Comments on: Socialist Calculation

By: bob

bob — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:57:12 +0000

i don’t see your point. even with the direct foreign aid and capitalist prices to use to plan production, the USSR still fell.

By: bob

bob — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:47:49 +0000

economy is efficient production. planning is not.

By: michael

michael — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:22:08 +0000

Mex: It would be a rare planner who claimed that he knew “everything”. I think they all understand that if you wait until you know everything, you’ll never get around to executing a plan. And that there comes a time for action, so that ready or not, when that time comes you have to do the best with whatever you’ve got.

That carries over into our own lives. Do you actually have no plan? Do you go into every new day just on a wing and a prayer, ready to be surprised by anything that crops up along your way? Or does your life have some overall design to it, some directionality?

By: error

error — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:23:05 +0000

Forget some facts in História of Soviet Union:

1) until 1921, Soviet Union was attacked by more than 1 dozen countries (including powers western, France, United States…).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

2) After Second World War, until 1980s, Soviet Union was blocked could not do exchanges with West. Search on Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod pipeline and see how the United States attempted embargo soviet transaction with western Europe.

By: error

error — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:21:58 +0000

Which reads “ony”, is “only”.

By: foolishness because...

foolishness because... — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 16:20:00 +0000

Foolishness because Mises believed that planning is not economy. Foolishness because he believed that outside capitalism not there Economy. Foolishness because their Theory is contradictory and did not know explain on Soviet experience, saying ony that “russians are russians”.

By: Allen Weingarten

Allen Weingarten — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:43:41 +0000

VC, I submit that that the government, and in particular the Supreme Court, was never given the delegated powers to impose their moral view. I do not deny, but affirm the corruption of our interventionist government. My position is opposed to arbitrary authority, and also to anarchism. Rather I hold to the Declaration of Independence, where the proper role of government is to defend our rights.

By: vc

vc — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:53:48 +0000

@Allen
That is a fair question. However, would you consider a system in which the whim of the majority of only 9 people out of 300 million can change abortion from an unalienable right into murder (or vice versa) a framework at all?
Or is it simply an appeal to arbitrary authority based on a monopoly of force?

By: Allen Weingarten

Allen Weingarten — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 10:25:13 +0000

Franklin, anarchists have generally advocated separate legal systems. For example, they reject Ayn Rand’s arguments about a conflict between those who accept the authority of government A, with those who accept the authority of government B. However, if anarchism accepts a common legal framework, and the use of force to protect it, then it concurs with our Constitution.

Do you really believe that a legal system wherein abortion constitutes murder, and where another views it as an inalienable right, “do not necessarily imply competing frameworks”?

By: michael

michael — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:07:01 +0000

It’s not just George Reisman. Every historian says it. The Soviet Union was saved on at least two occasions by American aid.

The first was during the period of War Communism, instituted at the end of the civil war. The Bolsheviks systematically destroyed all functioning government and production, leaving the country in chaos. Western aid, mostly American and coordinated by Herb Hoover, saved lives in the millions– a fact with which no historian disagrees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921

The second instance was when Hitler was fought to a standstill at Stalingrad and Kursk. Soviet resources were utterly exhausted. American Lend-Lease, in the opinions of all Russians old enough to remember, saved them.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:27:48 +0000

Get out of here, STALKER

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:26:49 +0000

No, this is amusing

After all, if you need to mimic a market economy to have a functional economy, why not have a market economy in the first place?

By: Old Mexican

Old Mexican — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:11:37 +0000

Re: Response,

He also says:

“What is called conscious planning is precisely the elimination of conscious purposive action.”

The foolishness rests in the planner’s presumption of being able to know everything.

Mises had already explained the importance of the price system for the allocation of resources, so why would you consider his conclusion “foolish” is something you will have to explain.

By: response

response — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:03:11 +0000

It really is amazing, but Mises repeats this foolishness. For example, in Human Action, Chapter on “The Impossibility of Economic Calculation under Socialism”, he said:

“The paradox of “planning” is that it cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation. What is called a planned economy is no economy at all.”

By: Beefcake the Mighty

Beefcake the Mighty — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:55:56 +0000

This is unfortunate. However, his The Best Enemy Money Can Buy is a very useful synopsis of his findings, and can be acquired quite cheaply:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Enemy-Money-Can-Buy/dp/0937765015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282006489&sr=8-1

By: relatin of exchage

relatin of exchage — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:48:46 +0000

Soviet Union not used the prices in the West. The relation with West was only of EXCHANGE (this only until the Second World War).

By: Jonathan M. F. Catalán

Jonathan M. F. Catalán — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:51:06 +0000

His book on the Soviet Union’s technology looks really good. Unfortunately, the copy at Amazon.com is $200+. I wonder if a publisher can put the book back in print (it would seem like a good book for the Mises Institute, as well).

By: Russ the Apostate

Russ the Apostate — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:46:27 +0000

If he said this in many places, then you shouldn’t have any trouble producing a quote. Put up or shut up, tovarisch.

By: correcting

correcting — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:35:33 +0000

Where it is written “readed”, in true is “read”.

By: planing is not economy

planing is not economy — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:29:48 +0000

This is question of someone who never readed Mises. In many books, he sair this, and repeats.