Justin, you, and to some extent Doug, have been asking for concrete
explanations of how planning would work. I don't see how market socialism
would work either. Seriously. The problem is that markets don't work
very well either. If you are dealing with what Sol Tax called penny
capitalism -- a small village economy -- markets work reasonably well in
achieving static efficiency, but buyond that ....
>
> In a message dated 7/15/00 3:45:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << reform capitalists a label
> -programme
> to suck in the gullible and naive >>
>
> Right. I am really a hired agent of the bourgeoisie, paid to sucker all 2000
> of you Marxists, who really worry the capitalist state. I defend market
> socialism this under a pen name, since the rest of my time I defend polluters
> and tobacco interests against the claims of those whom they have injured.
>
> Jesus Christ. If we don't learn that real arguments and objective facts will
> not duisappear in the face of magical incantations of orthodoxy, but require
> substantive responses and, if unavoidable, accommodation, we are even more
> toasted toast than we now appear.
>
> Suppose you are right that market socialism is impossible. That does not mean
> that I am wrong that planned socialism is impossible, or at any rate
> undesirable. Then, lacking a third alternative, socialism is impossible. So
> we would then be stuck with reform capitalism, if indeed we ciuld get the
> reform kind.
>
> Critics of market socialism who wish to avoid this result have a moral and
> intellectual obligation to explain how their planned alternative can avoid
> the problems I have been pressing. Put up or shut up, I say.
>
> --jks
>
>
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
