Cybersocialism: A Reassessment of the Socialist Calculation Debate

Abstract

This article presents a new approach to the socialist calculation debate. I focus particularly on the question of how to integrate information of consumers’ preferences and argue that the objections raised by Austrian economists against the socialist model proposed by Oskar Lange can be addressed within the current level of technological development. I propose that preferences of consumers can be revealed by their web search queries and also that, given the amount of information available, it would be possible to analyze consumers’ preferences in terms of hierarchical choices that distinguish between needs and subneeds.