A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture
and/or territory. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group
of people understood as defined by those features. A nation is generally
more overtly political than an ethnic group; it has been described as "a fully mobilized or institutionalized ethnic group". Some nations are equated with ethnic groups (see ethnic nationalism and nation state) and some are equated with an affiliation with a social and political constitution (see civic nationalism and multiculturalism). A nation has also been defined as a cultural-political community that has become conscious of its autonomy, unity and particular interests.
Benedict Anderson characterised a nation as an "imagined community", and Paul James sees it as an "abstract community".
A nation is an imagined community in the sense that the material
conditions exist for imagining extended and shared connections and that
it is objectively impersonal, even if each individual in the nation
experiences themselves as subjectively part of an embodied unity with
others. For the most part, members of a nation remain strangers to each
other and will likely never meet. Hence the phrase, "a nation of strangers" used by such writers as American journalist Vance Packard.
Etymology and terminology
The English word nation came from the Latin natio, supine of verb nascar « to birth » (supine : natum), through French. In Latin, natio represents the children of the same birth and also a human group of same origin. By Cicero, natio is used for "people". Old French word nacion – meaning "birth" (naissance), "place of origin" -, which in turn originates from the Latin word natio (nātĭō) literally meaning "birth".
nation, n. (14c) 1. A large group of
people having a common origin, language, and tradition and usu.
constituting a political entity. • When a nation is coincident with a
state, the term nation-state is often used....
...
2. A community of people inhabiting a defined territory and
organized under an independent government; a sovereign political
state....
The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for:
State (polity) or sovereign state: a government which controls a specific territory, which may or may not be associated with any particular ethnic group
Country: a geographic territory, which may or may not have an affiliation with a government or ethnic group
Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet.
Depending on the meaning of "nation" used, the term "nation state" could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states, or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group.
Medieval nations
Susan Reynolds
has argued that many European medieval kingdoms were nations in the
modern sense except that political participation in nationalism was
available only to a limited prosperous and literate class. Adrian Hastings
has claimed that England's Anglo-Saxon kings mobilized mass nationalism
in their struggle to repel Norse invasions. He argues that Alfred the Great, in particular, drew on biblical nationalism, using biblical language in his law code and that during his reign selected books of the Bible were translated into Old English
to inspire Englishmen to fight to turn back the Norse invaders.
Hastings argues for a strong renewal of English nationalism (following a
hiatus after the Norman conquest) beginning with the translation of the complete bible into English by the Wycliffe circle in the 1380s, positing that English nationalism and the English nation have been continuous since that time.
Another example of Medieval nationalism is the Declaration of Arbroath, a document produced by English nobles and clergy during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
The purpose of the document was to demonstrate to the Pope that
Scotland was indeed a nation of its own, with its own unique culture,
history and language and that it was indeed an older nation than
England. The document went on to justify the actions of Robert the Bruce
and his forces in resisting the occupation and to chastise the English
for having violated Scottish sovereignty without justification. The
propaganda campaign supplemented a military campaign on the part of the
Bruce, which after the Battle of Bannockburn
was successful and eventually resulted in the end of England's
occupation and recognition of Scottish independence on the part of the
English crown. The document is widely seen as an early example of both Scottish nationalism and popular sovereignty.
A significant early use of the term nation, as natio, occurred at Medieval universities to describe the colleagues in a college or students, above all at the University of Paris, who were all born within a pays,
spoke the same language and expected to be ruled by their own familiar
law. In 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris, Jean Gerson was elected twice as a procurator for the French natio. The University of Prague adopted the division of students into nationes: from its opening in 1349 the studium generale which consisted of Bohemian, Bavarian, Saxon and Silesian nations.
In a similar way, the nationes were segregated by the Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem, who maintained at Rhodes
the hostels from which they took their name "where foreigners eat and
have their places of meeting, each nation apart from the others, and a
Knight has charge of each one of these hostels, and provides for the
necessities of the inmates according to their religion", as the Spanish
traveller Pedro Tafur noted in 1436.
In his article, "The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of the Modernist Theory of Nationalism", Philip S. Gorski argues that the first modern nation-state was the Dutch Republic, created by a fully modern political nationalism rooted in the model of biblical nationalism. In a 2013 article "Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states", Diana Muir Appelbaum expands Gorski's argument to apply to a series of new, Protestant, sixteenth-century nation states. A similar, albeit broader, argument was made by Anthony D. Smith in his books, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity and Myths and Memories of the Nation.
In her book Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Liah Greenfeld argued that nationalism was invented in England by 1600. According to Greenfeld, England was “the first nation in the world".
Social science
In the late 20th century, many social scientists argued that there were two types of nations, the civic nation of which French republican society was the principal example and the ethnic nation
exemplified by the German peoples. The German tradition was
conceptualized as originating with early 19th-century philosophers, like
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and referred to people sharing a common language, religion, culture, history, and ethnic origins, that differentiate them from people of other nations. On the other hand, the civic nation was traced to the French Revolution
and ideas deriving from 18th-century French philosophers. It was
understood as being centred in a willingness to "live together", this
producing a nation that results from an act of affirmation. This is the vision, among others, of Ernest Renan.
Present day analysis tend to be based in socio-historical studies about the building of national identity
sentiments, trying to identify the individual and collective
mechanisms, either conscient or non-conscient, intended or un-intended.
According to some of these studies, it seems that the State often plays a significant role, and communications, particularly of economic content, also have a high significance.
There is an ongoing debate about the future of nations − about
whether this framework will persist as is and whether there are viable
or developing alternatives.
Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post–Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy and capitalist free market economics had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post–Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History and the Last Man, argued that the world had reached a Hegelian "end of history".
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology
had ended, the world had reverted only to a normal state of affairs
characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the
primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and
religious lines.
Postnationalism
is the process or trend by which nation states and national identities
lose their importance relative to supranational and global entities.
Several factors contribute to its aspects including economic globalization, a rise in importance of multinational corporations, the internationalization of financial markets, the transfer of socio-political power from national authorities to supranational entities, such as multinational corporations, the United Nations and the European Union and the advent of new information and culture technologies such as the Internet. However attachment to citizenship and national identities often remains important.
