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Convince me about a planned economy

weltweit said:
hmm ... imo there are plenty of, usually uneducated, people operating on the bottom rung in our regulated markets that are effectively serfs.
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but ,we, the serfs have won a lot since the days of fuedal serfdom a 35 hour week in france for instance

markets can be planned when the capitalist class deem it nescessary eg WW2if a war can be planned why cant ,as someone said earlier, the building of fridges be planned ?

do we need windows vista ?
you all say no but in 2 years everything is going to have to work with it, like it or not, needed or not
 
nightbreed said:
A planned economy would ensure fairness and equality. On the strict condition that it is democratically controlled.
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What is so "unfair" and "unequal" about our regulated markets?

What is it that you want that you cannot currently have?

Does the regulated market not provide the jobs and products that you need?

What democratic control could you have over a planned economy where faceless burocrats would be deciding the production of everything on whatever terms they decided were most suitable?

There was a planned economy in the former East Germany and there was enormous pollution, great inefficiency and the cars they produced, the awful Trabbant and ridiculous Wartburg, were on 12-24 month waiting lists, that is if you could even get on the waiting list at all.

nightbreed said:
A regulated free market would be impossible to enforce in a world economy.Individual nation states could and do introduce limited regulation but the whole point of free enterprise is to be free from regulation.

Capitalism cant and wont be managed.
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But it can be as Britain and most of Continental Europe shows, we do not have as unfettered a free market as in the USA, we have put controls in and they are working, it does not matter that there are less controls in places like the US the EEC has much more of a social conscience and has implemented this in controls on the free market.

nightbreed said:
Also regulation does not and cannot tackle the vast class inequalities in society.
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Is it the job of markets to tackle class inequality? Effectively in Great Britain now there is a working class and a middle class, you may as well ignore the old upper class because they hardly exist. Do you think that by having a planned economy you could remove the difference between the middle and working classes?

We have just had 10 odd years of labour government and the gap between rich and poor has widenned not narrowed. Of the three main parties it seems only the Liberal Democrats actually might reduce the gap between rich and poor, New Labour and the Tories certainly don't seem set on doing this.

You claim there are "vast class inequalities in society" what are they? specifically and what do you think could be done about it?

nightbreed said:
In short it is the free market that has proved unsuccessful. (I have to add, very successful for the tiny minority of capitalists who benefitted!!)
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The regulated free market of Great Britain has been the successful engine on which the state sector has parasitically survived and from which vast amounts of tax revenue have been taken to fund the welfare state and the NHS. Without healthy and vibrant regulated free market activity there would be no state sector, it is parasitic for tax revenue.

nightbreed said:
At every step in the history of capitalist development large expansion has ended up in war.This will continue until the capitalist class destroys us all either through war or by destroying the environment.
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Since WW2 West Germany and Japan have expanded their regulated market activities an enormous amount, without war, West Germany even took on the rebuilding of the former East Germany which was a mammoth task also without war.

WW2 was not a war of economics it was empire building by Hitler no more no less.

Collisions of ideology like USA v USSR can cause war at least in their case direct war did not take place but it requires very little difference between parties for warlike behaviour to take place.

As for the environment, the pollution in the former East Germany (planned economy) and the USSR had to be seen to be believed. Regulated capitalism has a much better record on the environment in my opinion than any of the states that have seriously attempted planned production.
 
disownedspirit said:
... markets can be planned when the capitalist class deem it nescessary eg WW2if a war can be planned why cant ,as someone said earlier, the building of fridges be planned ?
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What is this capitalist class? how would you describe it? what is it or does it do that differentiates it from the normal working or middle class people of Britain?

Markets can be planned in wartime, yes, and the population can be issued with ration books again but I doubt if you put that on your election manifesto you would collect many more votes than the monster raving loony party :) though it would probably be just as amusing to watch :)

Why can't "the building of fridges be planned?", it is planned, the people who have set themselves up to build fridges, the fridgemakers, plan their production to match as well as possible the demand for fridges from the population. They do not want to make too many because that would cause losses and they do not want to make too few because that would either cause a shortage or their competitors would take their business. So there are capable fridgemakers planning fridgemaking.

Why are you so unhappy about the way the fridgemakers plan their activities that you think some unelected or elected burocrat could do a better job?

disownedspirit said:
do we need windows vista ?
you all say no but in 2 years everything is going to have to work with it, like it or not, needed or not
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Do we need windows vista, well I don't and I won't be buying it. I am writing this on a PC that is almost 8 years old and running WindowsME, I have a laptop which still runs Win98, they still work fine and I see no reason to upgrade. I also use a copy of MS Office 97 and when people send me data saved in a later version I just ask them to save as a previous version and then I can work with it.

