Talk:Economic calculation problem

message: Furthermore, decentralist socialists would argue that there is no need for a common unit of accounting or, rather, that such a need only derives from the exigencies of economic exchange i.e. as a more efficient form of exchange than barter. In capitalism costs are measured in monetary terms. It is a tautology to argue that only a monetary-based system can measure costs in this fashion. On the other hand, if monetary accounting is supposed to "capture" costs in some other substantive sense one would then have to demonstrate a correlation between these two kinds of "costs". Since this would entail measuring costs directly and not in terms of money, if follows that the economic calculation argument is logically inapplicable.
:I don't entirely understand this, but I know its POV ;) Sam Spade Arb Com election 21:56, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Moved from article

message: Just for clarity:
:1. The aim of my argumentation is not to hold up the USSR as an enviable model.  It is to show that the evidence does not support the economic calculation argument in the way that many suppose.  Caplan's point, that calculation problems did not seem very prominent amongst Soviet worries, is as cogent as Allen's claims about the success of Soviet planning.
:2. There seems to be some doubt as to what the economic calculation argument actually establishes.  Does it show socialism to be impossible?  Or that socialist economies will have lower standards of living that capitalist economies?  Or that socialist economies can be rather efficient but will have certain inefficiencies?  The article should be clear on this but is not.  There doesn't seem to be any doubt amongst scholars that Mises claimed the first.
I'm not an expert on this, and I don't know how best to incorporate my objections into the article, but I'm pretty sure they will help to make for a much more interesting article. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 19:39, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Two points

message: Robert Allen did a summary of his book 
Reviews:
:1. Mark Harrison  (PDF)
:2. R. W. Davies 
:3. Simon Clarke 
:4. Paul Josephson 
Josephson's review is pretty critical, claiming there isn't much value to the kind of study Allen performed, but the other 3 generally seem to be impressed by Allen's analysis. --- Charles Stewart(talk) 20:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resources on Allen's ''From Farm to Factory'' 

message: "It could also be argued that the philosophical basis of the calculation problem has a flaw. Proponents argue that optimum economic settings are unknowable but also purport to know that the market can provide them." I've mentioned Pareto efficiency. Really I cannot think of any reasons that his piece can stand, but maybe someone can give a cite for details? Intangible 00:41, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we're just interpreting it differently. To me, that paragraph simply says "those who support the calculation problem argue that (1) it is impossible to find out what kind of distribution of wealth and resources is best, and (2) the market provides the best distribution of wealth and resources". Obviously, if you can't know which distribution is best, then how do you know that there isn't some possible distribution that is better than the one provided by the market? (note that Pareto efficiency only refers to the best distribution you can get without redistributing wealth) -- Nikodemos 00:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, because of these same economists claiming that interpersonal values cannot be compared (marginalism), because value is subjective. Intangible 01:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is the paragraph being removed? 72.139.119.165 01:12, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Who are those proponents? Intangible 01:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  optimum economic settings 

message: 1)The extended explanation strikes me as incorrect - the problem isn't that the price of consumer goods is unknowable, or even that demand is unkowable, but that without a market in ccapital goods you cannot rationally choose between methods of production - least that's my reading of Mises.  The destruction of the distinction between producer and consumer, and teh break of the link between production and consumption righst (through wages and profits) seems to be at the heart of this - I'll make changes later unless anyone drastically disagrees.--Red Deathy 07:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a difference also between the Mises' argument (calculability) and Hayek's (knowledge). Intangible 20:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

text: True, however demand could be met without being known (as it were) so I think the point about capital goods is more restricted and more relevent.  Anyway, I've tried to upgrade teh example, althoiugh the original was taken straight from Mises it wasn't informative and wasn't really an example more of a short illustration.  I've tried to convey how complicated simple economics can be.--Red Deathy 07:35, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Tidied (IMNHO) extended explanation.  Removed the zero sum stuff, which didn't strike as quite correct - the argument that you cannot have optimal production, doesn't necessarilly mean that you'll have shortages of goods (it could just mean you put in twice as much effort as is necessary to produce them - yes, that excess effort could have made other useful goods, or equally it could be used to have teh good of leisure time).  Later this week I really will purge teh debate section.--Red Deathy 08:04, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Needs a clean up

