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This article reminds me of theologians who use argument from ignorance to justify their own beliefs in one true god (basically an attempt to impose some absolut

This article reminds me of theologians who use argument from ignorance to justify their own beliefs in one true god (basically an attempt to impose some absolute moral framework on society). OK, there is always competition, no problem here. But there are nonetheless many other systems than market decision-making, and there is no clear winner from the moral point of view. Just one example can be democratic voting about economic allocation. I would love to see him show that this is not socially optimal, without showing the same about the market system. (To simplify things, we can consider market system to be one where you can accumulate votes.) In fact, we don't even know if "socially optimal" solution exists or is unique! Also, a minor point. It's been shown that price signals work only in the environment with perfect information and rational actors, but then the price is superfluous! This well-known counterargument is not addressed at all. Someone put it nicely here on HN, once economics stopped calling itself political economics, it became much more ideological. P.S. Downvoters, please, leave a comment. I will happily have a discussion with you.

afsina 11y ago
For the `perfect information and rational actors` part, it is addressed by many. Just one example from the author of this article: http://fee.org/freeman/do-free-markets-require-rational-actors/ http://fee.org/freeman/do-free-markets-require-rational-acto...
logicchains 11y ago
It depends how you define "socially optimal". A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. A market can consist solely of such interaction. A democracy on the other hand involves people via votes controlling what other people can and can't do (in a market context, reducing their control over what, how and to whom they can exchange their labour and products thereof), which necessarily entails some kind of loss (in terms of otherwise-realised unrealised preference) from the people who are not able to do what they'd be doing absent coercion by the democracy's enforcers. Pure free-market economics adopts the epistemological stance that utility (the economic proxy for value, based roughly on the notion of value being defined as the sum of people's realised preferences) isn't quantifiable, so no potential utility gained from the results of the democratic thwarting of some people's preferences can outweigh the definite loss from those people not realising their preferences. Other schools of economics do view utility as quantifiable, so it's possible to say that there can be a net benefit from interfering with someone's preferences based on the result of democratic process. They disagree however in how utility is best quantified. Schools of thought external to economics often have measures of value that differ substantially from the economic notion of utility. In particular, any scheme that assumes the existence of moral absolutes is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of utility. It's hence important to consider that any economics that makes recommendations (that isn't just econometrics/prediction) is necessarily based on some particular philosophical propositions regarding what's valuable. Without this, economic discussion tends to degrade to people talking past each other because they have fundamentally different theories of value, fundamentally different metrics for the "optimal" in social optimality. To put it another way, whether or not there is an optimal solution depends on how optimality is defined, so discussing solutions without defining optimality is pointless.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  >A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. This is, of course, completely unrealistic, but in some contexts it happens to help the modeling involved in academic economics.
- lern_too_spel 11y ago
  That "key notion" ignores market failures like externalities, in which everybody could make trades that help themselves, but everybody ends up worse off. In fact, this whole article makes a ridiculous mistake. Nobody is arguing for a command economy. Democratic socialists just want regulations that fix market failures.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  > A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. A market can consist solely of such interaction. The problem is that interactions of two other people can also impose cost on me. Then if this is worse than some opportunity lost is not clear cut. > Pure free-market economics adopts the epistemological stance that utility isn't quantifiable I know, but it's an absurd stance, isn't it? It let's you do things like seeing a person that has a heart attack and thinking "I see you have a heart attack, but why should I help you, maybe it's your preference!" I think any actor has to assume certain, at least very fuzzy, preferences of other actors to be able to operate in the world. I suspect there are actual rational reasons why people don't want to have their preferences revealed, and this economic school of thought's usage of the "non-quantifiable argument" is just a one of the possible rationalizations. > so discussing solutions without defining optimality is pointless I actually feel the same way reading the article.
  - logicchains 11y ago