Companies are getting tricked into this PC OS upgrading maddness yes but more fool them if they want to burn money on unnecesary upgrades. Yes it is a game that the PC makers and Microsoft are playing with the market, as mentioned in another thread the same is true for upgrades to mobile phones, but this is a game they would like to play, we do not have to engage and we do not always have to have the latest toy.
 
We are miles apart in our views arent we?

'What is so "unfair" and "unequal" about our regulated markets? '

The huge gap in wealth between wage labourers and the owners of the means of production.They are a tiny minority with vast wealth at their personal disposal which could be put at far better use.

'What is it that you want that you cannot currently have?'

A shorter working week for a higher minimum wage.Lower bills and cheap sustainable, quality housing. A free health service and free education where every related agency is kept in house with improved democratic accountability.

'Does the regulated market not provide the jobs and products that you need?'

What is the regulated market going to do about the unemployed? How is regulated going to give them full time jobs?How are they going to be dealt with during a recession?
How is the regulated market going to stop recessions?

'What democratic control could you have over a planned economy where faceless burocrats would be deciding the production of everything on whatever terms they decided were most suitable?'

You or I dont want faceless bureaucrats controling the economy. A democratic planned economy on a socialist basis has never happened before; you cant count the deformed variations of former 'communist' (stalinized) eastern europe.
Regulated capitalism has just as much faceless bureaucracy.Most capitalist live abroad or are huge monolthic financial organisations accountable to no one.(dont say shareholders because it is only the wealthy shareholders who have the most say)
 
'Is it the job of markets to tackle class inequality? Effectively in Great Britain now there is a working class and a middle class, you may as well ignore the old upper class because they hardly exist. Do you think that by having a planned economy you could remove the difference between the middle and working classes? '

Get rid of the market , take the wealth from the owners of the means of production and share it equally.The market will not and cannot tackle class inequality.

Wage labourers and owners of the means of production is my prefered view of class.

I believe a democratically controlled planned economy organised on a socialist basis would start to tackle class inequality.Key word , start.
 
'We have just had 10 odd years of labour government and the gap between rich and poor has widenned not narrowed. Of the three main parties it seems only the Liberal Democrats actually might reduce the gap between rich and poor, New Labour and the Tories certainly don't seem set on doing this.

You claim there are "vast class inequalities in society" what are they? specifically and what do you think could be done about it?'
Could you explain this a bit more?'



You say the gap between the rich and poor has widened in the last ten years and then ask me where the vast class inequalities are.You must then agree with 'vast inequalities' and can answer that question yourself.

Explain how the Lib Dems are going to narrow this in equality?
 
i would say that the capitalist class are those who own and control the means of production , the owners of the fridge factory if you like :)
i do not and have never owned a fridge factory nor has anyone on my behalf,
i have however worked in a factory . this is my differentiation between 'normal working class - middle class people' and the capitalist class (simplistic but for the sake of this thread enuf i think)

nightbreed has answered most points far more cleary than i could but to even ask the question 'what is so unfair and unequal about our regulated markets' shows a complete disregard for reality*

Does the regulated market not provide the jobs and products that you need?

in short no
if you are HIV positive in eg parts of africa the very regulation you seem to be saying is ok is condeming millions of people to a quicker death and i think this is just one example of how the regulation works against 'normal people' and for the profits of the capitalist class

you do not say that an economy cannot be planned.
if an economy can be planned in wartime with rationing etc why not in todays world, we are after all involved in 'the war on terror' the war on drugs'

the idea that a regulated market is the only way to run society is one i reject
 
nightbreed said:
We are miles apart in our views arent we?
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Yes, but look on the bright side, debate with people that agree with you is usually pretty dull and pointless :)

nightbreed said:
The huge gap in wealth between wage labourers and the owners of the means of production.They are a tiny minority with vast wealth at their personal disposal which could be put at far better use.
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But most of the rich do pay taxes like the rest of us, sure there are some that evade or avoid but most want to remain living in Great Britain and hence pay tax.

