[robbo203]

Thanks for that  DJP  – I will follow up the links
 
I wasnt thinking so much of diseconomies  of scale  which relates more specifically to corporation size but the classic presentation of diminishing marginal utility. You know –  the one about  the first ice cream consumed yielding a high marginal return in terms of the pleasure it provides, the second somewhat less and  the third even less. And so on and so forth. Granted  utility or “utils “is not exactly something that can be measured in a cardinal sense although in the early period of utilitarian thought  (a la Bentham & co) the workinga assumption  was indeed  that utility  could be thus measured.  All the same as the icre cream example demonstrates there is undeniable kernal of  truth in marginalist economics – its not alll cock and bull stuff.
 
Question is – does it have any possible appplication to the way a socialist society could organise production?  For example , given two  or more  particular ends uses how might one allocate a given input common to both of  them ?   And in what proportions? Is there a case for saying that something like the “equimarginal principle” – the opttimal allocation of an input, as in this case, between several end uses  – might  apply and, if so, how might might  we apply it?

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