    >The problem is that interactions of two other people can also impose cost on me. Then if this is worse than some opportunity lost is not clear cut. The economic answer would be that the possible costs it could impose on you can be expressed as violations of your property rights, and if they wished to do this then they'd need to compensate you, or else you could sue them for redress. >I know, but it's an absurd stance, isn't it? It let's you do things like seeing a person that has a heart attack and thinking "I see you have a heart attack, but why should I help you, maybe it's your preference!" Being absurd doesn't necessarily make it less philosophically valid. In one sense the whole concept of morality is absurd, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument. There's even a school of philosophy called Absurdism that based around recognition of the absurdity of seeking absolute values that inherently cannot be found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism. On a more concrete level, the rejection of quantifiable utility is based on rejection of the extra assumptions it requires. Two in particular: firstly, it assumes some kind of simple relationship, so that if person X buys 10 apples for $100, then they valued each apple at $10 (linear), or maybe the first at $50, the second at 25$, etc. (polynomial). There is however no irrefutable logical justification for the assumption, e.g. perhaps they valued the first at $30, the second at $1, the third at $4, the fourth at $5. Secondly, it assumes that a person's preferences at time t have any relation to their preferences at time t+1.
danbruc 11y ago
Not one of the downvoters, but a voting scheme seems totally unrealistic to me. Just think about the sheer number of economic decisions occurring every day. Going to store A instead of store B. Picking brand A over brand B. Walking two kilometers instead of calling a taxi. Picking your holiday destination. Researching suppliers for components for a new product. Cancelling a no longer profitable product. Doing market research. Changing the price of a product. And the list goes on forever. How could you ever faithfully reconcile all those decisions into a manageable number of votes? If you stranded with five people on a remote island you could probably pull this off, but in any realistic setting this seems totally out of reach to me. I am totally not happy with capitalism as we have it, but the thing that actually works really well are markets. Surely markets can fail if there are monopolies, if actors collude, if there are externalities not reflected by the price and so on and this can lead to socially suboptimal or plain bad outcomes but often they work really well. That is why I am against laissez-faire economics because well working markets are not something that necessarily arises out of the blue, sometimes it requires intervention.
- lujim 11y ago
  Replacing markets with central planners requires that you find planners that are 1) 100% impervious to corruption 2) Able to predict the weather or any other complex chaotic system with 100% accuracy. 3) Never sleep or take vacations. 4) Completely concerned with the needs of others and completely uninterested in their own needs (no family or friends) Once we can get 10 or 15 of those people, central planning would finally work better than imperfect markets.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    Except for predicting complex systems, it sounds like something an AI might eventually be able to do.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >Replacing markets with central planners requires that you find planners that are 1) 100% impervious to corruption Not necessary, since markets have been proved to be quite prone to corruption themselves. >2) Able to predict the weather or any other complex chaotic system with 100% accuracy. Not necessary, they can just take quick actions. Markets can't predict the weather either. >3) Never sleep or take vacations. Markets actually sleep too -- e.g. stock exchanges close. And shops, especially pre-internet, close, all at the same time, around 8-9pm (with small exceptions like your local diner). And who said 24/7 planning is required in the first place? The whole idea about planning is that you do it in advance of some bigger or smaller period of time. Again, this "requirement" presupposes what it has to prove is needed. >4) Completely concerned with the needs of others and completely uninterested in their own needs (no family or friends) Not necessary, since the market has proven that it's doesn't result in any 100% perfect arrangement regarding needs either. The needs of a huge percentage are ignored (to the point that they can even die homeless and sick), 0.1% controls 80% of the wealth, and even individuals are taught and conditioned to make bad decisions all the time for their own needs, destroying themselves in the process (e.g. having easy credit pushed upon them, etc). All those arguments presume the market is 100% perfect, or even if they don't presume that, they still ask that the "planning system" should be 100% perfect (instead of just better than the market which would be a more logical demand).
mariodiana 11y ago
The clear winner from a moral point of view is to allow people to interact with one another without the intrusion of force except in instances where it's used in self-defense: meaning, to rectify cases of fraud and theft.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  Only if you define morality as "allow people to interact with one another without the intrusion of force except in instances where it's used in self-defense: meaning, to rectify cases of fraud and theft." Any other moral code will recommend different government policies, particularly moral codes in which there are moral predicates other than property ownership, such as health, happiness, etc.
  - mariodiana 11y ago
