publications and presentations over the last several years (cites for anyone
interested). Also, have you seen Ted Burczak's work??? There is also an
interesting article by Robin Blackburn 1991 in NLR where he notes that the
Austrian ideas about dispersed knowledge can be used to argue that only workers
and not capitalists could effectively manage production. Apparently Pat Devine
(any relation?) and one of his students have been looking at some of this
(that's the work Hodgson refers to and disagrees with). I have heard good things
about Sciabarra's book, but I haven't read it, and I know Prychitko has been
playing around with some related ideas but I haven't kept up on it.
