Whether or not the socialist computation problem is solved depends on how it is defined. If the problem is to efficiently set a price for every item on every shelf at all times, then we have no claim to make. Though our theory can be disaggregated to any level of detail, the causality behind our theory does not operate below a macro level of abstraction.

A more practical definition of the computation problem follows from one of Mises’ many distinctions between socialism and capitalism, i.e.: whether or not one is allowed to buy and sell shares of stock. In a regime of economic command, the economy’s commanding heights are in effect owned in perpetuity by a hereditary master class. As none of this system’s larger assets are openly traded, their value is not appraised; and, absent meaningful valuation, these assets will not be shaped and allocated efficiently. In SFEcon’s model of such systems, control will be lost in expanding spirals of meaningless readjustments in all asset levels.

Thus the problem of economic command is not at all one of generally replacing markets with sufficiently honest, informed, and sober commissars. The problem is most intelligently confined to replacing only the financial market; and we can readily observe this intelligence operating in Asia’s experiments with state capitalism and market socialism:

Commodity prices are allowed to fluctuate as needed to clear markets.

Managerial elites are promoted in military fashion, depending on their success at enhancing the national conglomerate’s portfolio, with the highest commands being ratified by a politburo.

Entrepreneurs are allowed to emerge. When their enterprise achieves a certain magnitude, they are bought out with a state pension and replaced by officers assigned from the managerial elite.

Though Bernie Madoff went to jail, his takings were peanuts compared to those of AIG’s correspondents (many of whom were vastly wealthy and/or foreign nationals) and they were made whole by US taxpayers at 100¢ on the dollar.

Lanny Bruer, in his capacity as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, established the following limit on his powers in the area of financial malfeasance:

. . . if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bringing that case, there’s some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it’s a factor we need to know and understand.¹

Meanwhile the operations of Goldman Sachs ² have been essentially folded into the world's monetary authorities.³

Few cultures have ever been able to tolerate anything like the West’s traditions of liberty for sanctioning large concentrations of capital property in private hands; and there is no reason why non-Western cultures should not be allowed to exploit a view of ‘capitalism’ as a mere abstraction. Another culture might more securely optimize their assets by reference to a theory of pure capitalism, rather than trust asset valuation to a process requiring moral resources that are untested in their society, and readily observed to be unravelling in the West.

Where scholars cannot tolerate such clarity we might, in unkind moments, suspect they wish not to see instances of real capital markets misrepresenting, rather than revealing, actual values. Have those who endow such scholarship ever profited by forcing their troubled assets on an unwilling buyer at an artificial price?