Don't Tell Me That The Socialist Calculation Debate Isn't Still Relevant?

|Peter Boettke|

Here is some evidence from the LSE that the lessons the socialist calculation debate has to offer have not been learned -- Why Market Socialism Is A  Viable Alternative To Neoliberalism.  The issues that plague socialist economic planning must be continually diagnosed and emphasized in the professional and popular dialogue. Incentive compatibility and informational efficiency just brush on the topic, and the problems that we have learned go much deeper into the nature of knowledge and the process of economic activity.  Why the main theoretical insights this debate has to offer haven't been fully absorbed into the contemporary inquiry in comparative political economy remains one of the main intellectual puzzles to crack.

There is some good news, however, in this regard.  The Mercatus Center has made available Don Lavoie's brilliant Rivalry and Central Planning --- which is just a great place to learn about the debate and its implications for both theoretical and empirical inquiry into the workings of alternative institutional arrangements in economic systems.  Lavoie's work is part of a new series edited by my colleagues Virgil Storr and Stefanie Haeffele-Balch -- Advanced Studies in Political Economy.