message: In line with oterh criticism sectiosn of articles, I've stripped this one of twoing and froing, the article per se sets out the case for ECA, let the criticisms stand for themselves.  This is a preliminary to strengthening the wording of the remainign criticisms sections.  One bit at a time.--Red Deathy 13:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no excuse for violating NPOV by massively deleting opposing views. Other criticisms articles and sections include counter-arguments.Ultramarine 14:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hardly violating NPOV -the older version had a 'on one hand and the other' feel many of which were simply restatements of the original proposition.  Let the criticisms stand on their own, as happens in both the Socialism and Capitalism articles.  Articles that read like a debate are oor.  Besides it's a false sort of NPOV to have that, the description of the article itself should set ouit the "case for" the ECA, and then just mention the critciisms (which are currently badly worded, IMNSHO.--Red Deathy 14:34, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, deleting opposing views is simply not acceptable. Read the policy. You may reorganize, but do not delete them.Ultramarine 14:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAICS the opposing views to the critciisms section are in the first three paras, I'll try and reorganise, and tidy, I can see two small sections that can go, and one that's long and pointless, I'll defend in the change statements.--Red Deathy 14:41, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, read about NPOV. You are not allowed to remove opposing views. Wikipedia is not a soapbox for one side.Ultramarine 16:09, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

text: No, we cannot just purge links for no reason. For example just the first one removed: The Socialist Calculation Debate Why? Ultramarine 16:08, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Again, I will remove everything unsourced according to policy, there are lots of sources from both sides available, no need for original research. Regarding the links, Wikipedia prefer "secondary sources", if this is even applicable to this subject.Ultramarine 16:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Secondary soruces are for citations, links are better for primary texts.  I'll support your changes, but pelase do lose the pointless trotsky quote, it goes on for ever for no good reason...and please do consider some of my heading changes and ordering changes--Red Deathy 16:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is your own idea, not policy. I disagree, generally it is more useful with an overview than reading through a dozen economic books and papers. The trotsky quote could be place in a footnote and briefly mentioned.Ultramarine 16:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that is my own idea, we do have some grounds for judgement, such as examples, surely an explanation doesn't need to be sourced - truth claims must be sourced, but we can word how we work out truth claims (I happen to think some sort of worked example is needed to clarify the article).--Red Deathy 17:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Also see WP:EXTERNAL I think the first not-to-link criterion is enough to kibosh many of those linked articles.  I'll leave that decision to others, but think it should be done.--Red Deathy 17:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." Obviously the first link that you have deleted, see above, contains lots of valuable information. Read it.Ultramarine 18:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Urk, I see - I hadn't deleted that link, I made it a reference for the lead, which is a stronger use of such an article.  In general I'd prefer if some more of the links were moved to references...--Red Deathy 07:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: That's excellent - I'm even happier without criticis sections - it gives POV warriors an easy target (and debate sections are even easier).  Fantastic, thanks muchly.--Red Deathy 07:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New layout 

message: I've removed the restored debate section because it harmed the new layout we've all worked so hard on, and because it was unsourced and unencyclopaedic.  If editors wish to add a section on 'decentralised socialism' they should source it and make it conform to the new layout of the artickle, IMNSHO.--Red Deathy 07:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really, sourced critiqes of the ECA are provided, in the persons of Ollman, Robinson and Ticktin (and the brief mention of Neurath) - centralism v. decentralism is irrelevent to the argument as presented.--Red Deathy (talk) 09:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Central planning only  matters in the Hayekian form of the argument by informational complexity - Mises' position - that relative factors of production and thus production methods cannot be adequately assessed still applies.  Regulated stock control  could counter that, even if it was part of a centralised planning system, but centralism v. decentralism is neitehr here nor there.  If you can find a reputable source on regulated stock control, please do present a para on that point, though I think that really the steady state and abundance  arguments already cover most of the ground.--Red Deathy (talk) 08:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing debate 

message: Hope I'm not rocking the boat adding the new section (which IMNSHO is blanced) but I think it's a useful addition.
BTW, anyone reckon we should try for featured article?--Red Deathy 09:48, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Steady state section 

