Who Won the Socialist Calculation Debate (with Peter Boettke)

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🗓️ 17 February 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

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Summary

For more than a century, some economists have insisted that central planning can outperform markets. Economists like Mises, Hayek, and Friedman disagreed. Who won this debate? Is it over? Does AI change how we should think about the power of planning? Listen as economist Peter Boettke of George Mason University discusses what is known as the "socialist calculation debate" with EconTalk's Russ Roberts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.2	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is January 20th, 2025, and my guest is economist Peter Betke of George Mason University.
0:43.6	Our topic for today is socialism and what is known as the socialist calculation debate.
0:50.2	We're going to base the conversation on Pete's book of the same title, The Socialist Calculation Debate, that he has written with Rosalino Candela and Teghan Truett.
1:00.9	This is Pete's ninth appearance on the program. He was last year in May of 2018, discussing public administration, liberty, and the proper role for government. Pete, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:12.1	Thank you very much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here with you. So what is the socialist
1:16.2	calculation debate? I just want to say for listeners who might think this is some ancient,
1:21.8	weird, archaic academic dispute, it is that. But it turns out it's not so archaic and it's not so academic
1:29.5	and it's much broader than it comes to appear at first glance is what I learned from your book.
1:34.7	But let's start with the archaic academic debate of early, mid, early third of the 20th century, I guess.
1:42.3	Well, I guess the easiest way to put it is that Karl Marx, who was the
1:47.4	most systematic socialist, not the only socialist. There was a variety of socialisms, all right,
1:52.6	that came about. And in fact, you know, if you go back in the history of socialism to the first
1:57.5	international, it's not like Marx was the only socialist there. And you have Bakuna and you have
2:03.6	other kinds of people who all want to envision this possible future that would rid the world of the
2:09.6	social ills that the sort of, you know, old regime had generated. It's a little misnomer to talk about it always in capitalism
2:18.5	versus socialism because capitalism really wasn't, you know, fully developed then either, right? I mean,
	...

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