Economic Calculation --- The Austrians' Failure

[heavenlyboy34]

Since I propose neither the elimination of possessive property nor the existence of state apparatus, these comments are rather inapplicable to me anyway. What can you say to these decentralized socialist models' bypass of the price and knowledge problems...while capitalist economic structure is dependent on central planning and individual orthodox capitalist firms are susceptible to dispersed knowledge problems?

There are some forms of "capitalism" that rely on central planning, but not all. You'll have to be more specific to make sense.

 

[Apocalypse]

There are some forms of "capitalism" that rely on central planning, but not all. You'll have to be more specific to make sense.

Yeah...the existent ones. My point was never that propertarians advocated such economic structure, but that the laissez-faire economic structure that they did advocate was inherently deficient because of the need for the state to sustain capitalism...which is why "free market" capitalism is a perpetually nonexistent theoretical abstraction and would inevitably degenerate into orthodox capitalism.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Yeah...the existent ones. My point was never that propertarians advocated such economic structure, but that the laissez-faire economic structure that they did advocate was inherently deficient because of the need for the state to sustain capitalism...which is why "free market" capitalism is a perpetually nonexistent theoretical abstraction and would inevitably degenerate into orthodox capitalism.

What proof do you have to offer that the State is needed to sustain capitalism? Capitalism occurs on the black market all the time without State regulation. Capitalism happens at garage sales, park n' swaps, and the like all the time without government help.

 

[Leviathan]

What proof do you have to offer that the State is needed to sustain capitalism? Capitalism occurs on the black market all the time without State regulation. Capitalism happens at garage sales, park n' swaps, and the like all the time without government help.

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by minority private ownership of the means of production, market exchange as the primary means of resource allocation, and wage labor in a form that divides ownership and management from work. Mere market exchange does not constitute capitalism.

Capitalism is also an economic system heavily reliant on state interventionism for macroeconomic stabilization purposes and correction of market failures, from Pigovian taxation intended to combat the effects of negative externalities, to mandatory disclosure laws intended to combat agency problems such as adverse selection and moral hazard that result from information asymmetries, to antitrust legislation and other barriers to the efficiency-reducing concentration of monopoly and excessive oligopoly, the provision of public and merit goods, the protection of infant industries as a facet of strategic trade policy (every major capitalist country has evolved this way; consult Ha-Joon Chang), etc.

As an anarchist/libertarian, I cannot abide this pervasive state influence, and therefore cannot support capitalism.

 

[silverhandorder]

That is bull, the state is not needed to maintain capitalism one bit.

 

[Leviathan]

What do contradictions do? Where is your argument?

 

[silverhandorder]

My Argument is that laws of economics work without the state. In the post above my first one you said that capitalism needs the government to enforce it. This is nonsense, there is countless examples of capitalism working in all spheres of life with no government involvement at all. People already pointed out the black market.

 

[Leviathan]

My Argument is that laws of economics work without the state.

That statement is so deliberately ambiguous as to not be any kind of argument at all, not even a substantive assertion, really.

In the post above my first one you said that capitalism needs the government to enforce it.

As it does.

This is nonsense, there is countless examples of capitalism working in all spheres of life with no government involvement at all.

Can you point to a single example of stateless capitalism existing? Remember that economic systems cannot be reduced to individual agents, and that mere market exchange does not constitute capitalism (this would render various forms of market socialism "capitalist," after all).

People already pointed out the black market.

Isn't the usual propertarian line that the black market requires the existence of government because criminalization is the cause of demand being rendered illegal?

 

[silverhandorder]

Isn't the usual propertarian line that the black market requires the existence of government because criminalization is the cause of demand being rendered illegal?

If it can function with government thugs trying to repress it it can function if you take the government thugs out of the equation. It is a bonus that it can survive such things.

 

[Leviathan]

If it can function with government thugs trying to repress it it can function if you take the government thugs out of the equation. It is a bonus that it can survive such things.

The depiction of a conflict between capitalism and statism is mythical; they are intertwined, which is why anarchism (actual libertarianism), opposes both. Why don't you get to rebutting my comments on the role of government in provision of macroeconomic stabilization?

 

[silverhandorder]

This stabilization is present on the black market.

 

[Leviathan]

This stabilization is present on the black market.

A rebuttal to the arguments?

 

[silverhandorder]

What rebuttal? I gave you an example of working capitalist market on macro economic level.

 

[Leviathan]

What rebuttal? I gave you an example of working capitalist market on macro economic level.

Your "working capitalist model," apart from not approximating an economic system, was created by state criminalization.

 

[silverhandorder]

It wasn't created it survived state criminalization.

 

[Leviathan]

It wasn't created it survived state criminalization.

The very existence of a black economy necessitates criminalization, or it wouldn't constitute a black economy, and demand for its products would not be illegal.

 

[hugolp]

The very existence of a black economy necessitates criminalization, or it wouldn't constitute a black economy, and demand for its products would not be illegal.

You have not refute his claims.