lvc@cbscd5.UUCP (Larry Cipriani) (10/04/83)
Response to Michael Turner on von Mises: Would you kindly write clearly and succinctly? I can't figure out what you are trying to say. If you are claiming that von Mises ignores the history of Socialist theory or of Socialism in practice, you simply do not know what you are talking about. Socialism means "the socialization of the means of production", translated, that means government control over everything, and everyone. Von Mises's main point in "Socialism" is that a Socialist economy cannot make the necessary economic calculations to decide what to make, how much to make, how much to charge, etc. In short, without a price system, which the Socialist economy throws away, you cannot deliver the goods. Artificially derived prices handed down by government edict bear no relation to real prices and cannot be used succesfully to form a price system. A Socialist economy can receive noneconomic aid from Capitalist economies in the form of price information, but I would guess that this is an insig- nificant form of aid compared to economic aid, because a central authority could not act fast enough, not even with a Cray X-MP. Left to themselves, countries like the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, ..., and France would collapse. But the leaders of our *mixed economy* insist on helping out. I would submit to the fact that a Socialist economy could work in an economy where the degree of division of labor was very low, and where you were dealing with a *very* small market. But in an economy the size of, and as sophisticated as the U.S., forget it. The degree to which the price system of an economy correspondes with reality determines, to a large degree, whether or not that economy will prosper. Larry Cipriani cbosgd!cbscd5!lvc