Tagged: Socialism
Quotes
Don Lavoie, Rivalry and Central Planning (1985)
- The labor theory approach essentially reduces all scarcities to scarcity of labor time, but the practical task before the central planners is to husband all scarce goods.#
- A basic problem with marginal cost rules is that they depend on costs being objectively known, whereas when property is privately held, costs are estimates that are “verified” only by the earning of profits. Thus there is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, the tendency for producers, impelled by competitive profit seeking, to equate price to marginal cost and on the other the explicit instruction to directly attain this marginal “cost equals price” result.#
- The question [of market socialism] is no longer whether a nonrivalrous conscious plan can supplant the coordinating function of rivalrous competition among private owners but the related question of whether rivalrous competition can perform its function when the competitors are not private owners.#
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850)
- Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.#
Posts
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The Political Philosophy of Star Trek: Individualism, Not Socialism
Star Trek sometimes catches flack for portraying a Socialist space utopia. There's a vast, far-reaching central government, and Captain Picard often waxes – especially when time travel gives him the opportunity to lecture present-day people – about how humanity has evolved beyond self interest. Those interested in personal gain are . . .