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In a message dated 97-07-12 15:17:47 EDT, Brad writes: 
 
<< We found the 16 year old via reference in conversations at the 
playground. 
 We pay her $7 an hour--when the market equilibrium rate, to the extent 
 there is a market, is closer to $5.50 an hour--because we want her to value 
 her employment relationship with us and contribute more than just her raw 
 labor power to the job of babysitting our children. You might say that we 
 are in an "efficiency wage" equilibrium. Or you might say that we want to 
 be the kind of parents who pay their babysitters a generous wage. >> 
 
He also writes: 
 
<< .. we pay different people different wages for the same work.  >> 
 
 
It's not clear in fact that this is what you are doing.  What interests 
me is the fashion in which the phenomena is understood in terms of -- or 
in contrast to -- a very artificial construct in which the services and 
goods on the market must understood as identical, i.e. understanding a 
'market' is locked into a so-called 'perfect competition' construction.  
It was just the misleading character of this construct for thinking about 
the functioning of markets which inspired much of Hayek's alternative 
conception of the nature of market -- Hayek was mostly thinking of unique 
capital goods and unique entrepreneurial skills, but his is also extended 
to unique labor services.  My point is that Brad's case for Polanyi is 
bound up in a question begging explanatory construction -- one that is 
essentially contested by those who are attempting to help us understand 
markets. If you give up the misconceived picture of 'markets' imposed by 
thinking through the lens of the so-called 'perfect competition' 
construction in a particular 'neo-classical' manner -- what is left of 
Brad's defense of Polanyi? 
 
Greg Ransom 
Dept. of Philosophy 
UC-Riverside 
[log in to unmask] 
http://members.aol.com/gregransom/hayekpage.htm 
 
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