Economics

Pertaining to the regulation of household concerns; as the economic art.

H.H. Hoppe, 'A theory of socialism and capitalism, Economics, politics, and ethics', LvM Institute: 2007.
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'Declaring everybody a co-owner of everything solves the problem of differences in ownership only nominally. It does not solve the real underlying problem: differences in the power to control. In an economy based on private ownership, the owner determines what should be done with the means of production. In a socialized economy this can no longer happen, as there is no such owner.

Nonetheless, the problem of determining what should be done with the means of production still exists and must be solved somehow, provided there is no (...) harmony of interests among all of the people, but rather some degree of disagreement. Only one view as to what should be done can in fact prevail and others must (...) be excluded.

But then again there must be inequalities between people: someone's or some groups' opinion must win over that of others. The difference between a private property economy and a socialized one is only how whose will prevails in cases of disagreement is to be determined.'

'In capitalism there must be somebody who controls, and others who do not, and hence real differences among people exist, but the issue of whose opinion prevails is resolved by original appropriation and contract.

In socialism, too, real differences between controllers and noncontrollers must, of necessity, exist; only in the case of socialism, the position of those whose opinion wins is not determined by previous usership or contract, but by 'political means''Again closer inspection reveals that the difference is merely illusory, created only by semantics: to say that an economy of private owners is supplanted by a nationalized one creates the impression that instead of a multitude of decision making units, all of a sudden there is only one such unit.

In fact, nothing has changed at all. There are as many individuals with as many different interests as before. Just as much as capitalism then, socialism has to find a solution to the problem of determining how to coordinate the uses of different means of production, given the fact of differing views among people on how this should be accomplished. The difference between capitalism and socialism is again one of how coordination is achieved, and not between chaos and coordination, as the socialist semantic insinuates.'

Economics

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