The Communicative Character of Capitalistic Competition: A Hayekian response to the Habermasian challenge

"Ideal speech situations", "domination-free discourse" or "deliberative communities" describe political ideals proudly cherished by many sociologists. The sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, motivation is to mobilise political discourse as an instrument to tame or transform the capitalistic "system" according to alleged needs of "society". Most economists and defenders of capitalistic competition, in return, don?t care about communicative communities. The individual market actor is assumed or demanded to be free to choose among given alternatives satisfying given preferences subject to given constraints. Why, then, should homo oeconomicus argue (van Aaken 2003)? There is no "communicative action" among the individuals that populate economic textbooks, there is only "commutative action". Only a few, mostly "Austrian", economists realised that the exchange of goods and services within the spontaneous order of "catallaxy" involves an exchange of knowledge, ideas, opinions, expectations, and arguments – that markets are indeed communicative networks (e.g. Hayek 1946/48; Lavoie, ed. 1991; Horwitz 1992). In fact, and this will be my major claim, market competition is more "deliberative" than politics in the sense that more information about available social problem solutions and their comparative performance, about people's preferences, ideas and expectations is spontaneously created, disseminated and tested. This very idea is anathema for followers of Habermasian discourse ethics. The intellectual thrust and political clout of their vindication of deliberative politics critically seems to depend on a mostly tacit assumption that markets fail to address social needs and regulate social conflicts. Political discourse therefore ?steps in to fill the functional gaps when other mechanisms of social integration are overburdened? (Habermas 1996: 318). I will claim that the argument should be very much the other way around: politics and public deliberations are overburdened mechanisms – unable to deal with an increasingly complex and dynamic society. Moreover, the requisites of ideal speech communities are so enormous that functional gaps are inevitable. Partly, these gaps can be closed if market competition steps in. Partly, reorganisations of the political system are needed. Hence, I am not arguing that Habermas is wrong by stressing the need for open discourse in order to reach informed agreement among citizens who seek to realise mutual gains from joint commitment by contributing to common (public) goods and submitting to common rules of conduct (s.a. Vanberg 2003). I am challenging his neglect of capitalistic competition as a communicative device and his disdain for the classical liberal conception of bounded democracy that respects individual property rights (e.g. Habermas 1975; 1998). --

Learning through institutional competition

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The boundaries of the state

The paper is organized as follows: in part 2, I give a short account of Humboldt's boundaries of the state that relates to many present-day challenges to classical liberalism: his blunt rejection of any solicitude of the state for the positive welfare of the citizen which also covers education, religion and any kind of moral paternalism. In part 3, I refer to the new economic literature on the optimal size and number of nations in order to discuss whether small states are more likely to be (nearly) minimal states. This literature tends to disregard Humboldt's arguments in favour of exposing the individual to varieties of situations that he can choose and from which he can learn to self-develop. Therefore, in part 4, I argue that the evolutionary merits of this exposure can be illustrated by regarding institutional competition as a Hayekian discovery procedure. In part 5, I look at the partial removal of borders within the European Union and, using some intuitions from club theory, I argue that, in terms of the size of European government, integration has become in most areas too deep whereas in terms of the size of membership in the Union the EU has grown too big in some areas and too small in others. I conclude with a plea for more decentralization and competition amongst jurisdictions as a way to lead, as if by an invisible hand, to at least somewhat more limited states. My qualified claim is thus: more, and more open, boundaries between states lead to more limited governments. --

Capitalistic Competition as a Communicative Community - Why Politics Is Less “Deliberative” than Markets

