Volume 3, No. 2 (Summer 2000)
I propose to confine the present examination of Professor O’Neill’s book to one central topic, likely to be one of interest to readers of the Quarterly Journal. In these pages, and in predecessor journal the Review of Austrian Economics, there has been much concern with the nature of the socialist calculation debate. Is there one calculation argument or two—one based on calculation and the other on knowledge? Did Mises and Hayek advance the same argument, with minor variations, or were their contentions quite different? Professors Herbener, Hoppe, and Salerno, on the one hand, and Yeager, on the other, have not been in full accord on these matters. Professor O’Neill has an interesting and original view of the calculation argument, and, as will be seen, he to a large extent supports the “separationists,” though with a very different assessment.
