Re: OWNERSHIP: Redress

["Stephen V. Kane" <svkane@naisp.net>]

MR----->>Further,
attempts to force-feed such an imperative in the increasingly strained
efforts to try to muster some definitive means by which to de-legitimize
Binary productiveness leads to these revelations of the flawed nature of the
MRS/Isoquant/Iso-cost analysis and the theory of Marginal Productivity that
it is presumed this analysis substantiate.

svk:  I'm about halfway through this screed, and appreciate your criticisms,
as that's why i'm participating here, but enough .....who said anything
about "delegitimizing binary productiveness?"  You say it in the first
paragraph too......"Both because I am convinced that these considerations go
to the very core of why Binary critics are misguided in their increasingly
strained or diversionary efforts to dismiss Binary theory"

Hello?  To whom are you referring?  Me?  Who said i was a binary critic?
And far from 'dismissing' binary theory, my intent is to explain it in a
framework understandable to economists.

Which i've done.  If you've got a problem with it, confine yourself to the
merits.

It seems your major objection is that isoquant lines appear continuous, and
in reality, are not.  And you've sloshed 5,000 words on the board saying,
essentially, "aha.....the defects of MR theory are so glaring they cannot be
forced into a dynamic model such as Kelso's."

I had a discussion with Richard Hattwick, the editor of JSE, and i said,
"one criticism i expect to get is that i've used a tool that "can't" be
used......but in my trade I often use whatever tool is handy, if it does the
job."  To which he nodded his understanding.

I used this particular tool, not because it would 'discredit' Kelso or
Kelso's ideas, but because they work to explain the ideas.  Maybe not to
you, but to an economics audience they are useful.

Your assault on the defects of MRS analysis won't be the first, and won't be
the last.  I am well aware of the defects, as would be any other economist
who uses them.  Rodney Shakespeare has pointed out on several occasions now,
that I don't have any problem with the term 'productiveness,' or its use by
Mr. Kelso, or its use in this forum.  Never
have.  My intent is to define it in conventional terms, so that it belongs
to *all*
economics and not to a select few.

Incidentally, your criticisms are well taken.  As you may or may not  have
noticed, Alan Zundel and i have been exploring the microeconomics of b.e.
for the past weeks, trying to pin down the exact meaning of 'relative
productiveness'.  It's taken a couple of dozen posts, but communication has
occurred.  It's been a deliberate process, and that is better than
dissertation-length pronouncements which can't possibly be answered in
order.

I'm sorry you have such a negative view of my work.  But forty years of
evincing nothing but confusion from the use of kelsoantics has done little
for his program, imo.

I've set b.e. off on her own....she now belongs to 'economics', where she
has a place.  That should hardly be unwelcome.

vty, svk