This too misses the point. All but the truly homeless have at least some money to vote with, and plenty of businesses are vying for his patronage. Take Walmart for example: they very much cater to those of lesser means. Most Walmarts exist in low income rural areas; in fact that was the basis of Sam Walton’s business plan: to provide low prices to those who need it. Another example would be cheap food products like TV dinners and romen noodles, etc.

I kind of like viewing the economy as a voting machine, where people with money vote for various goods. The market entrepreneurs allocate the available resources with these signals of profit-loss.

The problem socialists usually find with this system is that prices don’t always express the intensity of certain wants. Like for example, how a pauper without any money with him can’t vote with enough money to bid resources away from a rich guy who uses the same resources for other frivolous needs. This is a valid point. But usually, such a cherry-picked cases that ignore the advantages the proper pricing system makes available to us.

2) Next, planners cannot make a genuine calculation of costs since there is no real bidding actually happening. There have been many of these alternative proposals to have ‘competing’ government agencies which will bid for resources. So much for genuine ‘competitive’ pricing.

And any pricing system which doesn’t take into account the real subjective preference of consumers who bid with their money votes, simply doesn’t make a rational allocation of resources towards the most urgent demands.

And next, you would again be committing an error, what classical economists did, if you calculate costs from production stages rather than deriving it from consumer prices. That doesn’t mean you can ‘impute’ prices to capital goods based on the consumer market prices. It’s impractical for many reasons.

Try this for now: http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/10674/252308.aspx#252308

The problem with the argument is this. Efficiency is defined as:

-No one can be made better off without making someone else worse off.
-More output cannot be obtained without increasing the amount of inputs.
-Production proceeds at the lowest possible per-unit cost.

While the first might be true there may be many “efficiencies” depending on how much value is given to any particular want or need. If its at efficiency and you take from one person and give to another you’re still in a condition where if anybody gains somebody has to lose so the first condition allows for many possible outcomes.

For the second one that seems self evidently true for any economy. You wouldn’t be inputing it if you didn’t have to in order to make the output so naturally to have more output you always need more input. This is redundant and is true in any economy.

Third, I see no reason why planners can’t calculate per unit costs. In fact while private companies might only be concerned with the dollar value and don’t care what else went into it planners could record from the beginning, from the raw materials onward through the production process everything used in the process and make an exact calculation of resource use rather than just a dollar value. Direct measurement of the cost instead of representative(money only represents value).

Ultimately a centralized computer system would probably be the most efficient means of running an economy if we could program one to take into account everything that goes into the process and if all labor could be mechanized. When that time comes humanity will liberate itself from labor and each individual free to pursue life as they see fit. This by definition maximizes value for each individual, therefore society, and therefore digital socialism would be most efficient system of all.

About practical limitations, there is NO LIMITATION, and every problem you can think of has proper practical free market solution.

Sorry, cant type much due to time constraint But i am sure you will now refute it as “comments on crony capitalism”
and I already commented on practical limitations in implementing idea of “free Market Capitalism” which you supported through your articles.

About crony capitalism America, China and India following, we keep publishing the flaws of that.
You are free to mention any and every flaw of capitalism.

Remember Capitalism is different than crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is that which China, America and India are following.

In fact you are totally free to showcase any fault of capitalism and we can discuss it too properly.

yet you won’t find any fault.

What fault can there be in HONEST INDEPENDENT LIVING? that is what capitalism is.

He just cannot understand that since socialist cannot calculate, hence they are dangerous and hazardous.

I am sure just like another 1 billion and more Indians, he knows nothing about Mises, nor it is important.

I don’t think it is necessary to advertise Mises, Rothbard, Rand, Hayek, John Locke, etc.

“ok..Apart from message “Socialist are not accountant or finanacial planner” there is nothing new in this article.”

Hi, I’m not sure about what your thoughts are; I simply can’t judge it from your one-liner. But the point is, the very basis to judge the efficiency of an economy is it’s allocative efficiency. While socialism doesn’t offer such a scope, there’s nothing further to talk about the system. Perhaps you didn’t get much out of this article because Mises has been so conclusive in his rebuttal of socialism.

There is a huge difference which you clearly missed.  And that is that in Socialism rational allocation of resources is not possible, because of the lack of Economic calculation.
In simple words it talks about the theoretically impossibility of Socialism.

Economic calculation problem explains why Lenin’s first attempt at pure Socialism failed so miserably and why he was forced to allow a market to exist in 1921.

Thanks so much!