Peoples preferences can still fluctuate in the ensuing time period, which is why “futures” were created in the first place, to dampen such changes’ effects on prices.

The reason I believe that Misesians “ignore” the Hayekian concept of the spontaneous market order is that for Mises the key societal concept is human cooperation under the division of labor. Society, the “social order”, is most accurately characterized, if not defined, as interpersonal cooperation under the division of labor. In Mises view, material economic progress and the advancement of civilization are the result of expanding and deepening the division of labor.

Zuzu: I confess to not being quite clear as to what you are trying to say. In any event, you have no basis for concluding that I lumped in Mises and Rothbard “quickly”.

Despite the views of some others, I believe it is clear from reading pages 695-715 (1966 edition) of Human Action that Mises himself considered the calculation problem, and not the knowledge issue, to be socialism’s fundamental (and insurmountable) obstacle. In this discussion, Mises went to considerable length to differentiate the two issues, even conceding for argument purposes only, that the socialist planners did have full knowledge of all relevant data.

The differences Mises and Hayek regarding economic calculation in a socialist state may arise from a more fundamental difference: Specifically, the epistemological status of the general equilibrium framework. Mises firmly and consistently rejected the general equilibrium construct except as a mental tool for understanding the incessant change of the real world, while some have argued that Hayek can be viewed as a “proximal equilibrium” theorist. Interestingly, Hayek’s emphasis on the knowledge issue in the socialist calculation debate was a response to the proposals of the mathematical, general equilibrium socialists.

Finally, I believe that Professor Herbener’s article “Calculation and the Question of Arithmetic” [RAE Vol. 9, No. 1 (1996)] should also be considered a significant contribution to the literature. In particular, he discusses an important aspect of Mises’s argument, specifically, that the cardinal numbers that constitute money prices enable entrepreneurs to appraise, using a common denominator, disparate factors of production. Without the common denominator of money prices, appraisement and calculation are not possible. While some may consider this a trivial insight, it is nonetheless powerful and critical to Mises’s argument that denies the possibility of economic calculation in a socialist state.

(Yes, Rothbard was Mises protege or whatever, but Rothbard took a much more modernish social-science flavor to his descriptions and analysis. I do agree with lumping Rothbard and Hoppe together for this reason.)

From an interdisciplinary perspective, Mises’ “human action” methodology derives from what many would now, with the gift of hindsight, call a branch of cognitive science.

Likewise from that same perspective, Hayek’s analysis follows more of a graph and information theory methodology.

Much of the same ground has been tread in swarms, complexity, combinatorial optimization, network theory, immunological computation, biosemiotics, and other such sub-disciplines studied at the Santa Fe Institute.

Although both Mises and Hayek concerned themselves with epistemology, the distinction I would make between Mises and Hayek has to do with scope… as in, beware the fallacies of composition and division. Mises addressed how the individual gathers information and acts on that information. Whereas Hayek addressed how the distributed computation between actors provides more useful information faster to each node than a centralized computation network could.

I would say that, too, is an interesting tangent, ala the Hayekian tradition. I don’t, however, think that it takes away from the correctness of the Rothbard/Salerno/Hoppe position on what Mises meant by “the calculation problem”.

You’re the first person to call your question stupid.

Bonus point to the first person call this question stupid.