message: Although Mises is the preeminent figure in the Socialist Calculation Debate, and the publication of Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth is in many ways a logical starting point for any article on the SCD (aka the Economic Calculation Problem, or ECP hereafter,) a thorough exegis of the events that led to Mises formulating the ECP might be edifying.  I suggest elaborating on the connection between general equilibrium analysis and the ECP:
Following the work of neoclassical economists like Alfred Marshall and Leon Walras, economics at the end of the nineteenth century became more formalized and acquired a mathematical rigor that was formerly associated only with the physical sciences.  Extrapolating from a model that focused on welfare effects in static equilibrium, a growing number of neoclassical economists after Walras maintained that socialism was both desirable and technically feasible.  Walras's work on general equilibrium theory was extended by his student Vilfredo Pareto, who applied his concept of the Pareto Optimum to the socialist economy.
Pareto established to the satisfaction of many economists that it was possible to maximize welfare under socialism in Les Systemes Socialists (1902-1903).  Pareto's student Enrico Barrone elaborated on the welfare implications of the Pareto Optimum under socialism in The Ministry of Production in the Collectivist State (1908), concluding that if the socialist ministry of production set prices equal to cost of production and costs of production were minimized, then resources would be allocated optimally and welfare would be maximized.  The ministry of production would produce at a perfectly competitive price and quantity and receive revenue equal to the producer surplus that would be achieved by selling at a monopoly price and quantity.  Thus, by using general equilibrium analysis and the tools of welfare economics, Barrone was able to reach a consensus among neoclassical economists that rational allocation under socialism was feasible.  This conclusion did not go unchallenged.
Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises asserted the logical incoherence of collectivist planning in Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (1920).  etc., etc....
Prime Director 22:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the Socialist Calculation Debate 

message: Shouldn' there be something on Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921)?
After all it was the first soviet reaction to a real-life economic calculation problem.. and it goes to the heart of the question of whether calculation is possible in the absence of private property in capital goods..  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.199.122.25 (talk) 08:38, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  NEP 

message: Is Project Cybersyn relevant to this article? It was a country-wide network implemented by the Allende government to coordinate economic information, so it seems to be an attempt to address this problem. Damburger 06:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Cybersyn is tangentally relvent, buti's not worth going into great detail (otehrwise we'd have to start including Sovnarkom and other attempts at planning).  Reference should be made, but without including material that is best suited to Cybersyn's own page.--Red Deathy (talk) 14:18, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cybernsyn 

message: Just a quick note on the reversion I just made.
#The changes to the paragraph about Hayek were changing comments derived from the source cited (I've just checked, and the comments in the reference are closer to the wording in the article).
#The stuff contra Lange was uncited entirely, and itself irrelevent, since the thrust of Langs position is that money and pricing is required, i.e. that Socialism would require markets, which is essentially accepting the economic calculation argument as true.  Debates on the merits of "market socialism" aren't really relevent here.
# Oh, and the additions on Lange read more like a debate - i.e. sounded unencyclopaedic, if Lange is irrelevent he should be excised from the article, or the significant rebuttal should be attributed.--Red Deathy (talk) 09:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  My reversions 

message: Thankyou for being so polite :) 
1) On the subject of market socialism, I thought that was the main outcome? Austrian's come up with the idea, socialists wander off, eventually return with market socialism (Poland etc). I thought it warranted far more than a single line. In retrospect, I think the Lange Model deserves at least a mention.
2) While the point of the amount of information has been touched upon, it was never explicitly mentioned. It is definitely not mentioned that in a market economy people can act on information that they do not explicitly realise is important, unlike in a command economy.
3) By most I meant I presumed that most did- Paul Samuelson seemed to think so, and he agreed with the majority of literature I’ve read, along with my instructor (and a Keynesian instructor at that). Should I re-insert specifying him?
4) "However, economics is the science of scarce resources: in a situation of abundance, it is unnecessary." I thought this was basic economic stuff- it's on page one of all the economics textbooks I've read. Alain Anderton, Economics, Fourth edition and Economics, 16th edition, Samuelson, Nordhaus are the two examples that spring to mind. 
You also said this repeated the preceding point- I'm sorry, but I can't find where this point was raised prior to my interjection.
5) You're probably right about the noun status of market socialism, proper or otherwise.
Finally, I think the layout could be improved.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Larklight (talk • contribs) 15:14, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, (1) Lange & Market Socialism are mentionjed later on, but they are not the topic of the article, so don't really belong int he lead (IMNSHO). (2) The best way to deal with that is to upgrade the sections on informational complexity, I'd suggest, which avoids that "tit-for-tat" appearance of some previous versions of the article. (3) It's much better to name a critic than most, open to accusations of weasel wording.  Better still is to have a verifyiable reference to that effect. (4) Perhaps I'm being a touch heterodox on this matter, Economics is from the greek meaning household management, you'd still have to manage the household even if you had abundance - intriguingly IIRC George Bataille refigured the conception of economics as dealing with the superabundance of wealth that we have - how can we possibly catch/use it all?  The preceding sentence, stating that the economic calculation problem disappears with abundnance was basically saying the same thing, which is why I thought it was atautlogous - essentially, socialism becomes "possible" is abundance is "possible"...--Red Deathy (talk) 07:44, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Larklight those changes are much better (IMNSHO) I've only added the "citation needed" tags because this article has been fully referenced up till now, and it'd be nice if you (or someone else) could add refs on those two points.--Red Deathy (talk) 07:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: A different set of reversions