People starting companies take on risk and if they succeed they can gain profits, but starting businesses is fraught with risk of failure, it is difficult to do, traditionally people who make it, and usually therefore produce employment for others, and tax revelue for the state, are not begruged wealth that they may accumulate. When they die, the state takes a lot of this wealth back in inheritance taxes / death duties.

nightbreed said:
A shorter working week for a higher minimum wage.Lower bills and cheap sustainable, quality housing. A free health service and free education where every related agency is kept in house with improved democratic accountability.
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. A shorter working week? is here at the moment with the EU working time directive.

. A minimum wage? is here at the moment and has been increased by the current labour government

. Lower bills? in my view the way to lowr bills is to allow competition in the supply of whatever bill you are talking about, competition lowers prices.

. Cheap sustainable, quality housing? wouldn't we all like that, imo the housing market is unsustainable at the moment, prices cannot stay this high, I think there will be a correction and perhaps these present rises in interest rates may bring it about.

. A free health service and free education? you will never have this, do you think at the moment these things are free? the NHS is one of the largest state run enterprises in the world with a budget I think of some £80 billion. It is not and never has been free, we pay loads and loads of taxes to support the NHS & education, it is NOT free.

. Improved democratic accountability? you only have one vote and each political party stands on a range of policies. New Labour has argued that because they were voted in for this last term that gives them a mandate on the war in Iraq? but people did not have a specific vote on Iraq, it was muddled together with all the other policies and intentions that New Labour had in their manifesto. You have a vote in the market, that is your vote as a consumer, if you do not like a companies products or their ethics or whatever do not buy from them and persuade others to follow your lead.

nightbreed said:
What is the regulated market going to do about the unemployed? How is regulated going to give them full time jobs?How are they going to be dealt with during a recession? How is the regulated market going to stop recessions?
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Government can and does operate regional regeneration grants and the such like to attract business to areas that need regeneration. The market at the moment is giving people jobs and let us not forget, it is taxes on the private sector that fund the state sector which you seem so keen on. At the moment the state sector would wither and die if it were not for vast tax revenues from the private sector.

How is the regulated market going to stop recessions? I don't know, how is the planned economy going to stop them?

nightbreed said:
You or I dont want faceless bureaucrats controling the economy. A democratic planned economy on a socialist basis has never happened before; you cant count the deformed variations of former 'communist' (stalinized) eastern europe.
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Just how often and in how much detail do you expect people to vote in your planned economy, it is almost too much to ask people to vote at general elections in Great Britain what makes you think the people have the stomach to vote for all sorts of things in a planned economy?

"A democratic planned economy on a socialist basis has never happened before." Indeed, but the attempts in the former Soviet Union and East Germany have surely been the closest attempts to date. Perhaps you could explain to me more what this economy means, how it would work and perhaps why it has never been done before?

nightbreed said:
Regulated capitalism has just as much faceless bureaucracy.Most capitalist live abroad or are huge monolthic financial organisations accountable to no one.(dont say shareholders because it is only the wealthy shareholders who have the most say)
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Me I just ask simple questions, has regulated capitalism provided work to keep me and my family from the poorhouse? YES, has regulated capitalism provided the goods and services that we need in our lives? YES Is the capitalist class one that is exclusive and that I could not ever join or could I (and could you) concievably start a successful company and join them? YES Does regulated capitalism via competition provide for innovation and development? YES it does.
 
nightbreed said:
Get rid of the market , take the wealth from the owners of the means of production and share it equally.The market will not and cannot tackle class inequality.
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Aha I understand it now :) you are preaching a revolution :) well best of luck in getting the people to rise up with you.

It is my opinion that the current state of formal politics, with the two main parties vying for the middle ground, indicates that the people do not have the stomach for a revolution, they are "doing all right jack" and don't want anyone who will rock the boat too much.

nightbreed said:
Wage labourers and owners of the means of production is my prefered view of class.

I believe a democratically controlled planned economy organised on a socialist basis would start to tackle class inequality.Key word , start.
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Wage labourers and Owners, Ok but these are not mutually exclusive groups, you do not have to be born into one or the other, you can choose to be in either of them. It is not easy to start a company, in fact it is very hard and needs significant hard work and even then failure is quite likely, but people from all walks of life do join the class "owners of the means of production".

"a democratically controlled planned economy organised on a socialist basis"

I just do not know what such an animal is, please explain in more detail.
 
disownedspirit said:
i would say that the capitalist class are those who own and control the means of production , the owners of the fridge factory if you like :) i do not and have never owned a fridge factory nor has anyone on my behalf, i have however worked in a factory . this is my differentiation between 'normal working class - middle class people' and the capitalist class (simplistic but for the sake of this thread enuf i think)
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Actually starting a fridge factory would probably not be as complicated as many businesses but I think the market is probably saturated at the moment with no one making excessive profits so Fridge making is probably not a great thing to go into at the moment.

