Calculation and Knowledge

Non-monetary calculation of the environmental effects of action runs into the same problems of in natural calculation and commonly owned means of production. 

This paper documents and articulates Murray N. Rothbard’s contribution to our understanding of the theory and practice of socialism.

This paper has attempted to bridge unresolved differences remaining from the Hayek and Mises “controversy,” which materialized in the early 1990s.

The standard view of the socialist calculation debate is that Mises and Hayek at best demonstrated the  practical impossibility of socialist economy,

The problem of cost is the cornerstone of economic calculation.  Entrepreneurs act upon the cost implications of their decisions and depend on cost data that represent the actual pattern of resource consumption.

Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises demonstrated that central planners will be unable to manage an economy rationally due to the problems of dispersed knowledge and the impossibility of economic calculation

The article is a much needed and long overdue acknowledgement and appreciation of Rothbard’s contributions to the theory, including the calculation debate, and practice of socialism.

Tolerably efficient coordination of human effort is impossible without trade in productive assets (capital markets).  There is no demonstrated, superior alternative to Wall Street and the price system. 

In a recent article Robert P. Murphy (2006) uses Cantor's diagonal argument to prove that market socialism could not function, since it would be impossible for the Central Planning Board 

This paper traces Spencer’s theory of causation through various disciplines, with special emphasis on Spencer’s “scientific&#8221