message: There are a number of serious problems with this whole page. The most glaring omission is the lack of any discussion of entrepreneurship. The role of entrepreneurs was explicit and central to the 1922 book by von Mises. The authors of this page cite the 1920 article by von Mises. One cannot speak authoritatively about the calculation debate without first going through the 1922 book carefully and completely (as I have). The role of entrepreneurs is stressed by modern Austrians as well (Kirzner, Lavoie, Boettke, MacKenzie, Salerno…).
A second major omission is the lack of any discussion of socialist bureaucracy. Part of the 1922 book examines deficiencies that Mises saw with bureaucracies, at least as far as managing commerce is concerned (i.e. Mises was OK with public administration of police and courts, but not “consumer industries”). Mises followed up his 1922 discussion of socialist bureaucracy with a 1944 book entitled “Bureaucracy”. The lack of any discussion of this component of the von Mises argument leaves a massive hole in this entry.
The next major problem is its wholly inadequate discussion of the Lange-Taylor model. The Lange-Taylor trial and error proposal for market socialism definitely does not try to incorporate markets into socialism. The Lange-Taylor proposal aims at simulating markets though trial and error. Trial and error aims at generating the results of markets without actually having markets. Red Deathy is wrong in his assertion that Lange thought “that Socialism would require markets”. Lange thought that socialism allowed for the simulation of some markets. Seeing as I wrote my dissertation on Lange, read and reread everything of his, and have published my work, I think there is some chance that I might know more about Lange than anyone who is posting here (unless Jan Toporowski is posting here). Furthermore, the work of Lerner, Dickinson, Durbin, and Dobb gets no play in this entry.
Next, the remarks from Joan Robinson apply to this debate, but are not a part of this debate. Robinson was into the Cambridge Capital Controversy, not the Calculation Debate. To discuss JR, while only mentioning Lange and ignoring Lerner and the others is absurd.
The next major omission concerns recent modifications of market socialism by Roemer, Bardhan, Shweikart, Burczak, and Junker. These are the five leading scholars on this side of the issue in recent years. Leaving them out renders this entry absurd. Joe Stiglitz gets no mention either, and he did write a book (albeit a lousy one) on this subject.
Yet another omission concerns the specific role of financial markets in the calculation issue. Austrians, like Lachmann, MacKenzie, and Schumpeter have made the importance of financial markets to the calculation issue clear. This article does not mention any of this literature.
Finally, as far as the parts of the calc debate that are mentioned is concerned, the reading on Hayek and Mises in this entry is so thin that it can’t be taken seriously. Yes, Mises wrote something about hectoliters and such, but this does not really explain the calculation problem. Furthermore, the references to how the problem can be solved in a non-growth economy or with optimization equations indicates that the authors of this page need to read a few thousand pages on this subject. The economic calculation problem does not exist under static conditions implied by non growth or by a set of simultaneous equations. There is no calculation problem to solve in these conditions.
The general problem with this article is that its authors/editors have only a superficial understanding of a tiny fragment of the calculation problem. Some of you might think that you are learned experts on this issue, but this is not even close to being true. ES  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.33.207.127 (talk) 00:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there's a lot to deal with there, you certainly seem able to bring a lot to this article, and I hope you can come up with some positive proposals for additions.  On bureaucracy, isn't that covered in the discussion of hayeks computational complexity?  I accept I was wrong about Lange, I only cited him to have something to comply with WP:V for mentioning market socialism (which it would be undue weight to go into too heavilly on this page).  Likewise with Joan Robinson, who was simply a representative author who could be quoted.  I should add, I agree, I'm not an expert, I'm a layman who has simply read some of the accessible and popular debates that surround this topic.  The stuff about statics and abundance is included because some argue that those conditions make socialism possible (refuting some of the stronger claims for the problem).  Please bear in mind, though, this is a general encyclopaedia artice, that should not run to thousands of pages, it should include only the broad outlines, and sufficient references for interested readers to follow up.--Red Deathy (talk) 07:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wish I could help. Would like to, but have never read anything specifically on it. Still, clearly there is a lot of work to do. Larklight (talk) 21:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ES, thanks, if you can't find the time, could you post some suggested basic reading that us monkeys could use to improve the page in the directions you suggest? :) --Red Deathy (talk) 07:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. I've read the road to serfdom (a fair while ago) and own Constitution of liberty, although I haven't read all off the latter, and doubt it'll be much help. Nevertheless I think the former should be quite useful, if we have nothing better. Ooo. What about http://mises.org/ ? Maybe we should have a crack at this... http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae2_1_1.pdf This last one looks pritty good, and I think we can count on it not to underestimate Mises's point. http://www.mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp Larklight (talk) 16:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