The point is disownedspirit you could start a fridge factory if you wanted to, people do, so why not you? You say as if you are proud that no one has ever owned a fridge factory on your behalf, what would be so wrong if someone in your family did own a fridge factory?

disownedspirit said:
... if you are HIV positive in eg parts of africa the very regulation you seem to be saying is ok is condeming millions of people to a quicker death and i think this is just one example of how the regulation works against 'normal people' and for the profits of the capitalist class
Click to expand...

I don't see a direct relationship between the Economy of Great Britain and the Aids epidemic in Africa. Yes Great Britain is rich and Africa in the main is poor but should the nation of Great Britain want to do more to eradicate Aids from Africa it could, Britain could do a lot more without the need to revolutionise its economy.

disownedspirit said:
you do not say that an economy cannot be planned.
if an economy can be planned in wartime with rationing etc why not in todays world, we are after all involved in 'the war on terror' the war on drugs'
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Yes in wartime it was planned but it was austere, there was rationing and many of the things we today take for granted were simply not available. As I think I already wrote in a post today if that is the kind of planned economy you envisage I doubt you will get anyone to vote for you.

disownedspirit said:
the idea that a regulated market is the only way to run society is one i reject
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You are right it is not the only way, but at the time being it appears to me that it seems to be the way that the main political parties accept as the most successful.
 
A copy of my post from here, which I found searching for a link to this book, hehe...:rolleyes: Weird...:D

May I warmly recommend: "Liberalismus - Fascismus"

Formen burgerlicher Herrschaft / "Kuhnl, Reinhard"
(Reinbek bei Hamburg) : Rowohlt , 1971

Liberalism always had the leaning towards resolving its inner contradictions/problems via a Nazi route...
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Very enlightening, I would have thought - to inform the debate on the issues, that is...;) Here's an offering of the outline on those issues:

Having toppled Feudalism and its innermost inequalities and unjust essential structures, where one couldn't better oneself via one's effort/work - the original, unbridled Capitalism had a "night-watchman political state" to accompany the sphere of bourgeois economy and NOT interfere. That is the original Liberal model we started with.

That notion collapsed under the weight of evidence from theory [Marx] and "practice" [cataclysmic cyclical crisis, like the Big Crash in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929]. Socialists and Communists in the US started gaining a lot of ground and the potential for a radical social upheaval meant that something radical needed to be done in order to prevent this from happening, as a lot of people had nothing to lose when such crisis hits.

The inherent difficulties of Liberalism, like:

1) rational production on the level of a factory and utterly irrational production on the level of a society or

2) communal/societal production and personal [or small group] appropriation,

3) proclamation of freedom and true absence of freedom for most

...and so on and so forth, meant that such a liberal model of Capitalism needed to resolve its inner contradictions somehow. One of the options was Fascism, the other Socialism.

The purposeful intervention into the economy came from Marx via a backdoor, as it were [Keynes: see bellow], when it was obvious that economy had to be managed.

Indeed, every law takes from some and gives to some others. Today we all know that there is no other option but to manage the economy and that the same principle goes right through both spheres, that of economy and the state [hence political economy, which once was "national economy" - and from here on the UN is necessary, of course... but that is the globalisation debate...].

Democracy is nothing but a constant renegotiation of the "deal" between the various groups of society, as it were...

[Btw, it happened via Marx, who re-read Hegel, after acquainting himself with the English Political Economy - since he now understood much better what he wrote in his early works and what Hegel meant in his work on the subject.]

The New Deal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

J. M. Keynes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Keynes

Planned Economy [USSR and alike], btw, is not to be misconstrued as the "same thing" here and mixed with the above outline that goes with the Modern Capitalist setting...

Even the Conservatives are adhering to the model, just quibble about how much should be given to the Capitalists... So much so that, for instance, the arch Conservative and a downright sociopath Kissinger said "We're fighting ideas with standard", infamously [if memory serves]...:rolleyes: :D

The links to the book I mentioned above:

http://www.abebooks.de/search/sortby/3/an/K%FChnl+Reinhard

http://www.abebooks.de/servlet/Book...8&searchurl=sortby=3&an=K%FChnl+Reinhard&ph=2
 
So, convinced [a bit more?] about our "need to rationally manage the economy" or should it be the torrential outpour of unbridled capitalism that will somehow bring the "equilibrium" and "ballance" to the society as a whole or.... what?;)
 
weltweit said:
I am not convinced a planned economy would be less wasteful than a regulated free market.

