Economic Calculation Problem
The economic calculation problem — Mises' claim that rational allocation is impossible without market prices — is the standard theoretical objection to socialism, and Haz Al-Din treats it as a pseudo-problem built on a false picture of what planning requires.
Haz's handling
- The dismissal (INTENSE DEBATES stream): "It's complete bullshit... based on faulty premises from the beginning." The premise: that everything must "collapse into one number" — price — for coordination. But reality is already centrally coordinated: "the mode of production is already centralized... objectively these supply chains have to all come together somehow from very disparate origins" (MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE) — the pencil argument turned against Friedman: the global pencil proves planning exists, markets merely mystify it.
- The deeper point (WE'RE SO BACK stream): the calculation debate assumes a "common measure" is needed in the absence of exchange value — Haz gestures at Cantor's mathematics of the infinite: multiple incommensurable dimensions don't need collapse into a scalar to be handled; the demand for a single metric is the value-form's own prejudice generalized into ontology.
- Historical answer: OGAS — the Soviet cybernetics proposal for computerized planning, discussed on the Lib Discord debate via Cockshott — the calculation problem was being answered technically before the USSR fell to other causes.