text: I bow to your supereor knowledge. Don't worry about it being too long, it looks a lot more aproachable with sub-headings. Just feed us more stuff on the Socialism side! Larklight (talk) 17:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for all that, Anon, I think some of that will require copy editting - reads a bit essayish and needs a bit of NPOVing to Wikipedia standards (i.e. changignt hings to say "Hayek claims", etc.), it'll take a while, as will sprucing the refs.  plenty of work for the rest of us.--Red Deathy (talk) 08:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: The Whole Page

message: OK, I restored (possibly temporarily) the recently deleted external links.  My main rational being that this is despite its mainstream acceptance, a pretty fringe subject (i.e. a great many people take the acceptance of the argument as read, and so tend not to discuss/dispute it), so linking to some grey pages is appropriate, particularly to get the flavour of the controversy aspet.  Authors link Cox and the LA are appropriate, even if not neutral academic sources.--Red Deathy (talk) 08:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links 

message: This section should really be used to only detail the counter-arguments provided to the Economic calculation problem. It's confusing and inefficient to mix arguments in a tit-for-tat manner. Please remove the statements in the section that reflect pro-ECP arguments. They don't belong there. Or, at least clean it up so that a reasonable person could come by the article, read it, and not be confused as to where the camps stand. You can't just use the wikipedia page to argue. That's not what it's there for.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.246.239 (talk) 23:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and a determined effort was made a year or so ago to get rid of the tit-for-tat arguing.  I tried to maintain that approach, but couldn't sustain a consensus (Some editors couldn't let a point go without entering its supposed refutation).  I've renamed the section criticism, which may help a little, since criticism entails a touch of debate.  I've tried and failed, so if you want to be bold and make changes, I'll help.--Red Deathy (talk) 08:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counter-arguments 

message: "Efficiency of Markets" contains more counter-criticism (apologetics) than criticism. A victim of "on the other hand"-ism.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.218.107 (talk) 08:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "On the other hand"-ism 

message: I jumped from a section in the Marxism article to a link titled "Economic Calculation Debate" which apparently took place in the 1920's.  However, i was redirected to this article "Economic Calculation Problem", while they are probably extremely related articles, it seems the redirect should be moved, and a new article should be created, or perhaps a new section within this one to describe the physical debate, if there was one.  Not being an expert, it would seem its either inconsistent, or poorly explained. All I found was a mention that Mises proposed the problem in 1920's.  I don't see any information about a debate (as a debate needs two people), just that Mises proposed the problem.  I would propose a new article, and title it "The Socialist Calculation Debate", and possibly outline the arguments made at that time. Thekappen (talk) 04:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title Disambiguation, or article edit 

message: Into two articles, one on the "Economic calculation problem" (the efficient allocation of goods in a society) and one on the actual "Socialist Calculation Debate" (a bunch of people writing papers and arguing with each other)?radek (talk) 00:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  shouldn't this be split? 