Discourse theorists such as Habermas tend to disregard the communicative character and discoursive power of market processes and at the same time overrate the ability of political deliberation to discover and implement social problem solutions. Mainstream economists have little to contribute to this debate since they regard both economic and political “markets” as simple instruments for the aggregation of given preferences. Hayek and other “Austrian” market process theorists, however, provide a rich theory that highlights the role of competition as a process of discovery, persuasion, experimentation and opinion formation. I use this analytical framework in order to show first that real market processes in many respects correspond to most ambitious claims of ideal deliberation such as “domination-free discourse” or “the unforced force of the better argument”. Next, I confront the deliberative ideal with predicaments of real political discourse, stressing opportunity costs (rational ignorance, shortage of attention, decision costs), asymmetric incompetence and the interventionist bias of political deliberation, and problems of “cheap talk” (preference falsification, opinion cascades, enclave deliberation). In order to make political discourse most effective within the limits described above, I argue in favour of privatisation, decentralisation and constitutionalisation as policy conclusions. I end with a summary comparison of economic and political competition as means to discover and disseminate local knowledge in society.discourse theory; market process theory; deliberative democracy; preference falsification; opinion formation; interventionism

A European social model of state-market relations: the ethics of competition from a neo-liberal perspective

In this paper I portray "neo-liberalism" in its original conceptual meaning as opposed to the generic term of depreciation as which it is commonly used. I identify fair competition and the denial of all privilege as the major concerns of original neo-liberals. Ethical merit for competition might, at first sight, be based on only two principles: individual natural rights (equal liberty) and socially desirable outcomes ("unintended altruism"). It was the neo-liberal idea to put fairness-norms or universally applicable rules of just behaviour between an unqualified "input-based" ethics and an unqualified "output-based" ethical consequentialism. The enforcement of such rules is a major obligation of the state. Today, the European Union assumes the role of "guardian" of competition. In a certain, but limited sense, neoliberalism, correctly understood, can be argued to be the one founding "European Social Model". However, beyond the realm of common, universalisable interests, competition amongst social-political models seems a preferable option for Europe. --Neo-liberalism,Ordo-liberalism,European Social Models,Ethics of Competition

Evaluation of renewable energy policies in an integrated economic-energy-environment model

This paper evaluates socio-economic impacts of alternative renewable energy policies in Poland. Applying a general equilibrium bioenergy model we perform simulations of alternative policy instruments. The obtained numerical results allow us to assess and compare welfare and distributional impacts of alternative policies. Our empirical findings advocate that the bioenergy sector in Europe would benefit most from an integrated economic-energy-environment approach to policy making.GEM-E3 Forestry Renewable energy.

Short-circuit current improvement in thin cells with a gridded back contact

The use of gridded back contact on thin silicon solar cells 50 micrometers was investigated. An unexpected increase in short circuit current of almost 10 percent was experienced for 2 cm x 2 cm cells. Control cells with the standard continuous contact metallization were fabricated at the same time as the gridded back cells with all processes identical up to the formation of the back contact. The gridded back contact pattern was delineated by evaporation of Ti-Pd over a photo-resist mask applied to the back of the wafer; the Ti-Pd film on the controls was applied in the standard fashion in a continuous layer over the back of the cell. The Ti-Pd contacts were similarly applied to the front of the wafer, and the grid pattern on both sides of the cell was electroplated with 8-10 micrometers of silver

(Biphenyl-2-yl)bromidobis(2-methyltetrahydrofuran-[kappa]O)magnesium(II)

In the title Grignard reagent, [MgBr(C12H9)(C5H10O)2], the Mg centre adopts a distorted tetrahedral MgCO2Br arrangement. The dihedral angle between the two aromatic rings of the biphenyl residue is 44.00 (14)°. Each molecule incorporates one R- and one S-configured 2-methyltetrahydrofuran molecule. Key indicators: single-crystal X-ray study; T = 173 K; mean σ(C–C) = 0.007 Å; R factor = 0.045; wR factor = 0.108; data-to-parameter ratio = 17.4

Process Research On Polycrystalline Silicon Material (PROPSM)

The mechanisms limiting performance in polycrystalline silicon was determined. The initial set of experiments in this task entails the fabrication of cells of various thicknesses for four different bulk resistivities between 0.1 and 10 omega-cm. The results for the first two lots are presented