    Exactly. Any other moral code will initiate the use of force.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  Who then defines what is fraud? If I can't stop transaction of two other people based on what I think is fraud, who can ever? And if you are telling me that I can't ever stop any transaction of two people, that actually poses extra risk for me, from serial fraudsters gaining too much power. Basically, you cannot model society as two-person interactions. That doesn't capture the power dynamic.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    But is there really a power dynamic? At least with respect to markets, it's much harder to say that there is. The stories about monopolies of market power from the morgue of the Hearst newspapers ( and at varying times, all newspapers emulated the Hearst newspapers ) are mostly just-so stories. And then there are true stories, like Edison using patent law and legbreakers to dominate the film industry.
    - 11y ago
grinnbearit 11y ago
I've had 2 discussions on this topic, I'd love to hear you thoughts on them. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919 TLDR, If you believe values (desires) are subjective then any centrally planned system will be inefficient. [edit: formatting]
- danbruc 11y ago
  Damn, that was a thread I always wanted to reply to but totally didn't manage to in the end.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  I wouldn't have big problem with the free market (as you describe), if the following big feedback loop of investing would be limited: People can "cheat" (for example give incomplete information, or mislead about how much stuff they have really done, etc.) and then for that, they get more votes about what is socially useful activity? Of course they will reinvest those points into more what they are doing, and at the end of the day, you will end up with people like that controlling the economy. And that's what actually happens - owners of capital decide by huge margin where to invest, because accumulation of capital gives you a leverage which just doing normal work doesn't. It also happens to a lesser extent between other social groups. Now, I see two realistic solutions to this loophole: - Limit personal wealth to some amount (say 100x average) and redistribute the rest. - Limit amount of overall wealth (let's say GDP) than can be subject of competition to a certain percentage (say 50%) and redistribute the rest. These are essentially proposals for having a mixed economy. > any centrally planned system will be inefficient Is democracy central planning or not? I don't think "central planning" is particularly useful category, to be honest. All larger-scale human activities have to be done by cooperation of many people, and this cooperation can be always viewed as central planning, or at least as place where individual values are suppressed.
  - grinnbearit 11y ago
    Yes, those are some of the issues with 'Laissez Faire'. There are always winners and losers in any system and I feel that some redistribution to "take the edge of" is a good thing. (But perhaps not your specific policy suggestions). Democracy isn't central planning. It has a similar basis to capitalism actually. If you believe that morals are subjective then it makes sense to give everyone a say in what morals are codified as law. If on the other hand you believe in a single objective moral code, a dictator's for example' then you don't need to make any decisions. Capitalism is the same but with morals switched with values/desires. It may not be the best "type 2" system, but in a subjective values universe any system that replaces it would need to be "type 2" as well.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bobcostas55 11y ago
>In fact, we don't even know if "socially optimal" solution exists Actually we know it doesn't, by way of Arrow's impossibility theorem.
mike_hearn 11y ago
It's been shown that price signals work only in the environment with perfect information and rational actors, but then the price is superfluous! That's a nonsensical argument so I doubt it's been "shown" by anyone. Price signals work better as the rationality and level of informedness of participants goes up, this should be obvious. But it isn't true that you must have perfect information or else prices are entirely useless. What's more, even if you do have ideal and perfectly informed actors, you still need prices. The perfect information is spread out amongst many peoples heads, thus requiring some sort of highly scalable gathering and spreading mechanism (like prices), and even perfectly informed people can still reach different judgements about the relative importance of things. The phenomenon of two people who are clearly experts in a subject vigorously disagreeing with each other is commonplace. So even if you could genetically engineer an economy of telepaths, you'd still need prices to resolve differences in personal perceptions of importance. Ballot-box style voting is not a replacement for markets. You can't literally hold a nationwide vote every time someone wants to buy a loaf of bread, it's too inefficient and anyway, what would the vote say? A much more effective voting mechanism is that you get some "votes" and then can cast them in a kind of auction to get what you want ..... oh, seems we ended up back at prices. Which are in a sense highly democratic.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Actually, in this day and age, its pretty simple to do (take a vote on the price of bread) - just an app. The time for modeling economies around middle-ages village markets is past. We do have good (not perfect) information; we can act rationally.
  - scottlocklin 11y ago
    You've obviously never done this in anything more than toy examples.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Whatever can you mean? Nothing concrete to offer? Just felt like a personal attack today?

