Michael Albert on Parecon - part 3

Michael Albert economic planning and Parecon (participatory economics). More info at parecon.org. Video clip from www.kanalb.de in Germany.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• economics
• participatory
• planning
• parecon
• znet

[123sbw]

Let's apply Parecon to an industrial model - workers on the auto line decide what cars to produce daily, weekly, or monthly, but not yearly. That simply isn't possible because of what is necessary to building cars. There must be long term planning which is exactly what Parecon is against - thus, one can conclude Parecond is not for industrialization but sustenance level living only.

[pixilatedpirate]

A) the workers do not decide what cars to produce, the people that want them do, the workers tell them if its possible and what it will take to do so, its called participatory planning. B) Parecon is simply not against long term planning, only the plan for how much to produce per quarter could be reevaluated every few months.

[fluffyliddiard]

Thanks goes to Michael Albert.

I hope this can spread everywhere fast.

It could be proposed that social ills such as crime, drug addictions and suicide are really influenced more from societal dis-empowerment and hence capitalism than anything else. And what we see are the symptoms or effects of segregation of people into classes. I believe we all want and need to belong.

[LordAcheron92]

@123sbw using the word thus doesn't make your argument any less dumb. Did you watch the videos or not?

[vitaminasHM]

@pixilatedpirate And most importantly... if we could release the whole technological potential available... then, goodbye workers... Machines would do the cars... and the people decide what they want... or a group of experts appointed by the people. Pretty much like an open source software project ;)

[p00ndawg]

So the low level employee, wouldnt necessarily be the low level employee. . For example, a custodian of a company would trade off their work for sometime each day or week with someone whose position is a little bit more empowering so that each worker shares the highs and lows of the company. you have to remember that your mindset would have to be completely different than in the economy we are in now

[p00ndawg]

There wouldnt be actual titles anymore and you wouldnt be for instace, a manager who also does yardwork, you would simply be a manager/gardener and vice versa.

[p00ndawg]

In this type of an economy your vote would count more to the ones affected by any decision. But, if people for instance what economical cars, then the workers would decided on how to build the car. But you have to remember that there are job complexes, so some of the managers would also take part in the process of the actual building.

[p00ndawg]

No not the customers, the the actual builders. But not so much and how or what to produce. More along the lines of how the process is done.

[maybememe]

Last I checked, the modern focus group was created by Edward Bernay's, who is on the record quoted as saying -- "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society."

[123sbw]

So 1 million Toyota customers are going to tell the linesmen what to build? And then the workers are going to say if it is feasible or not? Yeah, right. I hate to tell you this, but marketing focus groups already exist. All parecon does is rename things to appeal to the "fight the man" youth.