Psychological sophistry. You can’t read anyone’s mind.
I am not reading people’s minds, I am reading their actions.
If producers could decide what to produce on a charitable basis, there would not be an economic calculation problem and socialism would have succeeded.
Really? In a world without IP people demonstrate through action that they prefer a particular capital/goods production structure. You’re speculating that there’s another, more subjectively desirable configuration that can come about if we have IP law. You’re speculating about people’s values in a hypothetical alternate universe and then aggregating them.
Socialism is the absence of all prices. Charity may not rely on monetary profit, but it calculates in psychological profit.
I can’t believe you are still promoting this artificial distinction. All producers are consumers and all consumers are producers. To believe otherwise is to reject Say’s Law.
I think you’ll find this article on the calculation debate interesting.http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae10_4_1.pdf
Interesting, yes, but very long. What part responds to this thread? The one about managerial roles not being substitutes for entrepreneurs?
The part I orginally qouted from you. The main thrust of the argument is that calculation debate argument rather than resting on the existing or non-existence of monetary prices it rests on the inherent superiority of competition contra monopoly. So producers could be entirely rational in their resource allocation even if they did it on a charitable basis providing it was done in a competitive environment.
The part I orginally qouted from you. The main thrust of the argument is that calculation debate argument rather than resting on the existing or non-existence of monetary prices it rests on the inherent superiority of competition contra monopoly. So charities could be entirely rational in their resource allocation without the existence of monetary prices.
You misread the article. Monetary prices are still a necessary, yet insufficient, condition for proper economic calculation, otherwise the socialists would not have bothered with them at all.
Charities are economic calculators in the sense that they compete for donors. However, it is not the consumers of the charities’ goods that determine what is to be produced. (That would work, in fact, exactly like a socialist market economy.)
I haven’t read the article for a while although I have read a few times. What you are outlining above is a contingent practice which depends on the complexity of the economy which one cannot actually determine a priori. Now indeed it is the case that socialists found the use of monetary prices useful in their economies although it does not follow that they were necessary. Supposing Crusoe is the sole man on the Anarcho-Capitalist Island- is his calculations a priori irrational due to the absence of monetary prices? Further you imply that you ought to use moentary prices to do proper calculation which is simply a vaue judgement.
You make a false dichotomy here. It is economic actors, producer and consumer, who decide what will be produced. If I am willing and able to purchase a weapon that kills all of the worlds socialists it will not come into existence if the factor owners believe such a creation to be immoral.
Supposing Crusoe is the sole man on the Anarcho-Capitalist Island- is his calculations a priori irrational due to the absence of monetary prices?
As Machaj points out, there is no problem of economic calculation in a single-man economy.
You make a false dichotomy here. It is economic actors, producer and consumer, who decide what will be produced. If I am willing and able to purchase a weapon that kills all of the worlds socialists it will not come into existence if the factor owners believe such a creation to be immoral.
You make no dichotomy between producers and consumers at all. How can a division of labor exist without this distinction?
Already covered numerous times.
Therefore it follows that there is no calculation problem in any economy if it is entirely privately owned. Suppose I owned the whole world completely legitimately, would there be a calculation problem?
I do but I realise that individuals exists and when they act they exhibit producer or consumer actions. In fact it is impossible for one to be purely a consumer or producer: your body produces energy which you also consume to stay alive.
Therefore it follows that there is no calculation problem in any economy if it is entirely privately owned. Suppose I owned the whole world completely legitimately, would there be a calculation problem?
Yes, the rest of the world would have no means to buy anything from you to consume and survive.
I do but I realise that individuals exists and when they act they exhibit producer or consumer actions. In fact it is impossible for one to be purely a consumer or producer: your body produces energy which you also consume to stay alive.
That is not the point. In any specific market producers and consumers are different.
Unless they had all signed themselves into voluntary servitude, I could pay them and they could buy goods from me. Prices are based on subjective value judgements- it is just easy to see them in a single man or world owner economy. The problem arises when force is threatened and a monopoly arise which produces systematic errors as aopposed to the unsystematic errors of the competitive system.
Only in the theoretical sense of a market. Any man in any position in the real world will act both as a consumer and producer.
Unless they had all signed themselves into voluntary servitude, I could pay them and they could buy goods from me.
How would you decide how much to pay them? It would be purely arbitrary.
As are prices created by different owners of factors of production. You cannot agree with subjective value theory and the idea that there are non-arbitrary, wrong and right prices. You can only do this when the price deviates from the values determined by the economic actors; otherwise known as violence and the systematic form, monopoly.
As are prices created by different owners of factors of production. You cannot agree with subjective value theory and the idea that there are non-arbitrary, wrong and right prices.
You have no understanding of the economic calculation problem.
I mean, look at the title of this thread. You don’t see the giants of economic thought with book titles like “The Ultimate Case for Free Markets”. Not even Ayn Rand was so arrogant. You know you’ve found a bad argument when someone prefaces themselves with “Okay guys this is irrefutable” and then types up 10 pages.
[p.s. still waiting on the re]
It’s not just a bad argument. There hasn’t been one solid point made by the OP thus far into the thread. In fact, it’s mostly been other Austrian laymen correcting his methodological errors.
C’mon, be honest. Yes, she was.
I mean, look at the title of this thread. You don’t see the giants of economic thought with book titles like “The Ultimate Case for Free Markets”.
http://www.hanshoppe.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/hoppe_ult_just_liberty.pdf
I am just extending this argument to more precise forms of property.