A modern economy is so complex it would be impossible for a group of "experts" to design an efficient plan. This deep problem is solved in practice by decentralizing the decisions into smaller groups, each governed by the profit & loss test, for which you need market prices.
@NewmanJ_R@GeorgeSelgin But PSRs are local equilibria, not general, nor even regional. They are disturbed iteratively, not immediately.
We must be able to distinguish between dynamics that adjust aleatory errors and changes, and those that adjust systematic clusters of errors, even if same drivers.
@NewmanJ_R@GeorgeSelgin I don't know what you mean by your qualification.
The market process is always at work, but not immediate in that exchanges must take place for adjustments to occur.
I think you are taking it too far in the other direction, bordering on the neoclassical equilibrium always.
@GeorgeSelgin The nominal and the real both affect each other. Especially in the short term.
Nominal aggregate demand is determined and significant only through individual exchanges, in which the real factors are not to be underestimated.
It's not immediate, but the market process works.
@GeorgeSelgin Companies with discounted capital can be profitable by selling at lower prices and buying other inputs such as labor at higher prices. Their willingness to buy and sell increases aggregate demand and supply as they come into that situation. The resources are still there.
@GeorgeSelgin In this case I mean both. After the bankruptcies and liquidations, whoever obtained the discounted capital rebuilds AD through demand for imputes and AS through supply of outputs, so aggregate income starts flowing again and the quantities demanded and supplied increase again.
@GeorgeSelgin But why wouldn't demand bounce back as prices change? I know it's not immediate, but it eventually must happen, right?
How many enduring contractions not prolonged by intervention have there been?
@GeorgeSelgin I need to think about that. Perhaps you are right.
But given demand had collapsed, would it not have been better to let it come back by itself rather than doing deficit spending, which would have kept zombie projects from being liquidated?
Contrary to some critics, I am allowed to say "I prefer voluntary interactions in society" without first spelling out a full theory of property rights.
Great that @mises has published this book commemorating 75 years of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action. My contribution shows how deflationary credit contraction can be beneficial during the bust phase of the business cycle.
https://t.co/djXoa2BIOB