You, Bill Bartlett, wrote:

>What kind of structures do you think is necessary to overcome the "usual
>objections"?
First, it is true that capitalist economies don't practice what they
preach regarding freedom from government intervention. We read Chomsky so
no additional evidence is necessary on that point. Nonetheless, there's a
world of difference between the capitalist version of a planned economy
and a socialist one, as I think you would also agree. Certainly
capitalists recognize it, which is why they generally avoid the latter
like the plague. (Cuba's current experience provides an interesting
counterpoint to that statement, however. Did you read The Atlantic's, I
think, November article on Cuba's perestroika? Surprisingly sympathetic
article, considering that Cuba is admantly trying to hang on to socialist
principles while attracting capitalist investment.) Without getting too
pedantic about it, the main difference is that a capitalist planned
economy generally doesn't try to micromanage prices and output; it sets
the conditions (interest rate, government spending, subsidies, labor
laws, etc.) but then lets market forces operate from there. I know, I
know: Chrysler, Amtrak, Citibank, and so on. There are exceptions, but
they prove the rule, which is that companies are free to do and make what
they want, under the best conditions they can obtain from the market.

To cut to your question. To me a main liability of a socialist planned
economy is its sluggishness. Capitalist economist extol the genius of
market signals in efficiently allocating resources among competing
industries; with allowances made for their obvious biases, I still think
they are basically right. At the same time, of course, these signals are
only incidentally related to satisfying human needs. Still, especially as
the post-industrial revolution evolves and efficiency becomes more a
matter of perfect information flow than meeting production targets, the
relative weakness of conventional socialist planning becomes more and
more glaring. So, the first weakness a planned economy would have to
overcome is, ironically, rigidity.

At the same time, the main weakness of capitalism--its obliviousness
towards transcendent human needs--has yet to really reach crisis. Right
now it's operating on borrowed time, as it gobbles up new sources of
cheap labor and as-yet-untapped, non-renewable resources. Once those
luxuries are gone, one of two things happens: either we start exploiting
outer space (and hope we find some unskilled aliens willing to make
Nike's in return for a McDonald's franchise on Alpha Centauri), or the
residents of planet Earth assert control of the monster that threatens to
devour them. But doing so will have to exploit what I hope will be a
fully developed, anarchic, cybernetic system that somehow avoids the
Scylla of top-down state planning and the Charybidis of blind market
signals in making investment decisions. What shape that society will take
is beyond my event horizon, however.

_________
Tresy Kilbourne, Seattle WA
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be
one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of
blind-folded fear." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter, 10 Aug. 1787