Parecon Discussion

[Delta]

Hi everyone, I am currently having a discussion on the merits of Parecon (Participatory Economics) over at my blog at Freethought Weekly (http://freethoughtweekly.blogspot.com). I'm currently awash with capitalists unfortunately. However, I would really like to hear some of your views on these issues, and I'd also appreciate the support in combating the capitalist propaganda so that I could have a meaningful discussion.

In Solidarity,
Delta

[nickdlc]

Don't be fooled by parecon it's a really bad "alternative" and would end up being just anothe bureaucratic nightmare where workers have no control over production.

You may be interested in this article. http://nefac.net/node/1414

[Delta]

Thanks for the link nickdlc, I'll check it out soon. I'm withholding my judgement on Parecon until I learn more about it. After that I'll read any sort of anarchist, communist, or socialist rebuttals that I can find. Even if it were to turn out to be too bureaucratic, perhaps it could be a transitional economic system. And of course we need to also remember the Russian Revolution, and avoid this sort of situation. The State is going to be a deteriment to almost any economic system that I can think of, and it also needs to be dealt with.

[nickdlc]

No problem Delta. Actually NEFAC has a whole bunch of articles on parecon. I havent really bothered reasearching parecon too much because it seems like theoretical masturbation by middle class "radicals." If you read the articles you'll know what i mean. :ph34r:

Edit. Forgot to add link http://nefac.net/search/node/parecon

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I just did some quick research on parecon. It seems like an ultra-decentralized marxist economy.

[Leo]

Here's something related to Parecon: http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...st&p=1292086817 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51078&view=findpost&p=1292086817)

[Delta]

Hey Leo, that's actually the article that I read for the purposes of discussion on my blog. Parecon has some good literature out and if it doesn't have too many flaws, it can be very useful to hand to a capitalist who says "well, how would it work?". Instead of saying "well, I believe this, others believe this, it's kind of an organic, see what works process", I could simply refer to Parecon literature and discuss specifics with them. Plus the name participatory economics is nice because it doesn't invoke images of the USSR that the words "socialism" and "communism" do, of course due to the highly successful nature of capitalist propaganda in the school systems.

[nickdlc]

It seems like an ultra-decentralized marxist economy.

Whaa???


It is an incredibly complex market system that would require many millions of people to operate. For instance, there would be people actually measuring how hard a job is, assigning it a rating, balancing that rating off against millions of others, calculating relative costs and 'disutilities' and then trying to balance off the productive power and consumption of four or five billion people in millions of factories. To give you a flavor of this, consider this quote from one of Parecon's inventors to a question about calculating cost-benefit: "Say master carpentry has a disutility rating of .84 where 1.00 is the average disutility of labor in general. The indicative price of master carpentry labor would be calculated as follows: take the indicative price that emerges from the planning process - which will be the analog of the price of arable land with 20 inches of rain and a 3 month growing season, and just like the indicative price for that land reflects productivity and scarcity as determined by supply and demand through bidding from all potential users in the economy - and multiply that price for master carpentry labor by .84. In this way disutility can be combined with scarcity and productivity to give us an overall assessment of social opportunity costs of using different kinds of labor. Consider the vast effort that would need to go into making trillions of calculations of this kind in a more or less endless round of price- and wage-setting. Then think about the vast power that could be wielded by any group of people controlling this process. Think about how you would feel if a faceless bureaucrat somewhere was deciding how much your labor was worth this week, especially if that decision affected how well you ate, or whether you could afford healthcare or schooling (yes, in parecon you have to pay for housing, food, healthcare and everything else).

A little taste of what you could expect under parecon. Advocates of state planners would no doubt love this.

[Delta]

Originally posted by [email protected]Jun 21 2006, 07:15 PM


Then think about the vast power that could be wielded by any group of people controlling this process. Think about how you would feel if a faceless bureaucrat somewhere was deciding how much your labor was worth this week, especially if that decision affected how well you ate, or whether you could afford healthcare or schooling (yes, in parecon you have to pay for housing, food, healthcare and everything else).


I speak with very little knowledge of Parecon, but from what I understand many of these positions are rotated among the people, and so it wouldn't be a small group of people forever holding power. And in any economy where most of the production is isn't going to some fat cat, I can't imagine people not being able to get access to good food and schooling. Actually, from what I've read, education is free, if I remember correctly.

[nickdlc]

Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.

[nickdlc]

Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.

[nickdlc]

Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.

[Delta]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 06:03 PM
Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.
No, I agree. It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat. I'm saying that the effort required to eat would be so minimal that if you did anything at all you would be able to feed yourself, and the fear that you wouldn't be able to probably wouldn't arise.

But education, if I remember correctly, it is publicly funded.

[Delta]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 06:03 PM
Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.
No, I agree. It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat. I'm saying that the effort required to eat would be so minimal that if you did anything at all you would be able to feed yourself, and the fear that you wouldn't be able to probably wouldn't arise.

But education, if I remember correctly, it is publicly funded.

[Delta]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 06:03 PM
Nope in parecon if you don't work you don't eat.

From article i posted


People who choose not to work earn no shares (not even dole) and don't eat.
No, I agree. It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat. I'm saying that the effort required to eat would be so minimal that if you did anything at all you would be able to feed yourself, and the fear that you wouldn't be able to probably wouldn't arise.

But education, if I remember correctly, it is publicly funded.

[nickdlc]

It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat.
The fact that there is someone evaluating your effort is bad enough! I mean under parecon there will be an army of people who's sole purpose is evaluate others work. In capitalism we call them managers why in hell would we want these people in socialism when they could be doing something useful?

[nickdlc]

It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat.
The fact that there is someone evaluating your effort is bad enough! I mean under parecon there will be an army of people who's sole purpose is evaluate others work. In capitalism we call them managers why in hell would we want these people in socialism when they could be doing something useful?

[nickdlc]

It's just that your statement makes it sound like there would be a good chance that the person evaluating your effort could possibly make it so that you couldn't afford to eat.
The fact that there is someone evaluating your effort is bad enough! I mean under parecon there will be an army of people who's sole purpose is evaluate others work. In capitalism we call them managers why in hell would we want these people in socialism when they could be doing something useful?

[Delta]

I share your concern and will be thinking about it as I learn more about Parecon.

[Delta]

I share your concern and will be thinking about it as I learn more about Parecon.

[Delta]

I share your concern and will be thinking about it as I learn more about Parecon.