afsina 11y ago

For the `perfect information and rational actors` part, it is addressed by many. Just one example from the author of this article: http://fee.org/freeman/do-free-markets-require-rational-actors/ http://fee.org/freeman/do-free-markets-require-rational-acto...

logicchains 11y ago

It depends how you define "socially optimal". A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. A market can consist solely of such interaction. A democracy on the other hand involves people via votes controlling what other people can and can't do (in a market context, reducing their control over what, how and to whom they can exchange their labour and products thereof), which necessarily entails some kind of loss (in terms of otherwise-realised unrealised preference) from the people who are not able to do what they'd be doing absent coercion by the democracy's enforcers. Pure free-market economics adopts the epistemological stance that utility (the economic proxy for value, based roughly on the notion of value being defined as the sum of people's realised preferences) isn't quantifiable, so no potential utility gained from the results of the democratic thwarting of some people's preferences can outweigh the definite loss from those people not realising their preferences. Other schools of economics do view utility as quantifiable, so it's possible to say that there can be a net benefit from interfering with someone's preferences based on the result of democratic process. They disagree however in how utility is best quantified. Schools of thought external to economics often have measures of value that differ substantially from the economic notion of utility. In particular, any scheme that assumes the existence of moral absolutes is fundamentally incompatible with the notion of utility. It's hence important to consider that any economics that makes recommendations (that isn't just econometrics/prediction) is necessarily based on some particular philosophical propositions regarding what's valuable. Without this, economic discussion tends to degrade to people talking past each other because they have fundamentally different theories of value, fundamentally different metrics for the "optimal" in social optimality. To put it another way, whether or not there is an optimal solution depends on how optimality is defined, so discussing solutions without defining optimality is pointless.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
>A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. This is, of course, completely unrealistic, but in some contexts it happens to help the modeling involved in academic economics.
lern_too_spel 11y ago
That "key notion" ignores market failures like externalities, in which everybody could make trades that help themselves, but everybody ends up worse off. In fact, this whole article makes a ridiculous mistake. Nobody is arguing for a command economy. Democratic socialists just want regulations that fix market failures.
asgard1024 11y ago
> A key notion of economics is that if two people voluntarily agree to something, it must be of some benefit of them at that moment compared to alternatives else they wouldn't have agreed. A market can consist solely of such interaction. The problem is that interactions of two other people can also impose cost on me. Then if this is worse than some opportunity lost is not clear cut. > Pure free-market economics adopts the epistemological stance that utility isn't quantifiable I know, but it's an absurd stance, isn't it? It let's you do things like seeing a person that has a heart attack and thinking "I see you have a heart attack, but why should I help you, maybe it's your preference!" I think any actor has to assume certain, at least very fuzzy, preferences of other actors to be able to operate in the world. I suspect there are actual rational reasons why people don't want to have their preferences revealed, and this economic school of thought's usage of the "non-quantifiable argument" is just a one of the possible rationalizations. > so discussing solutions without defining optimality is pointless I actually feel the same way reading the article.
- logicchains 11y ago
  >The problem is that interactions of two other people can also impose cost on me. Then if this is worse than some opportunity lost is not clear cut. The economic answer would be that the possible costs it could impose on you can be expressed as violations of your property rights, and if they wished to do this then they'd need to compensate you, or else you could sue them for redress. >I know, but it's an absurd stance, isn't it? It let's you do things like seeing a person that has a heart attack and thinking "I see you have a heart attack, but why should I help you, maybe it's your preference!" Being absurd doesn't necessarily make it less philosophically valid. In one sense the whole concept of morality is absurd, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument. There's even a school of philosophy called Absurdism that based around recognition of the absurdity of seeking absolute values that inherently cannot be found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism. On a more concrete level, the rejection of quantifiable utility is based on rejection of the extra assumptions it requires. Two in particular: firstly, it assumes some kind of simple relationship, so that if person X buys 10 apples for $100, then they valued each apple at $10 (linear), or maybe the first at $50, the second at 25$, etc. (polynomial). There is however no irrefutable logical justification for the assumption, e.g. perhaps they valued the first at $30, the second at $1, the third at $4, the fourth at $5. Secondly, it assumes that a person's preferences at time t have any relation to their preferences at time t+1.

