Edited by author 05-31-2002 06:39 AM
<p>Sorry, Charlie, the Calculation Problem still applies to
Banks's Culture. You can't
have "demand signals" without a market, and even infinite amounts of computing
power can't get you out of that hole. It's actually provable that even a bureacrat-god with perfect knowledge cannot get the job done -- markets "know" things that
planners cannot. (See David D. Friedman's excellent book "Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life" for discussion).</p>
<p>Furthermore, you can't plan your way out of market failures even at the grossest macroeconomic level. Keynesian demand manipulation stopped working in the 1970s. You know why? It's because the manipulees caught wise -- rational business planning became speculation on the direction of monetary policy rather than a reaction to fundamentals. That's how we got high inflation and high unemployment at the same time.</p>
<p>In general, all economic-planning measures will fail once
the actors in the system become aware of the plan. They'll
game against the plan rather than gaming to maximize efficiency, and you'll be right back on the road to malinvestment and collapse. There is no escape. Nixon's Council on Wage-Price Stability couldn't do it, GOSPLAN
couldn't do it, and the Culture Minds couldn't do it either.</p>
<p>You missed the fact that I
didn't miss the fact
that MacLeod's characters are entrepreneurs. That is one of the things that makes them so repellently fascinating, that they know markets work better but fetishize socialism anyway.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of other minor claims I could refute,
but I'd rather stay focused on the big one. You believe
a lot of things about economics that ain't so. Rather
than argue politics with you, I challenge you to go read
Friedman and learn how markets actually work. Then think
about the political implications. You are more than smart enough to get them.</p>
(Sorry about the markup...thought I was supposed to be
typing HTML.)