Jan Zielonka of the University of Oxford states that "the future
structure and exercise of political power will resemble the medieval
model more than the Westphalian one" with the latter being about
"concentration of power, sovereignty and clear-cut identity" and neo-medievalism meaning "overlapping authorities, divided sovereignty, multiple identities and governing institutions, and fuzzy borders".
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by a group of non-governmental entities. The distinction between private and personal property varies depending on political philosophy, with socialist perspectives making a hard distinction between the two, while others blend the two together. As a legal concept, private property is defined and enforced by a country's political system.
History
Ideas about and discussion of private property date back at least as far as Plato.
Prior to the 18th century, English speakers generally used the word "property" in reference to land ownership. In England, "property" came to have a legal definition in the 17th century Private property defined as property owned by commercial entities was invented with the emergence of the great European trading companies of the 17th century.
The issue of the enclosure of agricultural land in England, especially as debated in the 17th and 18th centuries, accompanied efforts in philosophy and political thought—by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), James Harrington (1611–1677) and John Locke (1632–1704), for example—to address the phenomenon of property ownership.
In arguing against supporters of absolute monarchy, John Locke
conceptualized property as a "natural right" that God had not bestowed
exclusively on the monarchy; the labour theory of property.
This stated that property is a natural result of labor improving upon
nature; and thus by virtue of labor expenditure, the laborer becomes
entitled to its produce.
Influenced by the rise of mercantilism,
Locke argued that private property was antecedent to and thus
independent of government. Locke distinguished between "common
property", by which he meant common land,
and property in consumer goods and producer-goods. His chief argument
for property in land ownership was that it led to improved land
management and cultivation over common land.
In the 18th century, during the Industrial Revolution, the moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723–1790), in contrast to Locke, drew a distinction between the "right to property" as an acquired right, and natural rights.
Smith confined natural rights to "liberty and life". Smith also drew
attention to the relationship between employee and employer and
identified that property and civil government were dependent upon each
other, recognizing that "the state of property must always vary with the
form of government". Smith further argued that civil government could
not exist without property, as government's main function was to define
and safeguard property ownership.
In the 19th century, the economist and philosopher Karl Marx
(1818–1883) provided an influential analysis of the development and
history of property formations and their relationship to the technical productive forces of a given period. Marx's conception of private property has proven influential for many subsequent economic theories and for communist, socialist and anarchist, political movements, and led to the widespread association of private property - particularly private property in the means of production - with capitalism.
Legal and real world aspects
Proprietas Privata (PP) British period marker in San Martin, St. Paul's Bay, Malta
Private property is a legal concept defined and enforced by a country's political system. The area of law that deals with the subject is called property law. The enforcement of property law concerning private property is a matter of public expense.
In many political systems, the government requests that owners pay for the privilege of ownership. A property tax is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property, usually levied on real estate.
The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in
which the property is located. It may be imposed annually or at the time
of a real estate transaction, such as in real estate transfer tax. Under a property-tax system, the government requires or performs an appraisal
of the monetary value of each property, and tax is assessed in
proportion to that value. The four broad types of property taxes are
land, improvements to land (immovable man-made objects, such as
buildings), personal property (movable man-made objects) and intangible property.
The social and political context in which private property is
administered will determine the extent to which an owner will be able to
exercise rights over the same. The rights to private property often
come with limitations. For example, local government may enforce rules
about what kind of building may be built on private land (building code), or whether a historical building may be demolished or not. Theft is common in many societies, and the extent to which central administration will pursue property crime varies enormously.
Some forms of private property are uniquely identifiable, and may be described in a title or a certificate of ownership.
The rights to a property may be transferred from one "owner" to another. A transfer tax is a tax on the passing of title
to property from one person (or entity) to another. An owner may
request that, after death, private property be transferred to family
members, through inheritance.
In certain cases ownership may be lost to the public interest. Private real estate may be confiscated or used for public purposes, for example to build a road.
Theory
Factories and corporations are considered private property
The legal framework of a country or society defines some of the
practical implications of private property. There are no expectations
that these rules will define a rational and consistent model of
economics or social system.
Although contemporary neoclassical economics—currently
the dominant school of economics—rejects some of the assumptions of the
early philosophers underpinning classical economics, it has been argued
that neoclassical economics continues to be influenced by the legacy of
natural moral theory and the concept of natural rights,
which has led to the presentation of private market exchange and
private property rights as "natural rights" inherent in nature.
Economic liberals
(defined as those who support a private sector-driven market economy)
consider private property to be essential for the construction of a
prosperous society. They believe private ownership of land ensures the
land will be put to productive use and its value protected by the landowner. If the owners must pay property taxes,
this forces the owners to maintain a productive output from the land to
keep taxes current. Private property also attaches a monetary value to
land, which can be used to trade or as collateral. Private property thus is an important part of capitalization within the economy.
Socialist economists are critical of private property as socialism aims to substitute private property in the means of production for social ownership or public property. Socialists generally argue that private property relations limit the potential of the productive forces in the economy when productive activity becomes a collective activity, where the role of the capitalist becomes redundant (as a passive owner). Socialists generally favor social ownership either to eliminate the class distinctions between owners and workers and as a component of the development of a post-capitalist economic system.
In response to the socialist critique, the Austrian School economist Ludwig Von Mises
argued that private property rights are a requisite for what he called
"rational" economic calculation and that the prices of goods and
services cannot be determined accurately enough to make efficient
economic calculation without having clearly defined private-property
rights. Mises argued that a socialist system, which by definition would
lack private property in the factors of production, would be unable to
determine appropriate price valuations for the factors of production.
According to Mises, this problem would make rational socialist
calculation impossible.
In capitalism,
ownership can be viewed as a “bundle of rights" over an asset that
entitles its holder to a strong form of authority over it. Such bundle
is composed of a set of rights that allows the owner of the asset to
control it and decide on its use, claim the value generated by it,
exclude others from using it and the right to transfer the ownership
(set of rights over the asset) of it to another holder
In Marxian economics and socialist politics, there is distinction between "private property" and "personal property". The former is defined as the means of production in reference to private ownership over an economic enterprise based on socialized production and wage labor whereas the latter is defined as consumer goods or goods produced by an individual. Prior to the 18th century, private property usually referred to land ownership.