message: Whoops, I meant to put this discussion at the WikiProject Economics page. CRETOG8(t/c) 18:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  New School History of Economic Thought RS 

message: The argument that an efficient command economy under socialism is impossible because there would be no way to reliably price capital goods was not invented by Mises, as this article currently claims.  You can find the argument made very clearly in Max Weber's Economy and Society (Part One, Ch. II, Sec. 12; the current Wikipedia biography of Weber provides a quote).  That book wasn't published until 1922, but it was based on lectures that Weber gave in 1909-14.  Weber himself died in 1920, the same year that Mises published his paper on the economic calculation problem.  It's remarkable that Mises's paper doesn't cite Weber, since Mises was very well aware of Weber's work and we know from this interview with Gottfried Haberler that Weber was one of the main topics of discussion during Mises's private seminars in Vienna, in the years immediately after World War I. - Eb.hoop (talk) 19:32, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Max Weber's priority 

message: Maskin's (2008) Nobel lecture, AER volume 98 (3) describes the debates between Lange/Lerner and Hayek/von Mises as the inspiration for mechanism design theory, starting with the work of Leonid Hurwicz. It seems this page could be improved by bringing in a more modern point of view that reflects how mechanism design has shed light on the economic calculation problem. Rinconsoleao (talk) 12:21, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mechanism design 

message: Shouldn't this really be under Socialist calculation debate (now a redirect, though the article lede pretty much admits that that is how it's known in the sources) since that's how this is known in the literature? A more general problem is that this is written from a very Austrian POV (Mises and Hayek refuted Lerner and Lange and all that) rather than presenting a balanced overview. As it happens I actually do think that Hayek and Mises did do a good job of refuting the "market socialism" argument, but this article is so skewed towards their view it's a bit embarrassing. In terms of a general clean up of that NPOV issue, I don't even know where to start.Volunteer Marek
Or to put it another way, the Socialist calculation debate was a debate between two sides. This article is named after - and focuses on - the arguments put forth by one of the sides. That's not balanced.Volunteer Marek 02:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are really good points, I think. But moving the article is likely to be easier than rebalancing the content... bobrayner (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: If I have some time I'll try to rewrite at least the lede over the weekend.Volunteer Marek 23:30, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be easier to split the article into two, one being called "Socialist calculation debate" which can cover the historical debate between neoclassical economists and the Austrian school critics of socialist planning as well as modern contributions to the debate by Cockshott et al. The current article titled "Economic calculation problem" should focus more on the specific critique of central planning by Mises et al.-Battlecry 09:09, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: That could work.Volunteer Marek 06:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change 

