[twc]

ALB: Yes I had thought of making a play on words myself with "repugnant" and "repugnance"It was irresistible — the image of the Nobel Economics prize-giving clique rewarding work on "repugnance economics" was far too delicious to pass by unremarked. Apologies for sidetracking your more important point.

[twc]

ALB: "Repugnance economics", is that our answer to the "Economic Calculation Argument"?I hope not — neither by name nor definition:"Repugnance economics" — in essence, the study of transactions where the application of the price mechanism is regarded as morally repugnant, such as the sale of body parts, sperm and eggs, prostitution and even dwarf-throwing.While games-theory optimization tools may very well find their way into the toolkit for managing a future socialist society — as ALB suggests — all class-based economical theory is irredeemably "repugnant".The exponents of class-based economic theory (because of their perceived or adopted social position) of necessity practice the justificatory science of exploitation. They have assimilated the truly repugnant aspects of class exploitation with what appears on the surface to be blithe unconcern.Games-theory optimization strategies based on the ranking of human subjective evaluations — from Pareto to the post WWII mathematical crowd — are highly relevant to the world of capitalist economics, but only as theoretical baubles and justificatory diamonds. Capitalism's dynamic profit motivation inevitably succeeds in riding roughshod over any such strategy based on merely subjective human evaluation.Should we take these intriguing intellectual problems seriously in a practical sense? As ALB suggests, such optimization strategies have a hope of working — not under our present capitalism but — under the socialism we are all working for.The Achilles heal of stable ranking of human subjectivity is actually wobbly because of its over-riding dependence upon the supposed rock-solid lynch pin or pivot of mere illusory human subjectivity itself — that most fragile, variable and manipulable evanescence — and not the actually solid lynch pin or pivot of socially agreed-upon social necessity.This almost certainly renders these formal strategies with their stable solutions unsuitable in their present capitalist-posed and capitalist-assumed framework for any serious direct application to a future world of associated producers who own and control their means of production — and so think socially — and not to the present world of opposing (or disassociated) producers and private owners of the producers' means of production — where everyone "thinks" individually and so assumes non-deterministically (and this in a deterministic world) that he/she evaluates situations thoroughly individually.Capitalism's great justification is that it optimizes everything — above all human well being itself. Hence the attraction of optimization theory as a powerful justification tool.Social production, under any social system, will always depend to a lesser or greater extent on optimization strategies. But stable optimization of human valuation for the whole of us is an illusion. What happens to the stability when our perceptions/evaluations change? — the world of human evaluation just ain't stable or comprehendible, whereas the sought-for world of socially agreed upon need is at least acknowledged to be deterministic, and so actually understandable.Understandability is the last thing that capitalism desires — hence the power of these wondrous stable solutions governing human happiness to reconcile us to it!Other, less significant, thoughts come to mind…Moral repugnance is a social construct, which easily succumbs [= rationalized to complete satisfaction] when confronted by social necessity — discussed in Marx's 1844 notes,Did not the early Christian church fathers and the 19th century romantics set up in their dens an "alas poor Yorick" skull as macabre company? Cadaver repugnance has regularly become chic.Some of our greatest humans were "economically repugnant". Renaissance heroes (Leonardo, Michelangelo, …) let alone anatomical and medical pioneers chose eternal damnation over temporal repugnance when they studied cadavers clandestinely. Did the 18th century physician expect not to pay the gruesome grave robber?Finally, apart from dwarf throwing, all of the listed "repugnant" economies of the rather journalistically phrased definition have perfectly "respectable" economic existence — e.g., gene patenting, etc. In short, they are only "morally repugnant" in the limited sense of our modern professional ethics committees — in a sense securely untroubled by capitalist exploitation.But the over-riding point remains that human economic exploitation and its theoretical justifiers are the most adequate representations of "repugnant economics".

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