Criticism
Gate with a private property sign
Private property in the means of production
is the central element of capitalism criticized by socialists. In
Marxist literature, private property refers to a social relationship in
which the property owner takes possession of anything that another
person or group produces with that property and capitalism depends on
private property.
The socialist critique of private ownership is heavily influenced by
the Marxist analysis of capitalist property forms as part of its broader
critique of alienation and exploitation
in capitalism. Although there is considerable disagreement among
socialists about the validity of certain aspects of Marxist analysis,
the majority of socialists are sympathetic to Marx's views on
exploitation and alienation.
Socialists critique the private appropriation of property income
on the grounds that because such income does not correspond to a return
on any productive activity and is generated by the working class, it represents exploitation. The property-owning (capitalist) class lives off passive property income produced by the working population
by virtue of their claim to ownership in the form of stock or private
equity. This exploitative arrangement is perpetuated due to the
structure of capitalist society. Capitalism is regarded as a class
system akin to historical class systems like slavery and feudalism.
Private ownership has also been criticized on non-Marxist ethical grounds by advocates of market socialism.
According to the economist James Yunker, the ethical case for market
socialism is that because passive property income requires no mental or
physical exertion on the part of the recipient and its appropriation by a
small group of private owners is the source of the vast inequalities in
contemporary capitalism, social ownership in a market economy would
resolve the major cause of social inequality and its accompanying social
ills.
Weyl and Posner argue that private property is another name for
monopoly and can hamper allocative efficiency. Through the use of
taxation and modified Vickrey auctions, they argue that partial common property ownership is a more efficient and just way to organize the economy.
The justifications for private property rights have also been critiqued as tools of empire which enable land appropriation.
According to academic commentator Brenna Bhandar, the language
implemented in property legislation dictates colonized peoples as unable
to effectively own and utilize their own land.
It is suggested that personal rights are interchangeable with property
rights, that therefore communities which utilize communal methods of
land ownership are not equally validated by private property ideals.
It is also argued by critical race theorist Cheryl Harris
that race and property rights have been conflated over time, with only
those qualities unique to white settlement recognized legally. Indigenous use of land, focusing on common ownership, is distinguished from private property ownership and western understandings of land law.
The socialist calculation debate, sometimes known as the economic calculation debate, was a discourse on the subject of how a socialist economy would perform economic calculation given the absence of the law of value, money, financial prices for capital goods and private ownership of the means of production. More specifically, the debate was centered on the application of economic planning for the allocation of the means of production as a substitute for capital markets and whether or not such an arrangement would be superior to capitalism in terms of efficiency and productivity.
The historical debate was cast between the Austrian School represented by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who argued against the feasibility of socialism; and between neoclassical and Marxian economists, most notably Cläre Tisch (as a forerunner), Oskar R. Lange, Abba P. Lerner, Fred M. Taylor, Henry Douglas Dickinson and Maurice Dobb,
who took the position that socialism was both feasible and superior to
capitalism. A central aspect of the debate concerned the role and scope
of the law of value in a socialist economy. Although contributions to
the question of economic coordination and calculation under socialism
existed within the socialist movement prior to the 20th century, the
phrase socialist calculation debate emerged in the 1920s beginning with
Mises' critique of socialism.
While the debate was popularly viewed as a debate between
proponents of capitalism and proponents of socialism, in reality a
significant portion of the debate was between socialists who held
differing views regarding the utilization of markets and money in a
socialist system and to what degree the law of value would continue to
operate in a hypothetical socialist economy.
Socialists generally held one of three major positions regarding the
unit of calculation, including the view that money would continue to be
the unit of calculation under socialism; that labor time would be a unit of calculation; or that socialism would be based on calculation in natura or calculation performed in-kind.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels held a broad characterization of socialism, characterized by some form of public or common ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management within economic enterprises and where production of economic value for profit would be replaced by an ex anteproduction directly for use which implied some form of economic planning and planned growth in place of the dynamic of capital accumulation
and therefore the substitution of commodity-based production and
market-based allocation of the factors of production with conscious
planning.
Although Marx and Engels never elaborated on the specific
institutions that would exist in socialism or on processes for
conducting planning in a socialist system, their broad characterizations
laid the foundation for the general conception of socialism as an
economic system devoid of the law of value and law of accumulation
and principally where the category of value was replaced by calculation
in terms of natural or physical units so that resource allocation,
production and distribution would be considered technical affairs to be
undertaken by engineers and technical specialists.
An alternative view of socialism prefiguring the neoclassical models of market socialism consisted of conceptions of market socialism based on classical economic theory and Ricardian socialism, where markets were utilized to allocate capital goods among worker-owned cooperatives in a free-market economy.
The key characteristics of this system involved direct worker ownership
of the means of production through producer and consumer cooperatives
and the achievement of genuinely free markets
by removing the distorting effects of private property, inequality
arising from private appropriation of profits and interest to a rentier class, regulatory capture, and economic exploitation. This view was expounded by mutualism
and was severely criticized by Marxists for failing to address the
fundamental issues of capitalism involving instability arising from the
operation of the law of value, crises caused by overaccumulation of capital and lack of conscious control over the surplus product. This perspective played little to no role during the socialist calculation debate in the early 20th century.
Early arguments against the utilization of central economic planning for a socialist economy were brought up by proponents of decentralized economic planning or market socialism, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin and Leon Trotsky.
In general, it was argued that centralized forms of economic planning
that excluded participation by the workers involved in the industries
would not be sufficient at capturing adequate amounts of information to
coordinate an economy effectively while also undermining socialism and
the concept of workers' self-management and democratic decision-making
central to socialism. However, no detailed outlines for decentralized
economic planning were proposed by these thinkers at this time.
Socialist market abolitionists in favour of decentralized planning also argue that whilst advocates of capitalism and the Austrian School in particular recognize equilibrium prices
do not exist, they nonetheless claim that these prices can be used as a
rational basis when this is not the case, hence markets are not
efficient. Other market abolitionist socialists such as Robin Cox of the Socialist Party of Great Britain argue that decentralized planning allows for a spontaneously self-regulating system of stock control (relying solely on calculation in kind)
to come about and that in turn decisively overcomes the objections
raised by the economic calculation argument that any large scale economy
must necessarily resort to a system of market prices.