message: I would like added in this article examples of how the Soviet Union had economic calculation. 
What actually happens is that “world prices,” i.e., capitalist world prices, are used in all intra-[Soviet] bloc trade. They are translated into rubles . . . and entered into bilateral clearing accounts. To the question, “What would you do if there were no capitalist world?” came only the answer “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” In the case of electricity the bridge is already under their feet; there has been great difficulty in pricing it since there is no world market. (Wiles, “Changing Economic Thought in Poland,” pp. 202–03)
http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap12d.asp
chapter 12 Footnote 72 of "Man Economy and state" by Murray Rothbard
I think this is extremely important. The Austrian view, of course, is that the Nazis and Soviets were as successful as they were because they could copy prices from the capitalistic world.  
Also there should be some and references to the article "Socialism: Still Impossible After All These Years" which talks about the Soviets themselves admitting the problem of economic calculation and the problems they had in creating a moneyless society also from the article "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" where Mises talks about how Lenin wanted to spread statistics to the masses because of the problem of economic calculation. The article has a section on theory and criticisms but should have a whole section on concrete examples. 
From "Economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth" page 31 he is quoting Lenin. Mises says that Lenin gives a most unsatisfactory answer to how economic calculation is to be carried on. This is an important quote to add to a new section because it reveals the Soviet need for economic calculation
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
bring statistics to the masses, make it popular, so that the active population will
gradually learn by themselves to understand and realize how much and what kind
of work must be done, how much and what kind of recreation should be taken, so
that the comparison of the economy’s industrial results in the case of individual
communes becomes the object of general interest and education.29''
Also from "Socialism: Still Impossible After All These Years" by Peter J. Boettke and Peter T. Leeson
http://mises.org/journals/scholar/Boettke.pdf
Quoted from page 17:
Why this tremendous failure? If we are to take the quotations from Lenin,
Bukharin and others from above seriously, the issue of calculation, not incentives, stood at the center of socialism’s ability to perform. Thus as the historian of War Communism, Lancelot Lawton pointed out, War Communism’s failure stemmed from its “disregard of economic calculation” (1932 I, 107). The “attempts of the Bolsheviks to establish moneyless accounting ended with no accounting at all.” Thus in striving “to make all
men wealthy, the Soviet state had made it impossible for any man to be otherwise than poor” (1932 I, 111). This reason for War Communism’s failure was reiterated by the Russian economist Boris Brutzkus as well. Writing near the end of the War Communist period in 1920, he put it this way: the attempt to substitute a central plan for the spontaneous process of market evaluation led to the “atrophy of economic calculation” in the Soviet Union. The failure of War Communism resulted from the fact that it “no longer possesses the sensitive barometer provided by the market prices” (1982, 37). And in the aftermath of the failure of War Communism, Nikolai Bukharin himself stated that Mises was “one of the most learned critics of communism” and that the economic catastrophe that was evident in 1921 did resemble the picture “predicted” by Mises. (1925, 188)15  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gravyten577 (talk • contribs) 02:36, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Rothbard would hardly be the one to discuss this topic.  Start by studying the work of Nobel laureate Leonid Kantorovich and others actually responsible for managing the Soviet economy. 
 SPECIFICO  talk  02:33, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The Rothbard discussion of electricity pricing is funny.  Capitalist economies don't know how to price electricity either.  Rothbard might just have said it's because we're not purely capitalist.  Leave it up to whoever produces electricity and then by definition the problem is solved and there's no calculation problem.  The topic of the article seems ambiguous.  Is it the actual problem or the debate as framed by anti-socialists?  SPECIFICO  talk  03:02, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet examples of economic calculation 

message: If I understood correctly, the article states that if a Turing Machine can simulate any other Turnig Machines, central planing should be in no disadvantge to a descentralized one. I see many problems with this:
- It assumes humans are turing machines, which is highly debatable to say the least. We're yet to see a Turing Machine having or expressing desires, for instance, an important factor in economics.
- It assumes central planners will have the same amount of information than the group of descentralized consumers - it's akin to say that it's completely possible to know beforehand if a new prodcut would be sucessful. Actually, it's much more bold than that since we're not talking about a single product, but the whole economic production.
- It blatanly ignores that while one Turing Machine can, indeed, simulate all others Turing Machines, it will take time in doing so. By the time the central planners finished evaluating every person from its population, even if we assume they have an intimate knowledge of every citizen wishes and needs, these wished and needs, along other external economic variables (technology available, climate, foreing trade opportunities, etc) will have changed too, rendering the previous analysis outdated. 
I could write more, but I believe this is sufficient to show that, while it seems cool to use a Turing Machine analogy, it simply doesn't hold.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.209.62.165 (talk) 03:26, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turing machines? 

message: This blog has reviews of Mises and says that his theories don't apply to a mutualist or Ricardian type economy of workers owned companies in a market economy because there are still price singles involved. It seems relevant  
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/10/mises-on-rational-economic-planning.html  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ultan42 (talk • contribs) 21:06, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com's "mises-on-rational-economic-planning." 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Economic calculation problem. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070105024440/http://www.phil.uu.nl/~janb/phloofin/eclog.html to http://www.phil.uu.nl/~janb/phloofin/eclog.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070614110711/http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/pubdocenti/HEI99.pdf to http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/pubdocenti/HEI99.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:05, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Cockshott and Cottrell's approach described in Towards a New Socialism is old, as well as the criticism it received. I took the liberty of including an essay by Cosma Shalizi on why the economic calculation problem is insurmountable published in 2012, as well as mentioning the upcoming book by Leigh Phillips on why corporations like Amazon and Walmart are existing examples of large scale centrally planned economies as a placeholder, once the book is released hopefully it'll generate discourse that can be included — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.153.22.2 (talk • contribs) 04:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I have read Shalizi's post and studied the relevant literature, and the argument is a bit lacking. Shalizi is right that the linear model assumed by Kantorovich is insufficient. Non-convexities exist, but they can be dealt with by mixed-integer programming. MIP is NP in general, but economic programming may well be of a class for which approximate solutions can be found in polynomial time, similar to how many linear programs can be solved in linear time if they're sufficiently well-conditioned. We don't really know yet.  KetchupSalt (talk) 16:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updating the Use of Technology Section 