danbruc 11y ago

Not one of the downvoters, but a voting scheme seems totally unrealistic to me. Just think about the sheer number of economic decisions occurring every day. Going to store A instead of store B. Picking brand A over brand B. Walking two kilometers instead of calling a taxi. Picking your holiday destination. Researching suppliers for components for a new product. Cancelling a no longer profitable product. Doing market research. Changing the price of a product. And the list goes on forever. How could you ever faithfully reconcile all those decisions into a manageable number of votes? If you stranded with five people on a remote island you could probably pull this off, but in any realistic setting this seems totally out of reach to me. I am totally not happy with capitalism as we have it, but the thing that actually works really well are markets. Surely markets can fail if there are monopolies, if actors collude, if there are externalities not reflected by the price and so on and this can lead to socially suboptimal or plain bad outcomes but often they work really well. That is why I am against laissez-faire economics because well working markets are not something that necessarily arises out of the blue, sometimes it requires intervention.

lujim 11y ago
Replacing markets with central planners requires that you find planners that are 1) 100% impervious to corruption 2) Able to predict the weather or any other complex chaotic system with 100% accuracy. 3) Never sleep or take vacations. 4) Completely concerned with the needs of others and completely uninterested in their own needs (no family or friends) Once we can get 10 or 15 of those people, central planning would finally work better than imperfect markets.
- imgabe 11y ago
  Except for predicting complex systems, it sounds like something an AI might eventually be able to do.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >Replacing markets with central planners requires that you find planners that are 1) 100% impervious to corruption Not necessary, since markets have been proved to be quite prone to corruption themselves. >2) Able to predict the weather or any other complex chaotic system with 100% accuracy. Not necessary, they can just take quick actions. Markets can't predict the weather either. >3) Never sleep or take vacations. Markets actually sleep too -- e.g. stock exchanges close. And shops, especially pre-internet, close, all at the same time, around 8-9pm (with small exceptions like your local diner). And who said 24/7 planning is required in the first place? The whole idea about planning is that you do it in advance of some bigger or smaller period of time. Again, this "requirement" presupposes what it has to prove is needed. >4) Completely concerned with the needs of others and completely uninterested in their own needs (no family or friends) Not necessary, since the market has proven that it's doesn't result in any 100% perfect arrangement regarding needs either. The needs of a huge percentage are ignored (to the point that they can even die homeless and sick), 0.1% controls 80% of the wealth, and even individuals are taught and conditioned to make bad decisions all the time for their own needs, destroying themselves in the process (e.g. having easy credit pushed upon them, etc). All those arguments presume the market is 100% perfect, or even if they don't presume that, they still ask that the "planning system" should be 100% perfect (instead of just better than the market which would be a more logical demand).

mariodiana 11y ago

The clear winner from a moral point of view is to allow people to interact with one another without the intrusion of force except in instances where it's used in self-defense: meaning, to rectify cases of fraud and theft.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Only if you define morality as "allow people to interact with one another without the intrusion of force except in instances where it's used in self-defense: meaning, to rectify cases of fraud and theft." Any other moral code will recommend different government policies, particularly moral codes in which there are moral predicates other than property ownership, such as health, happiness, etc.
- mariodiana 11y ago
  Exactly. Any other moral code will initiate the use of force.
asgard1024 11y ago
Who then defines what is fraud? If I can't stop transaction of two other people based on what I think is fraud, who can ever? And if you are telling me that I can't ever stop any transaction of two people, that actually poses extra risk for me, from serial fraudsters gaining too much power. Basically, you cannot model society as two-person interactions. That doesn't capture the power dynamic.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  But is there really a power dynamic? At least with respect to markets, it's much harder to say that there is. The stories about monopolies of market power from the morgue of the Hearst newspapers ( and at varying times, all newspapers emulated the Hearst newspapers ) are mostly just-so stories. And then there are true stories, like Edison using patent law and legbreakers to dominate the film industry.
  - 11y ago