Early neoclassical contributions
In the early 20th century, Enrico Barone
provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for a planned socialist
economy. In his model, assuming perfect computation techniques,
simultaneous equations relating inputs and outputs to ratios of
equivalence would provide appropriate valuations in order to balance supply and demand.
Calculation in kind, or calculation in-natura, was often assumed to
be the standard form of accounting that would take place in a socialist
system where the economy was mobilized in terms of physical or natural
units instead of money and financial calculation.
Otto Neurath
was adamant that a socialist economy must be moneyless because measures
of money failed to capture adequate information regarding material
well-being of consumers or failed to factor in all costs and benefits
from performing a particular action. He argued that relying on any
single unit, whether they be labor-hours or kilowatt-hours,
would be inadequate and that demand and calculations be performed by
the relevant disaggregated natural units, i.e. kilowatts, tons, meters
and so on.
In the 1930s, Soviet mathematician Leonid Kantorovich
demonstrated how an economy in purely physical terms could use
determinate mathematical procedure to determine which combination of
techniques could be used to achieve certain output or plan targets.
Debate on the use of money
In contrast to Neurath, Karl Kautsky
argued that money would have to be utilized in a socialist economy.
Kautsky states the fundamental difference between socialism and
capitalism is not the absence of money in the former; rather, the
important difference is in the ability for money to become capital under
capitalism. In a socialist economy, there would be no incentive to use
money as financial capital, therefore money would have a slightly different role in socialism.
Jan Appel
drafted a contribution to the socialist calculation debate which then
went through a discussion process before being published as Foundations of Communist Production and Distribution by the General Workers' Union of Germany in 1930. An English translation by Mike Baker was published in 1990.
His argument against socialism was in response to Otto Neurath arguing for the feasibility of central planning.
Mises argued that money and market-determined prices for the means of
production were essential in order to make rational decisions regarding
their allocation and use.
Criticism of the calculation problem
Bryan Caplan, a libertarian
economist, has criticized the version of the calculation problem
advanced by Mises arguing that the lack of economic calculation makes
socialism impossible and not merely inefficient. Caplan argues that
socialism makes economic calculation impossible, yet that problem may
not be severe enough to make socialism impossible "beyond the realm of
possibility". Caplan points out that the fall of the Soviet Union
does not prove that calculation was the main issue there. He suggests
that more likely the problems resulted from bad incentives arising out
of the one-party political system and degree of power granted to the party elite.
Knowledge problem
Proponents of decentralized economic planning have also criticized central economic planning. Leon Trotsky
believed that central planners, regardless of their intellectual
capacity, operated without the input and participation of the millions
of people who participate in the economy and so they would be unable to
respond to local conditions quickly enough to effectively coordinate all
economic activity. Trotsky argued:
If a universal mind existed, of the
kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace – a
mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and
society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could
forecast the results of their inter-reactions – such a mind, of course,
could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan,
beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a
vest. The bureaucracy often imagines that just such a mind is at its
disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the
market and of Soviet democracy. But, in reality, the bureaucracy errs
frightfully in its estimate of its spiritual resources. [...] The
innumerable living participants in the economy, state and private,
collective and individual, must serve notice of their needs and of their
relative strength not only through the statistical determinations of
plan commissions but by the direct pressure of supply and demand.
— Leon Trotsky, The Soviet Economy in Danger
Lange model
Oskar Lange
responded to Mises' assertion that socialism and social ownership of
the means of production implied that rational calculation was impossible
by outlining a model of socialism based on neoclassical economics.
Lange conceded that calculations would have to be done in value terms
rather than using purely natural or engineering criteria, but he
asserted that these values could be attained without capital markets and
private ownership of the means of production. In Lange's view, this
model qualified as socialist because the means of production would be
publicly owned with returns to the public enterprises accruing to
society as a whole in a social dividend while workers' self-management could be introduced in the public enterprises.
This model came to be referred to as the Lange model.
In this model, a Central Planning Board (CPB) would be responsible for
setting prices through a trial-and-error approach to establish
equilibrium prices, effectively running a Walrasian auction. Managers of the state-owned firms would be instructed to set prices to equal marginal cost (P=MC) so that economic equilibrium and Pareto efficiency would be achieved. The Lange model was expanded upon by Abba Lerner and became known as the Lange–Lerner theorem.
Paul Auerbach and Dimitris Sotiropoulos have criticized the Lange
model for degrading the definition of socialism to a form of
"capitalism without capital markets" attempting to replicate
capitalism's efficiency achievements through economic planning. Auerbach
and Sotiropoulos argue that Friedrich Hayek provided an analysis of the dynamics of capitalism that is more consistent with Marxian economics' analysis because Hayek viewed finance as a fundamental aspect of capitalism and any move through collective ownership
or policy reform to undermine the role of capital markets would
threaten the integrity of the capitalist system. According to Auerbach
and Sotiropoulos, Hayek gave an unexpected endorsement to socialism that
is more sophisticated than Lange's superficial defense of socialism.
Contemporary contributions
Networked digital feedback
Peter Joseph argues for a transition from fragmented economic data relay to fully integrated, sensor-based digital systems, or an Internet of things.
Using an internet of sensory instruments to measure, track and feed
back information, this can unify numerous disparate elements and
systems, greatly advancing awareness and efficiency potentials.
In an economic context, this approach could relay and connect
data regarding how best to manage resources, production processes,
distribution, consumption, recycling, waste disposal behavior, consumer
demand and so on. Such a process of networked economic feedback would
work on the same principle as modern systems of inventory and
distribution found in major commercial warehouses. Many companies today use a range of sensors and sophisticated tracking
means to understand rates of demands, exactly what they have, where it
is or where it may be moving and when it is gone.
It is ultimately an issue of detail and scalability to extend this kind
of awareness to all sectors of the economy, macro and micro.
Not only is price no longer needed to gain critical economic
feedback, but the information price communicates is long delayed and
incomplete in terms of economic measures required to dramatically
increase efficiency. Mechanisms related networked digital feedback
systems make it possible to efficiently monitor shifting consumer
preference, demand, supply and labor value, virtually in real time.
