From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sat Apr 21 2007 - 11:01:32 EDT
> > >We -market socialists- think market economies >have proved the possibility to keep the >Entrepreneurship alertness even in absence of >privet property, due to the principal-agent >relations embedded in the stockholders forms of >management organization. Keiretsu's are groups >of firms associated with a main bank that >monitors their management and assigns loans. The >criterion to do this is the same used in western >form of capitalism or the 2th post-war USSR: >profitability. A high degree of market >concentration and large scale production like >Keiretsu's or Microsoft has not makes us think >in the absence of competition. We just have to >guarantee that non-market entry barriers impede >rivalry. > > > >I send you herewith a paper that considers the >Keiretsu case in the light of market socialism: >John Roemer, "The Morality and Efficiency of >Market Socialism", Ethic, Vol. 102, Nš 3, (Apr. >1992) > > On this paper I think Tom Mayer writes in his book Analytical Marxism (sage) , "The nature of govt intervention represents Roemer's most original contribution to the theory of market socialism. By simply regulating the interest rates at which firms borrow money, govt planners can, as Roemer and his colleagues show, achieve virtually any technically feasible composition of investment..Such regulation of interest rates is a nonintrusive but effective form of central planning. Neither output nor prices not the distribution of labor is centrally planned--only the composition of investment. Investment planning is not the arbitrary imposition of a govt bureaucracy: the broad features of investment are decided by democratic political processes. Roemer considers political determination of investment necessary to avoid possible market failures. For example, equilibrium investment levels often fall below the social optimum." p. 273 One wonders though whether the political manipulation of interest rates or even the money supply is enough to achieve the "social optimum". Rakesh
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