message: This fragment doesn't represent a relevant opinion in the issue. Left-anarchists and another ones have a very fringe position about economic calculation problem that nobody cares in the main scholar discussion (who in Economics talks about Proudhon, Kropotkin or Malatesta? - Malatesta indeed was just a writer of manifestos not an scholar in anyway). Also, it is so no-pertinent that it doesn't talk really about economic calculation problem (prices and entrepreneurship) but about "centralization" problems in organizations that is not the same issue.
"However, it is important to note that central planning has been criticized by socialists who advocated decentralized mechanisms of economic coordination, including mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and anarcho-communists Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta before the Austrian school critique. Central planning was later criticized by socialist economists such as Janos Kornai and Alec Nove. Robin Cox has argued that the economic calculation argument can only be successfully rebutted on the assumption that a moneyless socialist economy was to a large extent spontaneously ordered via a self-regulating system of stock control which would enable decision-makers to allocate production goods on the basis of their relative scarcity using calculation in kind. This was only feasible in an economy where most decisions were decentralised.[3]"
--Krapulat (talk) 13:37, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economic calculation problem and relevant sides 

message: Here's an economic calculation problem solved within RBE which unfortunately hasn't been addressed here at all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77wGCsVe2Ik - Douglas Mallette - Science, Engineering and Technology for Human Concern
https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=SN&page=1&hl=fr&v=IVUz6uUi9AU - Resource Based Economy vs. Libertarianism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxjwBZjADiM - Freedomain Radio Debates The Venus Project/Zeitgeist Moving Forward
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FDIne7M9o  - Economic Calculation in a Natural Law / RBE
Also books TZM Defined and The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression (2017) provide comprehensive data on how RBE works. Cheers!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badmaan (talk • contribs) 00:06, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resource-based economy calculations 

message: I just saw User:Adakiko's revert of Paul Cockshott's reply to Cosma Shalizi. Since we prefer peer reviewed academic sources, should not also Shalizi's post be removed? It too just cites a blog post. Personally I think the debate is interesting, but two blog posts are perhaps not up to snuff.. KetchupSalt (talk) 10:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Academic papers, even peer reviewed are wp:primary sources. wp:Secondary or, better yet, tertiary sources are preferred. With this type of article, one would likely be hard pressed to find secondary let alone tertiary sources. Blogs are usually strongly discouraged; there are some that are considered RS: Stephen Barrett on wp:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Quackwatch for one. Adakiko (talk) 10:36, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Should we remove the Shalizi mention then? I've read quite a bit of literature on linear programming and mathematical programming in general and Shalizi's objections when it comes to complexity are far removed from praxis, that praxis being heuristics. KetchupSalt (talk) 10:59, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Cosma Shalizi does have a Wiki article which has hat notes suggesting questionable sources. I can't judge the quality of the Cosma Shalizi content. The comments on the Shalizi article seem to question it as well. I would suggest being wp:BOLD, removing it with a detailed edit summary suggesting why and/or linking to this note talk:Economic calculation problem#Shalizi. (I added an template:anchor to shorten the link) Cheers Adakiko (talk) 17:41, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed it and added the link here as you suggest. Perhaps if Cockshott and Shalizi get into a more formal debate that may be worth mentioning in the article. I feel I should mention also that Shalizi is not an Austrian, but roughly a social democrat as far as I can tell. KetchupSalt (talk) 13:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

text: The anon who added that Shalizi sentence and link geolocates to the same location as another anon who had been adding wp:CITESPAM Adakiko (talk) 17:45, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the Cockshott vs Shalizi debate