Moreover, it can also be used to observe other technical processes price
cannot, such as shifts in production protocols, allocation, recycling
means, and so on.
As of February 2018, it is now possible to track trillions of economic
interactions related to the supply chain and consumer behavior by way of
sensors and digital relay as seen with the advent of Amazon Go.
Cybernetic coordination
Paul Cockshott,
Allin Cottrell, and Andy Pollack have proposed new forms of
coordination based on modern information technology for non-market
socialism. They argue that economic planning in terms of physical units
without any reference to money or prices is computationally tractable
given the high-performance computers available for particle physics and
weather forecasting. Cybernetic planning would involve an a priori simulation of the equilibration process that idealized markets are intended to achieve.
Participatory economics
Proposals for decentralized economic planning emerged in the late 20th century in the form of participatory economics and negotiated coordination.
Decentralized pricing without markets
David McMullen
argues that social ownership of the means of production and the absence
of markets for them is fully compatible with a decentralized price
system. In a post-capitalist society,
transactions between enterprises would entail transfers of social
property between custodians rather than an exchange of ownership.
Individuals would be motivated by the satisfaction from work and the
desire to contribute to good economic outcomes rather than material
reward. Bids and offer prices would aim to minimize costs and ensure
that output is guided by expected final demand for private and
collective consumption. Enterprises and startups would receive their
investment funding from project assessment agencies. The required change
in human behavior would take a number generations and would have to
overcome considerable resistance. However, McMullen believes that
economic and cultural development increasingly favors the transition.
Market socialism
James
Yunker argues that public ownership of the means of production can be
achieved the same way private ownership is achieved in modern capitalism
through the shareholder
system that separates management from ownership. Yunker posits that
social ownership can be achieved by having a public body, designated the
Bureau of Public Ownership (BPO), owning the shares of publicly-listed
firms without affecting market-based allocation of capital inputs.
Yunker termed this model pragmatic market socialism and argued that it
would be at least as efficient as modern-day capitalism while providing
superior social outcomes as public ownership of large and established
enterprises would enable profits to be distributed among the entire
population rather than going largely to a class of inheriting rentiers.
Mechanism design
Beginning in the 1970s, new insights into the socialist calculation debate emerged from mechanism design
theory. According to mechanism design theorists, the debate between
Hayek and Lange became a stalemate that lasted for forty years because
neither side was speaking the same language as the other, partially
because the appropriate language for discussing socialist calculation
had not yet been invented. According to these theorists, what was needed
was a better understanding of the informational problems that prevent
coordination between people. By fusing game theory with information economics,
mechanism design provided the language and framework in which both
socialists and advocates of capitalism could compare the merits of their
arguments. As Palda (2013) writes in his summary of the contributions
of mechanism design to the socialist calculation debate, "[i]t seemed
that socialism and capitalism were good at different things. Socialism
suffered from cheating, or 'moral hazard',
more than capitalism because it did not allow company managers to own
shares in their own companies. [...] The flip side of the cheating
problem in socialism is the lying or 'adverse selection'
problem in capitalism. If potential firm managers are either good or
bad, but telling them apart is difficult, bad prospects will lie to
become a part of the firm".
Relation to neoclassical economics
In his book Whither Socialism?, Joseph Stiglitz
criticized models of market socialism from the era of the socialist
calculation debate in the 1930s as part of a more general criticism of
neoclassical general equilibrium theory, proposing that market models be augmented with insights from information economics. Alec Nove and János Kornai
held similar positions regarding economic equilibrium. Both Nove and
Kornai argued that because perfect equilibrium does not exist, a
comprehensive economic plan for production cannot be formulated, making
planning ineffective just as real-world market economies do not conform
to the hypothetical state of perfect competition. In his book The Economics of Feasible Socialism,
Nove also outlined a solution involving a socialist economy consisting
of a mixture of macro-economic planning with market-based coordination
for enterprises where large industries would be publicly owned and
small- to medium-sized concerns would be organized as
cooperatively-owned enterprises.
In his first article, Mises described the nature of the price system under capitalism and described how individual subjective values are translated into the objective information necessary for rational allocation of resources in society. He argued that economy planning necessarily leads to an irrational and inefficient allocation of resources. In market exchanges, prices reflect the supply and demand of resources, labor and products. In the article, Mises focused his criticism on the deficiencies of the socialisation of capital goods, but he later went on to elaborate on various different forms of socialism in his book Socialism. He briefly mentioned the problem in the 3rd book of Human Action: a Treatise on Economics, where he also elaborated on the different types of socialism, namely the "Hindenburg" and "Lenin"
models, which are uniquely different, and showing why, in his view,
market socialism still falls prey to the problems that are tied to
socialism.
Mises and Hayek argued that economic calculation is only possible
by information provided through market prices and that bureaucratic or
technocratic methods of allocation lack methods to rationally allocate
resources. Mises's analysis centered on price theory while Hayek went
with a more feathered analysis of information and entrepreneurship. The
debate raged in the 1920s and 1930s and that specific period of the
debate has come to be known by economic historians as the socialist calculation debate. Mises' initial criticism received multiple reactions and led to the conception of trial-and-error market socialism, most notably the Lange–Lerner theorem.
In the 1920 paper, Mises argued that the pricing systems in
socialist economies were necessarily deficient because if a public
entity owned all the means of production, no rational prices could be obtained for capital goods
as they were merely internal transfers of goods and not "objects of
exchange", unlike final goods. Therefore, they were unpriced and hence
the system would be necessarily irrational as the central planners would
not know how to allocate the available resources efficiently. He wrote that "rational economic activity is impossible in a socialist commonwealth". Mises developed his critique of socialism more completely in his 1922 book Socialism, arguing that the market price system is an expression of praxeology and can not be replicated by any form of bureaucracy.
Notable critics of both Mises's original argument and Hayek's newer proposition include Anarcho-Capitalist economist Bryan Caplan, computer programmer and Marxist Paul Cockshott, as well as other communists.
Theory
Comparing heterogeneous goods
Since capital goods and labor
are highly heterogeneous (i.e. they have different characteristics that
pertain to physical productivity), economic calculation requires a
common basis for comparison for all forms of capital and labour.
