Sunday, June 15, 2014

Our World Cannot Function Without Money


Money is the force that drives the economy of an open society. It functions as a unit of account, a store of value, and as a medium of exchange. While some utopian thinkers would argue that money is not a necessity, one would be hard-pressed to imagine a cashless society that allocates resources as efficiently as our own. Few civilizations throughout history have thrived without some form of currency. An open market composed of an intricate series of sales, purchases, investments, and exchanges would be impossible without a stable form of currency. This post is a response to a recent article writtenby the Socialist Party of Britain and posted on Libcom.org that attempts to explain why money is not necessary in a socialist economy. The author argues against Ludwig von Mises’ essay Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, by claiming that economic calculations can be made in a socialist society as in a capitalist society without the use of money. I believe that the author of this article has misunderstood the point of von Mises’ essay, and makes the very same arguments that Mises was scrutinizing. Economic calculations could not be made in a cashless society that meets everyone’s demand and where all resources are used to the greatest efficiency. There are too many problems inherent in allocating goods in a centrally planned economy, let alone in one lacking a stable currency. A socialist economy could never rival the productiveness and efficiency of an open market, but without money such an economy would be doomed to failure. The article in question reveals a fundamental misunderstanding with the use of the price system and with the purpose of money.


In a socialist economy like the one proposed by the article, the means of production would not be privately owned, but would become the property of the state. As such, it becomes the responsibility of the state to distribute the goods they produce to the community. Rather than in a free market, where the distribution of goods takes the form of an exchange between the producers and the consumers, the distribution of goods in a socialist economy resembles an internal transfer, seeing as though under socialism there is no distinction between the two; the consumers are the producers. What Mises is arguing in his essay, is that such an economy could never satisfy the demands of consumers since the central planners would not have access to pricing information.[1] Prices in an open market are based on supply and demand. What the author of these articles does not grasp is how his utopian socialist state is going to obtain information about supply and demand without some kind of pricing system. He writes “Our answer is that the choice of which productive methods to employ, like working out what consumer goods are needed, will be based on estimations and calculations in kind.” What these calculations are exactly or what is being calculated he does not make clear. Socialists demonstrate incredible narrow-mindedness when they assume the government can somehow know and accommodate the needs of every single person in the economy. In reality, the series of exchanges and transactions that make up the economy are so many and so complex that nobody, including myself, could ever hope to know what everyone wants and it would be a painfully futile task to attempt to get information to this effect. The needs and tastes of individuals are also always changing, which only complicates matters. This is why I believe the author of that article completely missed the point von Mises was trying to make. Central-planned economies don’t work. There is no way that a government can somehow calculate the ever-changing supply and demand in any given market, let alone without an effective pricing system.


To demonstrate why central-planned economies are inefficient even on a small scale, consider this thought experiment. Suppose you’ve been given the task of making lunches for an entire school of a thousand students. You have access to a huge selection of food that would allow you to make whatever meals you wish, but you don’t have information about the preferences of each student. Thus, it would be impossible to satisfy them all. Some students inevitably would not like their lunches and would be forced to discard or exchange them with others, creating wasted resources. A central planner would never be able make lunches that optimize every student’s utility more any than if the students were allowed to make their own lunches. How then, is the government under socialism supposed to distribute goods to the entire population, allocating them all efficiently? This thought experiment also demonstrates that in an economy where goods are not allocated efficiently, agents are forced to exchange their goods with others in order to maximize utility. Even in a socialist country where currency is abolished, a medium of exchange would naturally arise to satisfy these needs. We can see examples of this throughout history. In American POW camps during World War Two, this medium took the form of cigarettes.[2] Prisoners would exchange their rations for cigarettes since they were light, easy to carry in bundles, and could be smoked. Goods and services in these camps were expressed in terms of cigarettes, just like goods in America are expressed in dollars and cents. Using cigarettes, prisoners whose preferences were not satisfied by rations they received could purchase goods they wanted throughout the camp. I believe that if a state were to dismantle the entire banking system and abolish money, then a commodity currency like cigarettes would develop in its place. Money is more useful than barter for trading and to propose that we could live effectively without a currency of any kind is absurd.



