Economic Calculation Problem Debunked!??

@ Apfelstrudel

We are not finished yet :wink:

I don’t understand why such a background story does anything to help you to answer that. To show you why I want to make my point more clear. I hope you will reconsider and answer to this again. It really is not the right way of how Z is stating his opinion.

I think you understand the law of supply and demand. But to get sure and to state my argument completely I will give you a small example. A company which produces 1000 pcs/year of a good X is able to sell all at exact $100 each year. Now if the price was lowered to lets say $90 it could sell 1050 pcs. But if only 1000 pcs are produced you have a shortage. People who would want to buy this good can’t although they are ready to express their demand with the needed purchasing power. If lowered further and the amount produced kept at the same level, it will increase the amount of people who want and could technically buy it but can’t practically. They need to go home with empty hands. This is a shortage. The price is the factor that restrains demand until it matches supply.
→ If you don’t agree about this please comment clearly on it or confirm.

Now imagine the current situation of production on earth how it actually is. But we artificially assume that the production process and the income of people is fixed. Nothing has an effect on it inclusive the price system. All people like zombies go to work and produce as they do today, no matter what happens or changes. So there is no feedback what so ever on the production process.
Now we think of what would happen if all prices would be lowered until they vanished completely of all goods every day, and people could finally get everything free of charge. Please note that their needs/behaviour of consumption are normal, not zombie like. So they react on changing matters like prices. Lower prices will cause higher effective demand → which means we get a growing shortage with ever lower prices, since supply doesn’t change. It should be clear that storage racks in shops would become empty in ever shorter periods of time along with ever decreased prices every day. This counts for all goods and services! The pressure to hurry to the shop after work and get what you want and need increases also, since the time window becomes shorter and shorter. If prices are vanished completely people would already storm shops after work like wild animals, because if you are not there in time nothing is left for you! Finally there is nothing that restrains/ration consumption of anyone!
→ Again please tell me if you agree/understand my scenario or if something is not clear. Basically it is only applied law of supply and demand on a hypothetical situation with fixed production and income but normal consumption behavior of people in capitalism.

This scenario is technically already very close to ancom since people can take whatever they want without having to give anything in return. Also production and distribution are split up, they don’t have an effect on each other anymore. But we can alter the situation further and say that production runs exactly how you think it would. Your system also overcomes the ECP and makes perfect use of the given supply of resources. All your “planners” do perfect work and do not make grave mistakes.
Yet production is still restraint by resources and the current available technology of production, which is given by nature.
→ I hope up to this point you don’t have anything to disagree with if yes explain exactly what.

Now there are 3 ways for you to argue of why people would not storm the shops and empty shops in near zero time:
1: You argue that the perfect anarcho communist way of production would get out of the same resources and state of technology an extreme multiplication of goods/services produced so that all needs/demands by all people are fully saturated, and therefore no fear for not getting what you want can even arise.

2: The amount of produced goods/services will be about the same of what the capitalistic mode can produce. At least there is no way of complete saturation of all needs of all people. But people will exercise self-restraint to match the optimal but still finite supply and no “storming the shops” would occur.

3: The same as 2, but you have any other way of generally ration the given supply. If you do not ration people will take as much as they need (which is more as you think if they do not exercise self-restraint)! This means people who are too slow will get nothing at all!

Number 1 is clearly a lala land point. Number 2 involves a change of human nature and omniscience, also lala land. Leaves number 3 for you to explain.

Considered my above given scenario nearly all your questions you asked me are not making any sense, since your system already produces perfectly as the given resources and current technology allow it. Any shift in production would decrease a shortage in one area only to incease a bigger shortage in another area.

The only questions that remain to answer are:
How much do we have?: Bricks for 1 house
How much is needed?: 9 times the amount of bricks for houses demanded who are not available currently.
For what do they need it?: For houses

→ This kind of shortage will persist for nearly every good/service all the time with the results described above (and more if you take feebacks on the production process into account), except you believe in 1 or/and 2. So how do you ration?