As a means of exchange, money
enables buyers to compare the costs of goods without having knowledge
of their underlying factors; the consumer can simply focus on his
personal cost-benefit decision. Therefore, the price system is said to
promote economically efficient use of resources by agents who may not
have explicit knowledge of all of the conditions of production or
supply. This is called the signalling function of prices as well as the rationing function which prevents over-use of any resource.
Without the market process to fulfill such comparisons, critics
of non-market socialism say that it lacks any way to compare different
goods and services and would have to rely on calculation in kind. The resulting decisions, it is claimed, would therefore be made without sufficient knowledge to be considered rational.
Relating utility to capital and consumption goods
The common basis for comparison of capital goods must also be connected to consumer welfare.
It must also be able to compare the desired trade-off between present
consumption and delayed consumption (for greater returns later on) via
investment in capital goods. The use of money as a medium of exchange
and unit of account is necessary to solve the first two problems of
economic calculation. Mises (1912) applied the marginal utility theory developed by Carl Menger to money.
Marginal consumer expenditures represent the marginal utility or
additional consumer satisfaction expected by consumers as they spend
money. This is similar to the equi-marginal principle developed by Alfred Marshall.
Consumers equalize the marginal utility (amount of satisfaction) of the
last dollar spent on each good. Thus, the exchange of consumer goods
establishes prices that represent the marginal utility of consumers and
money is representative of consumer satisfaction.
If money is also spent on capital goods and labor, then it is
possible to make comparisons between capital goods and consumer goods.
The exchange of consumer and capital/labor goods does not imply that
capital goods are valued accurately, only that it is possible for the
valuations of capital goods to be made. These first elements of the
calculation critique of socialism are the most basic element, namely
economic calculation requires the use of money across all goods. This is
a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for successful economic
calculation. Without a price mechanism, Mises argues, socialism lacks
the means to relate consumer satisfaction to economic activity. The
incentive function of prices allows diffuse interests, like the
interests of every household in cheap, high quality shoes to compete
with the concentrated interests of the cobblers in expensive, poor
quality shoes. Without it, a panel of experts set up to "rationalise
production", likely closely linked to the cobblers for expertise, would
tend to support the cobblers interests in a "conspiracy against the
public". However, if this happens to all industries, everyone would be
worse off than if they had been subject to the rigours of market competition.
The Mises theory of money and calculation conflicts directly with Marxist labour theory of value.
Marxist theory allows for the possibility that labour content can serve
as a common means of valuing capital goods, a position now out of
favour with economists following the success of the theory of marginal utility.
According to Israel Kirzner (1973) and Don Lavoie
(1985), entrepreneurs reap profits by supplying unfulfilled needs in
all markets. Thus, entrepreneurship brings prices closer to marginal
costs. The adjustment of prices in markets towards equilibrium (where
supply and demand equal) gives them greater utilitarian significance.
The activities of entrepreneurs make prices more accurate in terms of
how they represent the marginal utility of consumers. Prices act as
guides to the planning of production. Those who plan production use
prices to decide which lines of production should be expanded or
curtailed.
Entrepreneurs lack the profit motive
to take risks under socialism and so are far less likely to attempt to
supply consumer demands. Without the price system to match consumer
utility to incentives for production, or even indicate those utilities
"without providing incentives", state planners are much less likely to
invest in new ideas to satisfy consumers' desires.
Coherent planning
The
fourth condition for successful economic calculation is plan
coordination among those who plan production. The problem of planning
production is the knowledge problem explained by Hayek (1937, 1945), but
first mentioned and illustrated by his mentor Mises in Socialism (1922), not to be mistaken with Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
(1951). The planning could either be done in a decentralised fashion,
requiring some mechanism to make the individual plans coherent, or
centrally, requiring a lot of information.
Within capitalism, the overall plan for production is composed of
individual plans from capitalists in large and small enterprises. Since
capitalists purchase labour and capital out of the same common pool of
available yet scarce labor and capital, it is essential that their plans
fit together in at least a semi-coherent fashion. Hayek (1937) defined
an efficient planning process as one where all decision makers form
plans that contain relevant data from the plans from others.
Entrepreneurs acquire data on the plans from others through the price
system. The price system is an indispensable communications network for
plan coordination among entrepreneurs. Increases and decreases in prices
inform entrepreneurs about the general economic situation, to which
they must adjust their own plans.
As for socialism, Mises (1944) and Hayek (1937) insisted that
bureaucrats in individual ministries could not coordinate their plans
without a price system. If decentralized socialism cannot work, central
authorities must plan production. However, central planners face the local knowledge problem
in forming a comprehensive plan for production. Mises and Hayek saw
centralization as inevitable in socialism. Opponents argued that in
principle an economy can be seen as a set of equations. Thus, there
should be no need for prices. Using information about available
resources and the preferences of people, it should be possible to
calculate an optimal solution for resource allocation. Friedrich von Hayek
responded that the system of equations required too much information
that would not be easily available and the ensuing calculations would be
too difficult.
This is partly because individuals possess useful knowledge but do not
realise its importance, may have no incentive to transmit the
information, or may have incentive to transmit false information about
their preferences. He contended that the only rational solution is to utilize all the dispersed knowledge in the market place through the use of price signals. The early debates were made before the much greater calculating powers of modern computers became available but also before research on chaos theory. In the 1980s, Alexander Nove argued that the calculations would take millions of years even with the best computers. It may be impossible to make long-term predictions for a highly complex system such as an economy.
Hayek (1935, 1937, 1940, 1945) stressed the knowledge problem of
central planning, partly because decentralized socialism seemed
indefensible. Part of the reason that Hayek stressed the knowledge
problem was also because he was mainly concerned with debating the
proposal for market socialism and the Lange model by Oskar R. Lange (1938) and Hayek's student Abba Lerner
(1934, 1937, 1938) which was developed in response to the calculation
argument. Lange and Lerner conceded that prices were necessary in
socialism. Lange and Lerner thought that socialist officials could
simulate some markets (mainly spot markets) and the simulation of spot
markets was enough to make socialism reasonably efficient. Lange argued
that prices can be seen merely as an accounting practice. In principle,
claim market socialists, socialist managers of state enterprises could
use a price system, as an accounting system, in order to minimize costs
and convey information to other managers.
