National Economic Planning: What Is Left?

By Don Lavoie

Book Overview

In National Economic Planning: What Is Left? Don Lavoie argues that the radical Left's enthusiasm for planning has been a tragic mistake and that progressive social change requires the abandonment of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1942951264
• ISBN13: 9781942951261
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Hayekian review of modern leftism

Great book. This book is probably among a select few books that take a Hayekian or Austrian approach (knowledge problem based via Hayek rather than calculation problem based via Mises directly) to consider planning and the more recent noncomprehensive planning alternatives (from Lange to Sweden to Welfare States but also fascism and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation & MITI in Japan) and to so so in a fairly relaxed sort of review style. Lavoie considers planning from a theoretical perspective, similar in approach to the old planning debates but not as rigourously and takes on several separate proposed kinds of planning; but he also spends much of the book teaching the layman's introduction to the knowledge problem and in a post-Hayek world, introducing some of information & complexity theory. He spends one chapter and includes an appendix to consider further the knowledge problem (or growth-of-knowledge theory) as it relates to scientists, he also spends one chapter on biological models. He then uses these foundations to consider the problems inherent in a planned economy. If you're still not sure its a worthwhile example of this literature, note that Hayek wrote a blurb for the backcover! A very readable book with several interesting interwoven insights, review of broad areas and particular rebuttals, it will leave you hearing the underlying desire for noncomprehensive planning in every politician's speech for some time.