The Socialist Calculation Debate for the Umpteenth Time

Name
Email
Subject
Comment *
File	Select/drop/paste files here
Password	(Randomized for file and post deletion; you may also set your own.)
* = required field	[▶ Show post options & limits] Confused? See the FAQ.

File: a626ec913b07293⋯.png (354.87 KB, 1400x656, 175:82, misesCalculation.png)

The Socialist Calculation Debate for the Umpteenth Time Anonymous 10/21/18 (Sun) 23:51:58 No.92323

The calculation argument is that prices reflect subjective values.

The knowledge argument is that there are orders of knowledge that are only discoverable using markets.

Yes, even these bastardizations of the arguments have issues, but I think it's at least an improvement.

WHY DO THESE TWO KEEP GETTING HOMOGENIZED TOGETHER? More than that, why do they get homogenized into a completely different argument?! Most of the time, it gets homogenized into, "The human brain is deterministic; therefore, we can model it; therefore, an objective utility function can be defined, and we know that calculating a utility from the human brain is difficult, but we can solve a massive linear programming problem–Mises just pointed out how difficult that problem was" That's not the calculation argument. It's not Hayek's knowledge argument. It's infuriating how often I hear this.

I am henceforth calling this argument "The socialist's strawman."

Anyways, what gets me is not only that it's a strawman, but it's a very, very weak strawman.

Anonymous 10/22/18 (Mon) 02:05:57 No.92329

>>92323

>WHY DO THESE TWO KEEP GETTING HOMOGENIZED TOGETHER?

Well, one reason might be is that the mechanism markets use to provide knowledge to us is through the price system. So while they are different arguments, the point each one makes is related to the other on a higher order pun intended.

Anonymous 10/22/18 (Mon) 06:20:21 No.92335

…made all the more hilarious by the fact that socialism definitionally cannot have central planning, while it is required in capitalism.

Anonymous 10/22/18 (Mon) 09:06:30 No.92344

>>92323

>Anyways, what gets me is not only that it's a strawman, but it's a very, very weak strawman.

The problem is that it's neither a strawman (as ignorant libertarians say this in good faith), nor very weak. I used this argument for a long time, until someone - perhaps even you - corrected me, thankfully.

Anyway, as I said, even the bad argument is not weak, that's why some libertarians keep using it. The idea of modeling every brain in existence is the stuff of high sci-fi, so far ahead of us that using it as an argument for the viability of socialism is laughable. Socialists have no intelligent counter to it, that's why dumbasses like me got away with bringing this shitty argument instead of the legitimate calculation-argument.

Anonymous 10/22/18 (Mon) 13:51:09 No.92366

>>92335

0/10

try harder

Anonymous 10/22/18 (Mon) 21:02:51 No.92381

>>92335

Never have I ever heard a definition of those terms in which that statement was true.

Anonymous 10/24/18 (Wed) 08:27:07 No.92425

Even more abused is the notion of time preference. It is supposed to describe, in the unfettered market, the amount of money invested as opposed to that consumed and saved without investment. This allows defining originary interest as the aggregate of everyone's preferences, similar to total demand and supply. Time preference cannot be applied to choices regarding other people's money, because the point was how the rate of interest is arrived at in their absence. Nor should we treat the preference as indicative of value scales. Even assuming a static scale, each money unit lost and gained changes time preference, with no way to know beforehand in which direction.