Comments on: Socialism — Bound To Work, When Properly Tried?

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:00:34 +0000

Tim,

No argument here. I am not an an-cap, because while I think the situation would be ideal IF it worked, I don’t agree that it would have the stability necessary to remain better than a minarchist state.

By: Timothy West

Timothy West — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:18:04 +0000

The difficulty with anarcho-’whateverism’, and other types of ‘true’ libertarianism such as the non-aggression principle (aside from the obvious weakness of us never having seen it work properly) is the inherent weakness of its proponents to show that it *could* work, even hypothetically.

there ya go. Fixed it for you. Not much difference. There’s no evidence to suggest that any ‘pure’ economic theorum works. liberty based societies work better than others, but insisting that therefore, that 100% non coercion would be even better, is simpleminded as long as we do have governance in place that the LP has to deal with.

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:56:05 +0000

Ludwig,

I completely agree. Great point.

By: Ludwig

Ludwig — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:44:48 +0000

It’s true what you say that officials are also subject to incentives, and that is indeed part of the reason socialism fails. But I think the real problem is that efficient central planning is simply not possible. Socialism destroys price data, which means that the central planners are shooting in the dark for the most part. Prices are determined by who wants how many of what how badly. The best way to “calculate” prices is to put things in a store and see whether people buy them. If they buy them up quickly, your price is too low (becuase you underestimated how much people wanted them); if they don’t buy them, either your product is crap, or the price is too high. Capitalism has the virtue of keeping prices honest. It enforces reality. Under Socialism people are allowed to dream about what prices should be – but the truth is that prices just are what they are. People either want/need things or they don’t – and they either have enough things to trade for the things they want/need, or they don’t. The great irony of Socialism is that, for all its jabbering about the efficiency gains of central planning, it shoots itself in the foot by destroying the information (real prices) that is the absolute sine qua non of REAL planning. And that is why Capitalist economies are ultimately better “planned” (and therefore run better) than Socialist economies. True – Capitalist economies are not centrally planned – but they are planned all the same by all the individual businesses trying their best to maximize profit. These businesses has access to real price information, and thus are able to do their job more effectively.

I think this fact goes a lot further to explaining why Capitalism works better than the (indisputable) fact that the planners are themselves subject to incentives.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:56:15 +0000

The difficulty with Marxism (aside from the obvious weakness of us never having seen it work properly) is the inherent weakness of its proponents to show that it *could* work, even hypothetically.
What you find is that Marxist advocates must, as Marx himself did, radically distort data, ignore reality, and create a revolutionary *mindset* rather than a properly functioning government.
Marx’s own mother is credited with the wish that “Karl would accumulate capital, instead of just writing about it.”