Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Chomsky sites; Znet; Parecon

A lot of his writing can be found on Znet:
http://www.zmag.org/chomskyarchive.htm

The main Znet site, also has a lot of good material, from many authors
besides Chomsky, definitely from a solid Left perspective:
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

Those of you interested in "Utopia Theory" might be interested in this,
from Michael Albert, the head of Znet:
http://www.parecon.org/

There's a book about "Parecon" by Albert, available at Amazon. While
containing a number of typos, it's pretty well written, and his vision for
a just economic system, that would avoid the pitfalls of both
capitalism, AND "centralized command economies" (what in the US is known
as "communism"), is intriguing and very well thought-out. (Though
Amazon reviewers trash it in predictable fashion, most of them probably
never having read much of it).

Also check this: http://www.zmag.org/lacsite.htm

If anyone's interested, I could post a summary of the basic tenets of
Parecon here on metatuning.

C Bailey

> > If anyone's interested, I could post a summary of the
> > basic tenets of Parecon here on metatuning.
>
> I'd be interested.

Here are some quick thoughts on...
http://www.parecon.org/writings/albert_lac.htm

"Capitalism is a zero sum system in which to get
ahead one must trample others."

Capitalism is not zero-sum. Every transaction in
a free market is mutually beneficial, or else it
wouldn't take place. "Beneficial" is defined by
what free agents choose to do, so it's a bit of a
tautology, but it's still meaningful. "Free"
implies symmetrical information and amortizable
transaction costs, which don't always obtain. So
you can argue about how to improve information
symmetry and lower transaction costs. You can
also dispute the above reasoning. But Michael
Albert instead gives us...

"You must ignore the horrible pain suffered by
those left below or you must literally step on
them, pushing them farther down. In capitalism,
a famous baseball manager of a team called the
Yankees, used to say"nice guys finish last" which
is actuallya horrible critique of market exchange.
My version of the insight is that in capitalism
"garbage rises." Witness, again, our exalted
leaders."

"In a Participatory Economy for those who can
work, remuneration is for effort and sacrifice."

Uh-oh.

Despite that the essay presents Parecon as
something new, I'm having a hard time seeing any
difference from plain-jane socialism.

If you want to renumerate effort, you need a
way to measure effort. How do we do that?

The essay talks a lot about other "values" of
Parecon. Some of which are quite admirable.
Such as everybody having "a say in decisions in
proportion as we are affected by them". But how
do we achieve these values?

The answer in all cases seems to be: with
democratic councils. In Parecon, councils define
the jobs. But how do they know what jobs are
needed? Are they creative enough to invision new
jobs?

Historically, democratic councils have been
miserable at aggregating information. They
haven't been able to measure or adjust to
conditions quickly or completely enough to manage
prices.

Parecon's improvement on this historical
performance is called "participatory planning".
Its description is given two paragraphs near
the end of the essay, which I will quote in full:

""
Participatory planning is a system in which worker
and consumer councils propose their work activities
and their consumption preferences in light of
accurate knowledge of local and global implications
and true valuations of the full social benefits and
costs of their choices. The system utilizes a back
and forth cooperative communication of mutually
informed preferences via a variety of simple
communicative and organizing principles and vehicles
including what are called indicative prices,
facilitation boards, rounds of accommodation to new
information, and other features all of which
permit actors to express their desires and to
mediate and refine them in light of feedback about
other's desires, arriving at compatible choices
consistent with remuneration for effort and
sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and participatory
self-management.

Actors indicate their preferences. They learn what
others have indicated. They alter their preferences
in an effort to move toward a viable plan. At each
new step in the cooperative negotiation each actor
is seeking well being and development, but each can
get ahead only in accord with social advance, not by
exploiting others. It is impossible to describe this
whole system and all its features, and to show how
it is that they are both viable and worthy, in a
short talk like this. I'd like to recommend the
website www.parecon.org which has all kinds of
material about Parecon, from interviews, to questions
and answers, to essays, to whole books, on the one
hand and also give just a brief summary of the
situation...
""

Raise your hand if you feel like you could implement
one of these.

-Carl

Chomsky sites; Znet; Parecon

🔗Christopher Bailey <chris@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <clumma@...>

🔗monz <monz@...>