I have just been watching question time in which there was a complaint about the thousands of doctors that have been trained, some even to consultant levels, but for whom there are no jobs in the NHS. Consequently these people are emigrating to places like New Zealand which is benifiting from the excess doctors in Great Britain. Training places in universities and medical schools and demand for people by the NHS are imho about as planned as it is possible to be yet there has been vast overproduction and waste.

Waste to a free market is losses or loss of profit, free markets do not like waste or excess.

Where you get regulators interfering with market forces like they have in European agriculture then for sure, then you can get large excesses.
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The current way in which the economy is organised - as Crispy rightly points out - is responsible for over-production, which leads inevitably to waste. Those wine lakes and butter mountains aren't a myth, they exist.
 
Well, strictly speaking - those things are a result of the CAP, which is a 'planned economy' tool if I ever saw one!
 
Crispy said:
Well, strictly speaking - those things are a result of the CAP, which is a 'planned economy' tool if I ever saw one!
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Sorry, those were poor examples.:oops: The amount of food that is thrown away daily is probably a better example or the numbers of animals that are raised for meat production that don't find their way to the dinner table for one reason or another.

That said, while CAP may be a planned economy tool, it operates within the framework of the current capitalist production model.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
The arms industry is a good example of a planned economy, is it not?
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I suppose in that the customer for the big budget items like fighter planes are usually governments then yes at that end of the transaction there is a central planning element. But afaik in the US at least aren't most of the defence contractors that would be suppliers private companies, like BAE over here?

So perhaps is it not a partly planned economy?
 
In a way, the arms industry is a well-run planned economy. The purchasers group together to recognise their needs, communicate those needs to the manufacturers, who respond with products matching those needs. Whilst there is competition between manufacturers to win a particular contract, resources are not wasted on full development of competing products. The major barriers between different manufacturers and purchasers are political/histroical.
 
The question of planned economy versus free market capitalism (or regulated markets) could be hedged less in idealism terms and more in terms of who or what should be entrusted with doing the detailed planning for production of items.

In the market version there are already production planners, even in the most demand pull type of environments or the most computer programmed, and their roles are among the most stressed that there is.

Make too little, people shout at you, make too late, people shout at you, make too much, people shout at you. And where raw materials are concerned which is usually your responsibility for planning, if not actual purchasing of, again, get in too much, people shout at you, get in too little, people shout at you, forget to get something in that is on a 16 week lead time and people start having heart attacks shouting at you :)

Humans have already tried to create automatons to be responsible for production planning, they are/were called MRP systems (Manufacturing Resource Planning systems) and they used to be massively expensive things that used to run on massively expensive mainframe computers.

Essentially sales people fed into the system actual orders and forecasts of future orders into one end of the computer program and it went through lists (Bills of Materials) of what things were made of what and produced Material Requirements Plans (which drove purchasing) and Master Production Schedules which drove production.

They are/were dependent really on the accuracy of the forecast of orders that the sales and marketing department made, if the expected orders did not materialise the production/purchasing system would still already have purchased the ingredients for hundreds of item X and probably already have manufactured sub assemblies for it.

So there are already production planners in a regulated market economy, but they exist in individual companies.

In a planned economy, who would plan what, and who would those planners be responsible to?
 
The economy of the world is gradually moving towards a planned economy, large parts already are. The socialist models of the USSR and of western Europe were just initial steps in this process. They may have failed or been reigned back for now but ever widening democratic control is INEVITABLE.

*stands to sing Internationale*
 
I guess it's not the planning of manufacturing that would be so different, but the communication of demand. Currently, every product has to make it all the way to the market before sales figures can assess its popularity. If there was a democratic mechanism for deciding these things beore resources are committed, then there could be less waste.

This is all so very idealistic, of course :)
 
Crispy said:
I guess it's not the planning of manufacturing that would be so different, but the communication of demand. Currently, every product has to make it all the way to the market before sales figures can assess its popularity. If there was a democratic mechanism for deciding these things beore resources are committed, then there could be less waste.

This is all so very idealistic, of course :)
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Not so sure that I see it as so different, there are competing philosophies as I may have mentioned up the thread a bit, from Japan there is JIT (Just in time) through which they strive to produce the item just as you say you want it and not before.