However, while this can deal with existing stocks of goods, providing a
basis for values can be ascertained, it does not deal with the
investment in new capital stocks.
Hayek responded by arguing that the simulation of markets in socialism
would fail due to a lack of genuine competition and entrepreneurship.
Central planners would still have to plan production without the aid of
economically meaningful prices. Lange and Lerner also admitted that
socialism would lack any simulation of financial markets, and that this
would cause problems in planning capital investment.
However, Hayek's argumentation is not only regarding
computational complexity for the central planners. He further argues
that much of the information individuals have cannot be collected or
used by others. First, individuals may have no or little incentive
to share their information with central or even local planners. Second,
the individual may not be aware that he has valuable information; and
when he becomes aware, it is only useful for a limited time, too short
for it to be communicated to the central or local planners. Third, the
information is useless to other individuals if it is not in a form that
allows for meaningful comparisons of value (i.e. money prices as a
common basis for comparison). Therefore, Hayek argues, individuals must
acquire data through prices in real markets.
Financial markets
The fifth condition for successful economic calculation is the existence of well functioning financial markets.
Economic efficiency depends heavily upon avoiding errors in capital
investment. The costs of reversing errors in capital investment are
potentially large. This is not just a matter of rearranging or
converting capital goods that are found to be of little use. The time
spent reconfiguring the structure of production is time lost in the
production of consumer goods. Those who plan capital investment must
anticipate future trends in consumer demand if they are to avoid
investing too much in some lines of production and too little in other
lines of production.
Capitalists plan production for profit. Capitalists use prices to
form expectations that determine the composition of capital
accumulation, the pattern of investment across industry. Those who
invest in accordance with consumers' desires are rewarded with profits,
those who do not are forced to become more efficient or go out of
business.
Prices in futures markets
play a special role in economic calculation. Futures markets develop
prices for commodities in future time periods. It is in futures markets
that entrepreneurs sort out plans for production based on their
expectations. Futures markets are a link between entrepreneurial
investment decisions and household consumer decisions. Since most goods
are not explicitly traded in futures markets, substitute markets are
needed. The stock market serves as a ‘continuous futures market’ that
evaluates entrepreneurial plans for production (Lachmann 1978).
Generally speaking, the problem of economic calculation is solved in
financial markets as Mises argued:
The problem of economic calculation
arises in an economy which is perpetually subject to change [...]. In
order to solve such problems it is above all necessary that capital be
withdrawn from particular undertakings and applied in other lines of
production [...]. [This] is essentially a matter of the capitalists who
buy and sell stocks and shares, who make loans and recover them, who
speculate in all kinds of commodities.
The existence of financial markets is a necessary condition for
economic calculation. The existence of financial markets itself does not
automatically imply that entrepreneurial speculation will tend towards
efficiency. Mises argued that speculation in financial markets tends
towards efficiency because of a "trial and error" process. Entrepreneurs
who commit relatively large errors in investment waste their funds over
expanding some lines of production at the cost of other more profitable
ventures where consumer demand is higher. The entrepreneurs who commit
the worst errors by forming the least accurate expectations of future
consumer demands incur financial losses. Financial losses remove these
inept entrepreneurs from positions of authority in industry.
Entrepreneurs who commit smaller errors by anticipating consumer
demand more correctly attain greater financial success. The
entrepreneurs who form the most accurate opinions regarding the future
state of markets (i.e. new trends in consumer demands) earn the highest
profits and gain greater control of industry. Those entrepreneurs who
anticipate future market trends therefore waste the least amount of real
capital and find the most favorable terms for finance on markets for
financial capital. Minimal waste of real capital goods implies the
minimization of the opportunity costs of capital's economic calculation.
The value of capital goods is brought into line with the value of
future consumer goods through competition in financial markets, because
competition for profits among capitalist financiers rewards
entrepreneurs who value capital more correctly (i.e. anticipating future
prices more correctly) and eliminates capitalists who value capital
least correctly. To sum things up, the use of money in trading all goods
(capital/labor and consumer) in all markets (spot and financial)
combined with profit driven entrepreneurship and Darwinian natural
selection in financial markets all combine to make rational economic
calculation and allocation the outcome of the capitalist process.
Mises insisted that socialist calculation is impossible because
socialism precludes the exchange of capital goods in terms of a
generally accepted medium of exchange, or money. Investment in financial
markets determines the capital structure of modern industry with some
degree of efficiency. The egalitarian nature of socialism prohibits
speculation in financial markets. Therefore, Mises concluded that
socialism lacks any clear tendency towards improvement in the capital
structure of industry.
Example
Mises gave the example of choosing between producing wine or oil, making the following point:
It will be evident, even in the
socialist society, that 1,000 hectolitres of wine are better than 800,
and it is not difficult to decide whether it desires 1,000 hectolitres
of wine rather than 500 of oil. There is no need for any system of
calculation to establish this fact: the deciding element is the will of
the economic subjects involved. But once this decision has been taken,
the real task of rational economic direction only commences, i.e.,
economically, to place the means at the service of the end. That can
only be done with some kind of economic calculation. The human mind
cannot orient itself properly among the bewildering mass of intermediate
products and potentialities of production without such aid. It would
simply stand perplexed before the problems of management and location.
Such intermediate products would include land, warehouse storage,
bottles, barrels, oil, transport, etc. Not only would these things have
to be assembled, but they would have to compete with the attainment of
other economic goals. Without pricing for capital goods, essentially,
Mises is arguing, it is impossible to know what their rational/most
efficient use is. Investment is particularly impossible as the potential
future outputs cannot be measured by any current standard, let alone a
monetary one required for economic calculation. The value consumers have
for current consumption over future consumption cannot be expressed,
quantified or implemented as investment is independent from savings.
