SFEcon’s premise that markets are material phenomena (once again: facts that the economist is obligated to explain) subsumes the possibility of an admittedly black swan in the form of artificially calculated economic efficiency. Evidence of this rare bird’s sightings at a Mises Institute Forum (convened with no notice to us nor input from us) were received first by dismissing our particular swan on the ground of its being black, and then proceeding directly on to dispute in its ad hominem form:

SFEcon seems to have a political agenda attached to it, and I am extremely dubious of any so-called solutions to the calculation problem.

The (implicit or explicit) desire to manipulate, plan and control economic processes by means of a centralized state structure is certainly at the heart of the SFEcon project, according to their website. Wealth is to be socialized.¹

Ludwig von Mises didn’t like references to the "miracle" of the marketplace or the "magic" of production or other terms that suggest that economic systems depend on some force that is beyond human comprehension. In his view, we are better off coming to a rational understanding of why markets are responsible for astounding levels of productivity that can support exponential increases in population and ever higher living standards.²

Mises forgive me: this is a miracle.³

Fairness to the critique of SFEcon as a socialist project has some support in that sfecon.com is linked-to by think tanks in Russia and China; and that its first publication in a proper economics journal was written by an official of Ukraine’s Ministry of Economics.⁴ Our theory might already be at work in the service of some socialist regime; but we simply do not know the depth of any considerations being given to it.

But it is obviously the prospect of SFEcon’s being used descriptively that incites a dissipating tradition’s instinct for self-preservation. A mechanical analog to economic adjustment under pure capitalism most assuredly works as an instructional videogame with which to inculcate an appreciation of free markets; and, as the mathematical expression of pure anarcho-capitalism, it is just as logical to receive SFEcon as the Austrian School’s fulfilment rather than as its negation.

Were latter-day traditionalism merely defending property as an essential component of liberty it would have nothing to fear from a mechanistic interpretation of how capitalism works. If Liberty is our prime directive, and property is an indispensable aspect of liberty, then we would provide for the self-interested disposition of private property even if such were not materially efficient. Having the mathematical enabler of a scientific socialism does not dictate that it must serve economic command: it is, again, entirely serviceable for imparting the attractions of free markets.

‘The self-interested use of private property’ might be more easily defended if were understood as one of perhaps many methods by which to create economic efficiency. ‘Capitalism’ might be then be reduced to a set of criteria for efficiency, and unburdened of any specification of the means by which such criteria might be best realized in a given culture. Such a theory might even find uses for educating the public to be confident in an unrigged market's intrinsic abilities to absorb even the most intense stimuli, yet find its way back to equilibrium in the most fair and efficient way possible.

The critiques raised at the Mises Institute are, in any case, contraindicated by SFEcon’s origin in a thesis proposed at an institution created by the industrial captain Alfred Sloan for cultivation of embryonic capitalists at MIT.⁵ Thereafter it had no life in the academy until its author retired from a lengthy career spent entirely in the private sector to teach at another conservatively constituted, indeed downright Catholic, university. In its only academic incarnation, SFEcon was used to impart the intricacies of international business economics to MBA candidates having bachelor's degrees in STEM subjects.