Abstract
[Interview excerpt] The Austrian position on calculation is the following: without private property rights in the means of production, economic calculation is impossible. Economic calculation refers to the ability of a decisionmaker to determine ex ante whether a project’s benefits can be expected to exceed its costs, and ex post whether the project’s benefits have actually exceeded its costs; in a phrase, profit and loss. Means of production are any resources that are used to produce consumer goods: capital. Private property rights is a fraught term and there is some dispute over what the essential features of private property are, but what calculation requires is alienability, or the right to sell one’s rights in capital. What is necessary for calculation is that capital be exchanged in markets.