grinnbearit 11y ago

I've had 2 discussions on this topic, I'd love to hear you thoughts on them. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9510919 TLDR, If you believe values (desires) are subjective then any centrally planned system will be inefficient. [edit: formatting]

danbruc 11y ago
Damn, that was a thread I always wanted to reply to but totally didn't manage to in the end.
asgard1024 11y ago
I wouldn't have big problem with the free market (as you describe), if the following big feedback loop of investing would be limited: People can "cheat" (for example give incomplete information, or mislead about how much stuff they have really done, etc.) and then for that, they get more votes about what is socially useful activity? Of course they will reinvest those points into more what they are doing, and at the end of the day, you will end up with people like that controlling the economy. And that's what actually happens - owners of capital decide by huge margin where to invest, because accumulation of capital gives you a leverage which just doing normal work doesn't. It also happens to a lesser extent between other social groups. Now, I see two realistic solutions to this loophole: - Limit personal wealth to some amount (say 100x average) and redistribute the rest. - Limit amount of overall wealth (let's say GDP) than can be subject of competition to a certain percentage (say 50%) and redistribute the rest. These are essentially proposals for having a mixed economy. > any centrally planned system will be inefficient Is democracy central planning or not? I don't think "central planning" is particularly useful category, to be honest. All larger-scale human activities have to be done by cooperation of many people, and this cooperation can be always viewed as central planning, or at least as place where individual values are suppressed.
- grinnbearit 11y ago
  Yes, those are some of the issues with 'Laissez Faire'. There are always winners and losers in any system and I feel that some redistribution to "take the edge of" is a good thing. (But perhaps not your specific policy suggestions). Democracy isn't central planning. It has a similar basis to capitalism actually. If you believe that morals are subjective then it makes sense to give everyone a say in what morals are codified as law. If on the other hand you believe in a single objective moral code, a dictator's for example' then you don't need to make any decisions. Capitalism is the same but with morals switched with values/desires. It may not be the best "type 2" system, but in a subjective values universe any system that replaces it would need to be "type 2" as well.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bobcostas55 11y ago

>In fact, we don't even know if "socially optimal" solution exists Actually we know it doesn't, by way of Arrow's impossibility theorem.

mike_hearn 11y ago

It's been shown that price signals work only in the environment with perfect information and rational actors, but then the price is superfluous! That's a nonsensical argument so I doubt it's been "shown" by anyone. Price signals work better as the rationality and level of informedness of participants goes up, this should be obvious. But it isn't true that you must have perfect information or else prices are entirely useless. What's more, even if you do have ideal and perfectly informed actors, you still need prices. The perfect information is spread out amongst many peoples heads, thus requiring some sort of highly scalable gathering and spreading mechanism (like prices), and even perfectly informed people can still reach different judgements about the relative importance of things. The phenomenon of two people who are clearly experts in a subject vigorously disagreeing with each other is commonplace. So even if you could genetically engineer an economy of telepaths, you'd still need prices to resolve differences in personal perceptions of importance. Ballot-box style voting is not a replacement for markets. You can't literally hold a nationwide vote every time someone wants to buy a loaf of bread, it's too inefficient and anyway, what would the vote say? A much more effective voting mechanism is that you get some "votes" and then can cast them in a kind of auction to get what you want ..... oh, seems we ended up back at prices. Which are in a sense highly democratic.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Actually, in this day and age, its pretty simple to do (take a vote on the price of bread) - just an app. The time for modeling economies around middle-ages village markets is past. We do have good (not perfect) information; we can act rationally.
- scottlocklin 11y ago
  You've obviously never done this in anything more than toy examples.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Whatever can you mean? Nothing concrete to offer? Just felt like a personal attack today?