Looking Forward. By Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel Go to Table of Contents 6. Participatory Allocation

"Having markets, we also have banks which in turn have competing branches in virtually every community utilizing enough buildings to house a comparable participatory economy's nonworkplace, nonconsumption housed facilitation boards."

Once everyone does the same, all these new proposals are summed and the new information is made available for the third round of planning. So far, so good: in the first two rounds, no rules that limit changes. But not necessarily rapid convergence, either. Now, however, in the third round, there would be a change. We would no longer move our proposals in any direction by any amount. Now, in an effort to facilitate convergence without introducing biases, there are limits on how much consumers can increase or decrease their demand for goods. While the specific limits that best facilitate convergence would probably differ for different goods, and settling the limits may well be something best left to the discretion of industry lFBs who develop a "feel" for what works best in their industry, at this point consumers would be prohibited from decreasing demand for a good in excess demand by (say) more than 50 percent of the average per capita excess demand, while they would be prohibited from increasing demand for a good in excess demand by more than (say) 25 percent of the average per capita excess demand. And likewise, consumers would also be prohibited from increasing their demand for a good in excess supply by more than 50 percent of the average per capita excess supply and from decreasing demand for such a good by more than 25 percent of the average per capita excess supply. Similarly, producers would have a comparable rule, to be initially applied, however, only in the fourth iteration so that most reallocation of labor could already be settled, where each factory would be limited to the same range of movement, but of their factory's proportionate share of the gap between supply and demand. In other words, actors' changes are limited, assuming this rule is employed, more if they want to change in the direction that takes the status of a good away from equilibrium, and less if they want to change in the direction that moves the status of the good toward equilibrium. The rule's purpose is to guarantee that the maximum possible divergence from equilibrium diminishes with each iteration. The limit pressures actors not to be frivolous about early proposals lest they place themselves too far from where they will want to end up to be able to get there under the limitations. The different limit for the two types of movement insures that if goods move from excess demand to excess supply or vice versa, they will most likely do so in ways that leave the gap between supply and demand diminished. Whether it is better to choose limits of 75 percent and 40 percent or 30 percent and 10 percent instead of 50 percent and 25 percent will depend on the iteration, the good, and perhaps other features of the economy as well. But the point is that some limits, with equilibrating changes less restricted than disequilibrating changes, will increase the expected speed of convergence. These types of limits, therefore, are examples of potentially useful facilitation rules for participatory planning. In the fourth round of planning, full councils make proposals instead of individuals. Consumers meet in their neighborhood councils and workers in their workplace councils to decide councilwide proposals. This is when individuals must convince neighbors and workmates that above average consumption requests and below average work proposals are warranted. And if cases are not deemed compelling, local pressure, including the possibility of a council rejecting a proposal, is applied to individuals to make adjustments. In workplaces, in particular, the need for coordination causes debate to settle on shared views about overall workload and intensity. Nothing about this approach compels actors to change proposals at all or pushes consumers to consume goods in the same proportions or workers to produce goods with the same techniques. On the other hand, there is pressure on workplaces to propose at least average amounts of productive labor and on consumer councils to limit consumption to roughly average per capita value and on all actors to assess their needs and capacities carefully right from the outset of the process. Indeed, at this stage, workplaces that persist in proposals with lower social benefit to cost ratios than their industry's must petition their industry to be allowed to persist. Similarly, neighborhood consumer councils ordering above-average per capita consumption bundles would have to petition higher-level councils for permission not to lower their demands. This process would curtail inequitable proposals but would be subject to sensible discretion. We would expect many petitions to be granted because there are frequently extenuating circumstances.