Market socialism was tried pretty extensively in Eastern Europe during the cold war; Joseph Stiglitz wrote a pretty thorough examination of it in his book ‘Whither Socialism.’
The information problem which kills explicit central planning is still extant in market socialism because it is based on reductionist economic models which do not capture the full complexity of market behavior. In other words, neglecting easy-to-miss microeconomic issues (like information asymmetry in purchasing, to use the example he focuses on most) means creating systemic dysfunction on the macro scale. Economic models can be useful abstractions when it comes to predicting trends in real markets, but they are not what they symbolize and building a “market” around their assumptions leads to collapse.
Market socialism was tried pretty extensively in Eastern Europe during the cold war; Joseph Stiglitz wrote a pretty thorough examination of it in his book ‘Whither Socialism.’
The information problem which kills explicit central planning is still extant in market socialism because it is based on reductionist economic models which do not capture the full complexity of market behavior. In other words, neglecting easy-to-miss microeconomic issues (like information asymmetry in purchasing, to use the example he focuses on most) means creating systemic dysfunction on the macro scale. Economic models can be useful abstractions when it comes to predicting trends in real markets, but they are not what they symbolize and building a “market” around their assumptions leads to collapse.