The article later goes on to criticize the pricing system by claiming that the cost of an item only takes into consideration the labour and time it took to produce it. He argues, “To make this the only consideration that counts (as is imposed by the economic laws of capitalism) is an absurd aberration.”


The author of this article is clearly mistaken about several things. Capitalism does not impose laws on anyone. Capitalism is merely a system wherein individuals are free to make their own choices and where property laws are enforced by the government. As far as the price system goes, to suggest that only labour and time are considered in the cost of a good is the true absurd aberration. Supply and demand are determined by a variety of factors, including labour costs, but goods can have value for many other reasons including aesthetic or historical significance, taste, popularity, scarcity, or other seemingly arbitrary factors. The extraordinary value of a coin collection, an antique armoire, or a Vermeer painting is not derived from the labour and time they took to produce, but rather from the scarcity of these goods compared to how much they are demanded. How is a socialist state going to allocate works of art without some unit of account with which to assign them value? It appears that art collecting is to be abolished along with money in this supposed socialist utopia. The purpose of money is as a unit of account, that is, it assigns values to objects based on their demand and supply, which in turn are determined by any number of things. Money allows for the trade of value for value. Money ensures that every good that is produced is traded to someone who wants it for the appropriate value in dollars and cents. It reflects a poor understanding of the economy to assume that somehow the government will know how to allocate its resources efficiently without even a basic unit of account. Therefore, any suggestion that a socialist economy can provide for everyone’s needs better than a market economy is absolute rubbish.

       
Under Socialism, Vermeer's The Astronomer is worth 9 million cigarettes


Another ridiculous claim made by the article is that under socialism, producers would not take into account monetary or market values, but rather “human values”. I believe what the author means by this is that goods will only be produced in accordance with their need in society rather than to make a profit. This kind of mentality, well-meaning and idealistic as it may be, does not correspond to how the world really works. I feel the following quote by Adam Smith has relevancy here: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” In order to create a given product, it requires technical ingenuity, time, effort, resources, imagination, and market knowledge. In a market economy, firms are willing to invest all that effort because if the product they create is successful, it will confer a benefit in the form of profit. Threats of competition also ensure that producers make the best goods possible, utilizing their time and resources to the greatest efficiency to satisfy the greatest demand. Under a socialist economy however, there is no threat of competition and no opportunity to make a profit off anything, so where is the motivation under socialism to satisfy these “human needs” to the best of its ability? To engineer some product for the masses, using the fewest resources possible, and without the accountability incurred by competition, it seems that any good produced under socialism would inevitably be of lesser quality that its equivalent in a market society. If you compare the technology of Soviet Russia to that of the United States, this becomes evident. The state of the Soviet automobile industry was so poor, that in the 1960s, Soviet leadership turned to the Western powers to help them produce a proper car.[3] The infamous Lada, a product of communist ingenuity, was a car so unreliable that if you purchased one brand new, it still required extensive repairs in order to be made roadworthy.[4] The Lada also had horrible fuel economy and they became an object of ridicule anywhere outside Soviet Russia. If the socialist’s way of satisfying “human needs” is to have its people driving around in obsolete deathtraps, then I will take my chances in a market economy. 

How do you double the value of a Lada? 
Fill up the gas tank.


Any economy with a stable currency can provide for the needs of its people better than a cashless socialist hell. For all the high-minded rhetoric espoused throughout the Libcom.org article, little of it amounts to more than idealistic navel-gazing. Money allows for individuals to exchange their labour for an equivalent value of goods and services. It ensures that workers are properly compensated and that all resources are allocated efficiently. Socialists and utopian thinkers are hard-pressed to demonstrate how a world without money could ever function.  Money gives the individual freedom to make his own choices.  Supply and demand, more so than any amount of socialist rhetoric, reflects the true needs of the people, and this is why I believe socialists despise money. Ultimately, money represents the responsibility the individual has over his own life and his freedom of choice, ideals that do not fit the socialist’s vision of man as a form of sacrificial livestock—to be herded and organized by the whim of a central planner.  No state or central planner, regardless of the means at their disposal, can never accommodate these needs better than an open market.







[2] http://www.clsbe.lisboa.ucp.pt/docentes/url/jcn/ie2/0POWCamp.pdf
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry_in_the_Soviet_Union#Historical_production_by_year
[4] http://www.economist.com/node/11703067

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