Additionally, why is necessary to have an “intellectual division of labour” among entrepeneurs if all the pertinent information can be coalated and processed by the central planner? The task of guiding the means of production only needs to be divided among competing entrepeneurs because of the practical problems of coalating and processing all that data centrally (which is essentially Hayek’s argument), right?
Afterall, competing entrepeneurs are merely in disagreement about how best to serve the consuemers. And if how best to serve the consumers can be worked out emperically through trial and error, it should be deducible how the factors of production are to be distributed.
Herein lies the consequentialist line which stains Hayekian though. The information itself is generated by antecedent human valuations and actions and if there is no competition in that any information will be deficient. Also who decides what “pertinant” information is expect a human actor? Hayek seemed to be believe that prices reflected the given information in contrast to Mises who thought it was entrepeneurs expection of future events that determined prices.
But as Rothbard shows a monopolist will charge a higher price or have a less good quality product than a free market would produce.
Given that we’re still working with your market socialist example would the competing assocaitions be able to put the others out of business so to speak? So is it possible for one association to come and control all the resources? And if so how do new assocaition come into existence?
How would the economic commander know if his decisions are right or wrong, according to the values of the society? There’s no way, he will be simply moving, assigning, producing and distributing goods, with no feedback whatsoever.
In my humble opinion, the Hayekian, and Misean views that you are discussing here are not mutually exclusive, and are merely explaining the scenario through different perspective. With the Hayekian perspective, there is an emphasis on the utilization of knowledge in society while in the Misean one it is from the pespective of action, and its well-spring: valuation. To dismiss the Hayekian view because it does not focus on action itself would be a tragic squandering of the ability of the Austrian schoo to explain knowledge in human society.
What if we don’t care about what the consumers want. If the state simply decides what the consumers “need”, that it evaluates only the ends the state wants to achieve and the people are just to be given the basics for what they need to survive without any regard for what they think, is the calculation problem applicable?
In other words, does it matter that there is only one planner if it is only the ends of the state that are strived towards? If the state isn’t trying to satisfy the many, disperate ends of the consumers, is a market necessary?
Not sure why Taylor is mentioned over and over since Misesians have dealt with his contentions, and yes, the fact that we don’t live in a world of “Walrasian” equations is a strong theoretical case against socialism, and it still doesn’t address the fact that capital goods themselves need to be can be allocated in multifarious ways - without ownership in them Mises argues any valuation assigned will be utterly arbitrary and fail to put them to their optimal uses. Walrasian equations only address the consumer end of the problem…
When economic calculation is spoken of it is with reference to consumer wants. Socialists engaging in the debate don’t challenge this, because it’d be tantamount to admitting that socialism must remould consumers in order for it to meet their needs, and that it can only do so by steamrolling them out. Not much of a case for all but its most dictatorial forms…
Actually, many socialists do argue precisely that. If the central planner is only concerned with the consumer’s “needs” and that the central planner dictates what those needs are, then it does not need to care about the consumer’s subjective evaluation of the end result.
Socialists don’t challenge this because they usually stick to the LTV. If an objective value of goods really existed, socialism would provide consumer with the most valuable goods. When Mises tried to refute socialism, he said that they couldn’t plan the economic production without market signals. Then, socialists replied with market socialism, about which Mises said that now they can calculate, but they are still ignoring other issues, like entrepreneurship and sound market signals for capital goods. I think he was close to the point; the real idea behind the impossibility of socialism lies in the idea of the lack of private property. Socialism is like a huge monopolistic enterprise, without any incentives and feedback signals or responses from the market. It’s guided by an individual (or a group of individuals, but it’s the same), so everyone act according to the guide will; everything that happens inside (for example, internal trade, purchases, sales) it’s more like a game, without any economic value, as the actions of managers are not constrained by the other “market” actors.