7 votes

Free market or socialism: Have economists really anything to say?

5 comments

  1. NaraVara
    Link
    Interesting article. I've long found the arguments about "capitalism vs. socialism" that frame these as diametrically opposed paradigms to be really tiresome. It's a holdover of Cold War thinking...

    Interesting article. I've long found the arguments about "capitalism vs. socialism" that frame these as diametrically opposed paradigms to be really tiresome. It's a holdover of Cold War thinking where the US and USSR both tried to dress up bog-standard imperialism by spackling a veneer of economic justice over it.

    In reality, these are interdependent drives in economic institutions and drawing such hard lines between them becomes less and less sensible here in the year 2020. These are 19th century paradigms articulated to address the social dislocation during the Industrial Revolution. It's a new era now and we need to break out of these old ways of talking about things.

    11 votes
  2. [3]
    vord
    Link
    If you're interested in learning more about this, I recommend checking out Paul Cockshott's Youtube channel. The audio quality is terrible, but the content within is phenomenal. He's a computer...

    If you're interested in learning more about this, I recommend checking out Paul Cockshott's Youtube channel. The audio quality is terrible, but the content within is phenomenal. He's a computer scientist and marxist economist. I recommend reading Towards a New Socialism if his Youtube channel is too hard to consume due to poor audio.

    Also this fantastic TED talk about this subject, from Nick Hanauer.

    6 votes
    1. thundergolfer
      Link Parent
      Haha yeah audio it is bad. So many whistling sounds and pop sounds when he speaks. Still listenable imo. Thanks for the recommendation.

      Haha yeah audio it is bad. So many whistling sounds and pop sounds when he speaks. Still listenable imo.

      Thanks for the recommendation.

      1 vote
    2. determinism
      Link Parent
      Thanks for that recommendation. I might just watch his whole channel.

      Thanks for that recommendation. I might just watch his whole channel.

      1 vote
  3. skybrian
    Link
    The article is seems to mostly be a history of dry economic theory, but I found one interesting question towards the end:

    The article is seems to mostly be a history of dry economic theory, but I found one interesting question towards the end:

    The analysis of the situations in which different firms, or principals, compete by proposing different allocation mechanisms stands as the main challenge for modern incentive theory and its developments. Making an extensive use of game-theoretic concepts, this recent research area provides novel insights on the relationship between markets and incentives. Although its theoretical foundations are rather complex, the research questions are basic: is competition between different incentive schemes beneficial? How do people respond to incentives when they are designed by competing parties?

    4 votes