> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tom Walker) > Subject: [PEN-L:10423] Re: more planning and democracy > The snare's there, but not in the post. Just because there's a radical > separation between language and reality doesn't mean there's no reality or > even that reality is "unknowable". The snare is in the presumed dichotomy > that *either* our ideas and language can perfectly correspond with reality > or the relationship must be entirely arbitrary. But there's a third > possibility, which just happens to be a fairly classical position -- in any > *meaningful* information, there is an irreducible residue of ambiguity. If > anything, I'd call that Cartesian rather than POMO-tista. A "residue of ambiguity" would not qualify in my book as an Achilles heel for planning. Such problems proliferate under capitalism with no apparent disabling results. This issue turns up in discussions of privatization and contracting. As often as not, contracts do not specify every jot and tittle of a transaction, yet such transactions go on nevertheless. At the same time, the alternative to contracting, namely bureaucracies whose operations are based on rules and monitoring, have plenty of faults of their own. There is no easy dichotomy between ambiguous organizational connections and clear-eyed contracting, or vice versa. > Not at all. No organization could function with an imperative for completely > accurate information. I taught a course in project management in which the Isn't this a straw man? > greatest anxiety among students is about having to "make up" some of the > information they report. Same thing when I was collecting statistics from > school principals: "How do I fill this in?" You just have to guess. "How do > I know what to guess?" You just have to guess and so on. > > I'll grant that if what I said made any sense, no organization could > function "all by itself" that is *without people to mediate the ambiguity*. > So, yes, "artificial intelligence" is a crock. People could mediate in a planning structure. You're driving me to the other side of this argument. I come back to the premise that the problem is not precision in information but the diverse individual motives underlying the transmission, processing of information, as well as the construction and implementation of instructions from third parties (e.g., the planners). As well there remains the complex task of calculation, computer-assisted or not. MBS ================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] Suite 1200 202-775-8810 (voice) 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions here do not necessarily represent the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===================================================
