Max Sawicky wrote,
>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.
Agreed. That is, with "no apparent disabling results" aside from the
corruptibility of institutions. Ellsberg described why this might be so --
although not in such perjorative terms.
In his analysis, the heightened ambiguity of any departure from current
strategy leads to an inherent conservativism of decision making even when
current strategies are known to have a high risk of failure. Proverbially,
this effect is referred to as "better the devil we know than the devil we
don't know" or the bureaucratic (social democratic?) maxim that it is better
to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
>People could mediate in a planning structure.
>You're driving me to the other side of this
>argument.
I agree that people could mediate in a planning structure. It's quite
possible I might be trying to drive you to the other side of this argument
-- first by agreeing with you, then by pointing out an aspect of "our"
mutual position that you find uncomfortable. It's my contention that neither
"side" can take comfort in the mechanics of their own arguments. As I keep
repeating and repeating "Only in mediocre art does life unfold as fate."
I take it that you reject both comprehensive plans and free markets as
idealizations and in this regard I agree with you. What's not clear is
whether you then consider some mix of regulation and market allocation as
adequate. I don't.
>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).
So it's definitely the egg then that comes first? Or are you saying it's the
chicken? Look, Max, individuals don't drop from the sky; their diverse
motives are as much an outcome of the characteristics of language (including
information) as they are an input to the system. This is an idea so trite
that even that famous pomo-tista, Sir Winston Churchill, used it: "We make
our buildings, then our buildings make us."
We also make our utopias and our utopias make us.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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