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#11
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[ QUOTE ]
You will have to explain it to me, I'm not an economics expert and I fail to see how the market alone can distribute different chunks of a problem to all the agents. I would presume competition, principles of voluntary behavior and the lack of central intelligence would make it hard both to see a picture and 'agree' (I write agree in quotation because I'm not claiming a statist solution can make participants agree either) on it for all participants. [/ QUOTE ] You have the problem wrong. The problem goes something like, "Allocate those resources under your control to your ends in the manner you believe will most improve your state of satisfaction relative to the alternatives." There's probably a much better way to state it, but it's midnight and I'm tired. The knowledge of people's ends is distributed in their heads. The control of resources is distributed throughout society as well, perhaps in a manner that displeases you or me, but there it is. Any claim to know better than others what their ends are or should be, or to be better able to allocate their resources to their ends better than they can, without being in their mind, having their wants, needs and desires and having your resources and satisfaction at risk and not someone else's, is simply the pretense of knowledge in my opinion. [ QUOTE ] And if it did, wouldn't something like that effectively be a government in some form? [/ QUOTE ] No. In any event, I'll take a "swarm intelligence" of the market over the centralized incompetence of the state any day. And I don't mean incompetence in any sort of perjorative way; central planners are literally not competent to plan for all market participants. See for example, F.A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society, or his Nobel Prize Lecture, The Pretense of Knowledge. |
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