Analysis
Efficiency of markets
Some academics and economists argue that the claim a free market is efficient, or even the most efficient, method of resource allocation is incorrect. Alexander Nove
argued that Mises "tends to spoil his case by the implicit assumption
that capitalism and optimum resource allocation go together" in Mises'
"Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth". Joan Robinson
argued that many prices in modern capitalism are effectively
"administered prices" created by "quasi monopolies", thus challenging
the connection between capital markets and rational resource allocation. Robin Hahnel
argued that free markets are in fact systematically inefficient because
externalities are pervasive and because real-world markets are rarely
truly competitive or in equilibrium. Socialist market abolitionists argue that whilst advocates of capitalism and the Austrian School in particular recognize equilibrium prices
do not exist, they nonetheless claim that these prices can be used as a
rational basis when this is not the case, hence markets are not
efficient.
Joseph Schumpeter
argued that large firms generally drive economic advancement through
innovation and investment and so their proliferation is not necessarily
bad.
In countries with protectionist policies, foreign competition cannot
fulfill this role, but the threat of potential competition, namely that
as companies abuse their position new rivals could emerge and gain
customers dissatisfied with the old companies, can still reduce the
inefficiencies. Milton Friedman agreed that markets with monopolistic competition are not efficient, but he argued that in countries with free trade the pressure from foreign competition would make monopolies behave in a competitive manner.
Economic liberals and libertarian capitalists
adamantly oppose any distortion of market structure by the introduction
of government influence, asserting that such interference would be a
form of central planning or state capitalism,
insofar as it would redirect decision making from the private to the
public sector. These libertarian capitalist analysts argue that
monopolies and big business are not generally the result of a free
market, or that they never arise from a free market; rather, they say
that such concentration is enabled by governmental grants of franchises
or privileges.
Equilibrium
Allin Cottrell, Paul Cockshott
and Greg Michaelson argued that the contention that finding a true
economic equilibrium is not just hard but impossible for a central
planner applies equally well to a market system. As any universal Turing machine
can do what any other Turing machine can, a central calculator in
principle has no advantage over a system of dispersed calculators, i.e. a
market, or vice versa.
In some economic models, finding an equilibrium is hard, and finding an Arrow–Debreu equilibrium is PPAD-complete.
If the market can find an equilibrium in polynomial time, then the
equivalence above can be used to prove that P=PPAD. This line of
argument thus attempts to show that any claim to impossibility must
necessarily involve a local knowledge problem, because the planning system is no less capable than the market if given full information.
Don Lavoie
makes a local knowledge argument by taking this implication in reverse.
The market socialists pointed out the formal similarity between the
neoclassical model of Walrasian general equilibrium
and that of market socialism which simply replace the Walrasian
auctioneer with a planning board. According to Lavoie, this emphasizes
the shortcomings of the model. By relying on this formal similarity, the
market socialists must adopt the simplifying assumptions of the model.
The model assumes that various sorts of information are given to the
auctioneer or planning board. However, if not coordinated by a capital
market, this information exists in a fundamentally distributed form,
unavailable to the planners. If the planners somehow captured this
information, it would immediately become stale and relatively useless,
unless reality somehow imitated the changeless monotony of the
equilibrium model. The existence and usability of this information
depends on its creation and situation within a distributed discovery
procedure.
Scale of problem
One
criticism is that proponents of the theory overstate the strength of
their case by describing socialism as impossible rather than
inefficient.In explaining why he is not an Austrian School economist, anarcho-capitalist economist Bryan Caplan
argues that while the economic calculation problem is a problem for
socialism, he denies that Mises has shown it to be fatal or that it is
this particular problem that led to the collapse of authoritarian
socialist states. Caplan also states the exaggeration of the problem; in
his view, Mises did not manage to prove why economic calculation made
the socialist economy 'impossible', and even if there were serious
doubts about the efficiency of cost benefit analysis, other arguments
are plentiful (Caplan gives the example of the incentive problem).
Steady-state economy
Joan Robinson argued that in a steady-state economy there would be an effective abundance of means of production and so markets would not be needed.
Mises acknowledged such a theoretical possibility in his original tract
when he said the following: "The static state can dispense with
economic calculation. For here the same events in economic life are ever
recurring; and if we assume that the first disposition of the static
socialist economy follows on the basis of the final state of the
competitive economy, we might at all events conceive of a socialist
production system which is rationally controlled from an economic point
of view."
However, he contended that stationary conditions never prevail in the
real world. Changes in economic conditions are inevitable; and even if
they were not, the transition to socialism would be so chaotic as to
preclude the existence of such a steady-state from the start.
The purpose of the price mechanism is to allow individuals to recognise the opportunity cost
of decisions. In a state of abundance, there is no such cost, which is
to say that in situations where one need not economize, economics does
not apply, e.g. areas with abundant fresh air and water. Otto Neurath and Hillel Ticktin
argued that with detailed use of real unit accounting and demand
surveys a planned economy could operate without a capital market in a
situation of abundance.
Use of technology
In Towards a New Socialism's "Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek" and "Against Mises", Paul Cockshott
and Allin Cottrell argued that the use of computational technology now
simplifies economic calculation and allows central planning to be
implemented and sustained. Len Brewster replied to this by arguing that Towards a New Socialism establishes what is essentially another form of a market economy, making the following point:
[A]n examination of C&C's New
Socialism confirms Mises's conclusion that rational socialist planning
is impossible. It appears that in order for economic planners to have
any useful data by which they might be guided, a market must be hauled
in, and with it analogues of private property, inequality and
exploitation.
In response, Cockshott argued that the economic system is
sufficiently far removed from a capitalist free-market economy to not
count as one, saying:
Those that Hayek was arguing
against like Lange and Dickinson allowed for markets in consumer goods,
this did not lead Hayek to say : Oh you are not really arguing for
socialism since you have conceded a market in consumer goods, he did
not, because there remained huge policy differences between him and
Lange even if Lange accepted consumer goods markets. It is thus a very
weak argument by Brewster to say that what we advocate is not really
socialist calculation because it is contaminated in some way by market
influences.
Cosma Shalizi articulated the problems that come with central
planning using supercomputers in a 2012 essay. He cited the sheer
complexity of the problem as well as the difficulty of negotiating
between preferences as being the central problems with such a system.
Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski released a book in 2019 that
argues that multinational corporations like Walmart and Amazon already
operate centrally planned economies larger than the Soviet Union,
proving that the economic calculation problem is surmountable.
