Comments (29)

• Benjamin Marks

• I would not buy it unless it calculated incorrectly. Then I would buy many, it would be a great gift/prank/advertising piece!

• Published: February 24, 2006 8:12 AM

• jeffrey

• I should add that it is small and thin, almost like a credit card.

• Published: February 24, 2006 8:15 AM

• David J. Heinrich

• I agree with Benjamin. Make it so it can't calculate -- that would be a great prank gift to give to socialists.

• Published: February 24, 2006 8:51 AM

• Christopher Meisenzahl

• LMAO, love it! ;-)

• Published: February 24, 2006 9:54 AM

• George Gaskell

• See if you can get one with a switch -- one setting for freedom (which works perfectly) and another for socialism (which is wildly inaccurate).

• Published: February 24, 2006 10:45 AM

• David J. Heinrich

• The switch idea is great! Or one switch for socialism, where sometimes 2+2=5, and othertimes it 2+2=3...another for capitalism, where the calculator works. Great!

• Published: February 24, 2006 10:55 AM

• Dave

• Make it scientific and I'll buy one!

• Published: February 24, 2006 11:13 AM

• Nat

• Dave, scientific notation should only be available when the proposed switch is set to "freedom". Not only can socialism not calculate, it is unscientific.

• Published: February 24, 2006 11:46 AM

• Koen

• I absolutely love the idea of the malfunctioning calculator: just giving silly or rather random answers. I would buy a dozen of those and hand them out to my left-leaning friends...

  the original idea behind the calculator can be somewhat misleading though since socialism of course cannot be rescued by (super) calculators and although I understand that this is not what the Mises Institute means some people may see the calculation problem that way and then the point/joke of the Mises calculator is lost...

• Published: February 24, 2006 12:56 PM

• Dennis Sperduto

• How about if when the calculator is set to the socialism mode, all the numbers on the keys disappear. As Mises demonstrated, socialism’s most fundamental economic shortcoming is its inability to establish prices, i.e. common denominator cardinal numbers, for the factors of production upon which to perform arithmetic calculations.

• Published: February 24, 2006 1:07 PM

• Geoffrey Allan Plauche

• I second, or third or fourth or whatever, the malfunctioning calculator idea.

• Published: February 24, 2006 1:12 PM

• Misesian

• I love it!

• Published: February 24, 2006 1:13 PM

• quincunx

• You know you are among Austrians, when you expect someone to mention a socialist calculator that can't calculate before even opening up the comments section.

• Published: February 24, 2006 2:11 PM

• Roy W. Wright

• We're such nerds.

• Published: February 24, 2006 2:41 PM

• tz

• It is not that socialism can't calculate because it can't do mathematics, it can't calculate because it can't determine the numbers (related to price and quantity) to do mathematics on.

  It may be cute, but the socialist mode would disable the numbers, putting random values in, but the operator buttons would still work.
  

• Published: February 24, 2006 5:00 PM

• Koen

• perhaps the following idea for a Mises 'socialism can't calculate' calculator may be both 'true' and feasible.

  when you type in a number (e.g. 2) the calculator instead generates a random number (e.g. 7), then you do an operation (e.g. 'plus') and type another number for which the calculator then generates another random number, then do = and you get the correct result from the operation between the two random numbers.

  for the user of the calculator it would be maddening calculational chaos in a practical sense... just like the early (and brief) absolute socialism was for Trotsky etc...

  the idea: although socialist governments can do calculus correctly, they can have no data that give any information: they can calculate all they want but they get no further...

  in a practical sense, i reckon it would be not so difficult to get a random number generator in a calculator, although such things are of course not mass-produced...

• Published: February 24, 2006 6:36 PM

• David K. Meller

• A very interesting idea. However, if it is supposed to be a calculator, why not have the keys blank, or covered with question marks?

  That would certainly make your point very well.

  PEACE AND FREEDOM

• Published: February 25, 2006 9:38 AM

• Roy W. Wright

• Ah, but then a little experimentation would tell you exactly which keys are which. Is that really the kind of economic thinking we want to spread?

• Published: February 25, 2006 3:15 PM

• Heffalump

• I think that when it is switched to "Socialist" mode, the answer to whatever calculation you enter should spell out "utopia"..

• Published: February 25, 2006 7:09 PM

• Dennis Sperduto

• My earlier posting stated:
  "How about if when the calculator is set to the socialism mode, all the numbers on the keys disappear. As Mises demonstrated, socialism’s most fundamental economic shortcoming is its inability to establish prices, i.e. common denominator cardinal numbers, for the factors of production upon which to perform arithmetic calculations."

  After reading Mr. Wright's comment, what I really meant to convey is that in the calculator's socialist mode there would be no numbers associated with any of the keys.

• Published: February 25, 2006 7:55 PM

• Benjamin Marks

• Maybe there ought to be three different settings: (1) total socialism where the calculator is off; (2) socialistic economy where the results somehow come out distorted; and (3) the free-market where the calculator is on the normal setting.

• Published: February 25, 2006 8:49 PM

• Mathieu Bedard

• It should at least have 'scientific' functions so it can be used in class. People already have tons of these thin 4 functions calculators collecting dust at home..

• Published: February 26, 2006 6:12 AM

• Thomas Rudolf

• I love it! It's another great idea! I would certainly buy one!

• Published: February 26, 2006 6:49 AM

• Mitch

• How about if it gives an answer that is 60% of the correct one, so that it reflects the after-tax amount?

• Published: February 26, 2006 9:08 AM

• Ike Hall

• Hmmm. Is econometrics starting to nose into the tent here? Joke.

• Published: February 27, 2006 9:05 PM

• Gabe

• One more possibility: Change the cardinal labels on the numberpad (1, 2, 3, ...) to ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd, ...) and have the operations (+, -, *, /) return an error.

• Published: February 28, 2006 6:20 PM

• Aakash

• I want one!

  (This is perhaps the neatest of the Mises Store items that I've seen yet!)

• Published: February 28, 2006 9:21 PM

• Carey Closs

• How about when it is set in socialist mode it doesn't give a mathmatical answer but rather a nonsensical Marxist slogan.

• Published: March 1, 2006 2:26 PM

• anarkhos

• A better slogan would be "Not to be used" or "Cannot be used for central planning"

  I agree that the 'socialism' button would simply be the off switch.

• Published: March 1, 2006 10:42 PM