I have heard of motorcycle helmet stores in Japan where you can design your own custom helmet in the store and a, very short while later, you can take it away. Of course you could pick up a standard one on the shelf probably also but the shelf would only be stocked one layer thick.

Waste is critical for the JIT philosophy which also stresses zero defects as being a critical aim of production.

Waste is produced if too much is made but also if there are defects scrap or repair work must be carried out. Companies like Toyota and Kawasaki used to be tens of years ahead of their US rivals when I looked into this last.

The critical ideal of the JIT philosophy (iirc) is that there may be one item of the product in the shop (rather than traditionally perhaps tens or hundreds). A customer can buy that one item as it is and this will trigger the factory to make another one to replace the one that is missing from that shop. But the customer can also if they prefer order a special or custom version of the item, perhaps a car in their choice of paint colour or with their choice of interior and this will be entered into the production line at the factory and will be produced custom for the customer after they decided they wanted it.

A democratic way of electing or deciding what you want before resources are committed, a vote - I want one of those please, make it for me but quickly.
 
Crispy said:
If there was a democratic mechanism for deciding these things beore resources are committed, then there could be less waste.
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The devil is in the details, as always..

Lots of people could for example vote for flying cars, huge amounts of resources spent building a helicopter factory, which would then turn out to be impractically expensive and dangerous to actually use...

If people had to pay a deposit in advance, that would avoid that problem...but that is something capitalism can do, but usually does something better instead.
 
samk said:
The devil is in the details, as always..

Lots of people could for example vote for flying cars, huge amounts of resources spent building a helicopter factory, which would then turn out to be impractically expensive and dangerous to actually use...

If people had to pay a deposit in advance, that would avoid that problem...but that is something capitalism can do, but usually does something better instead.
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Does it, though? What strikes me most about the current system is the mediocrity it produces. There's good stuff in there too, but it's almost overwhelmed by the crap.

As suggested earlier, the hi-tech quality of modern weaponry comes out of what is effectively a planned economy.
 
samk said:
A market economy can contain planned economies where they are more effective - they are called corporations ;)
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There is a lot of truth to this - though I know you're not being too serious. Thing is, the planned economy of a large corporation is easy to manage because there is essentially only one goal being pursued - increased profits. And they have incentives available to them that aren't available to states - 'If you're not very good we'll throw you out the economy'.

New Labour is completely obsessed with giving public sector people 'the right incentives' (pretty much always economic) in order to increase efficiency, but because there is a huge number of different goals being pursued by any given government this becomes a hideously complex and trap-laden process. You find that you're dealing with a chaotic system where a small tweak in incentives in one place can cause a huge number of unforseen and undesirable consequence.

In short, you cannot run a country like a corporation and I wish to god New Labour would stop trying.
 
bluestreak said:
i'm not convinced that our economy isn't a lot closer to being a planned economy than many would admit.
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Truth here too - Gordon Bastard Brown is currently trying to use public sector pay (i.e. keeping it low) as a tool to control the economy.

I can only find old figures with a quick google, but in 1998 government expenditure was 39% of GDP.

The NHS is an enormous planned economy of a sort - and some might say an argument against :p
 
Crispy said:
There's a rather neat quote from Iain Banks:

Full text here - towards the end of the second section. This is a great article btw, even if you haven't read the books.

My question is this: Is he mad? Can humans ever pull that sort of planning off? And at a better efficiency/usefulness than modern capitalism?
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Kicks self at missing this thread. I'm with Banks in prnciple. I think humans don't need private property and the existence of many competing interests to provide life's needs and it's been a topic of thought that's been floating around my mind for a while now.

I'll get back when I get time, suffice to say for now that no-one who has ever advocated it has seriously imagined that the *form* of market mechanisms would disappear overnight.
 
Crispy said:
I guess it's not the planning of manufacturing that would be so different, but the communication of demand. Currently, every product has to make it all the way to the market before sales figures can assess its popularity. If there was a democratic mechanism for deciding these things beore resources are committed, then there could be less waste.

This is all so very idealistic, of course :)
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A complete system has been designed to work as you describe. It's called Parecon - and I know I wouldn't want to use it :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parecon

It is essentially built on consumers and producers councils and an iterative bureacratic but democratic decisionmaking process using a lot of computing power.
 
Yes, well all those councils and meetings are enough to turn anyone off :) Participation sounds great until you're forced into a room with people. :p
 
 
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