“I have signed up to Karl Marx’s dismissal of equity (as a bourgeois notion) as well as to his antipathy to defining freedom as the right to make free choices as long as they do not impinge on others”
I’d be curious to learn these arguments. I hope Yannis would also be open with ideas that contradict his dogmas.
“Thus, according to your definition of freedom, every Tom and Dick has the right to scream that Harriet’s choices somehow impinge on theirs”
That’s absurd maybe because it is so abstract. Could you make a more realistic case?
“But, who gets to decide the job balance necessary for Harriet’s empowerment? … No worker council should tell Harriet what is good for her to do, let alone decide on her behalf.”
The point is not what is good for her alone but what is socially good according to a reasonable and commonly agreed standard (namely, roughly equal mix of empowering and disempowering tasks). Harriet can decide that she wants to do only work which we would call empowering, but that would not be good for the self-government (democracy).
“Harriet wants desperately to work on some new project that Tom and Dick consider ‘socially useless”
Who decides? Harriet’s co-workers and consumers (much as today). Any economy determines what is socially useful. Markets do it irrationally and after the fact. Any planning requires determining it before hand. It need not be exact, and there can be plenty of experimental research work categories.
“Participants (i.e., worker-co-owners) must be free to join at will, or to quit, work teams within the enterprise – and to pursue projects without anyone’s permission” contradicts “A democratic process must determine who is brought into the enterprise, but also who is fired”. If I am free to join Google at my own will alone, clearly current Googlers have no say. Democratic hiring and firing is exactly what is proposed in parecon.
“Democratic resource allocation: The collective decides how much the basic salary is…”
What is the collective? Will salaries across enterprises be coordinated? How will it be decided how much of what needs to be produced?
“…to be distributed according to a democratically agreed process”
Let’s agree to base those processes on the principle of rewarding effort and sacrifice.
“ Glad that we are proceeding slowly, refusing to take for granted vague terms like ‘equitable’ and ‘just’ – terms within which all manners of oppressions and irrationalities can take refuge.”
So annoyingly frustrating: the philosophical and overbearing intellectual musings lurking behind such a comment. Hidden within is stuff Yanis knows and will unleash if necessary to clear up the ignorance of all us normals who use such words everyday. But what would I know. Hey, it’s a debate and I must wait. Be patient and openminded and not be lead by my throat choking with angst when Yanis comes down hard on aspects of participatory economics. After all, he’s read Marx and holds to the great dead old man’s words like a true believer.
Oh well, another debate and a decision I must make. Yanis or Parecon? Markets or not? See, no balance here at all. Just well mannered discussion between learned souls from and after which, I, an unlearned soul, must “collapse the wave function” and make a decision.
“I have signed up to Karl Marx’s dismissal of equity (as a bourgeois notion) as well as to his antipathy to defining freedom as the right to make free choices as long as they do not impinge on others”
I’d be curious to learn these arguments. I hope Yannis would also be open with ideas that contradict his dogmas.
“Thus, according to your definition of freedom, every Tom and Dick has the right to scream that Harriet’s choices somehow impinge on theirs”
That’s absurd maybe because it is so abstract. Could you make a more realistic case?
“But, who gets to decide the job balance necessary for Harriet’s empowerment? … No worker council should tell Harriet what is good for her to do, let alone decide on her behalf.”
The point is not what is good for her alone but what is socially good according to a reasonable and commonly agreed standard (namely, roughly equal mix of empowering and disempowering tasks). Harriet can decide that she wants to do only work which we would call empowering, but that would not be good for the self-government (democracy).
“Harriet wants desperately to work on some new project that Tom and Dick consider ‘socially useless”
Who decides? Harriet’s co-workers and consumers (much as today). Any economy determines what is socially useful. Markets do it irrationally and after the fact. Any planning requires determining it before hand. It need not be exact, and there can be plenty of experimental research work categories.
“Participants (i.e., worker-co-owners) must be free to join at will, or to quit, work teams within the enterprise – and to pursue projects without anyone’s permission” contradicts “A democratic process must determine who is brought into the enterprise, but also who is fired”. If I am free to join Google at my own will alone, clearly current Googlers have no say. Democratic hiring and firing is exactly what is proposed in parecon.
“Democratic resource allocation: The collective decides how much the basic salary is…”
What is the collective? Will salaries across enterprises be coordinated? How will it be decided how much of what needs to be produced?
“…to be distributed according to a democratically agreed process”
Let’s agree to base those processes on the principle of rewarding effort and sacrifice.
“ Glad that we are proceeding slowly, refusing to take for granted vague terms like ‘equitable’ and ‘just’ – terms within which all manners of oppressions and irrationalities can take refuge.”
So annoyingly frustrating: the philosophical and overbearing intellectual musings lurking behind such a comment. Hidden within is stuff Yanis knows and will unleash if necessary to clear up the ignorance of all us normals who use such words everyday. But what would I know. Hey, it’s a debate and I must wait. Be patient and openminded and not be lead by my throat choking with angst when Yanis comes down hard on aspects of participatory economics. After all, he’s read Marx and holds to the great dead old man’s words like a true believer.
Oh well, another debate and a decision I must make. Yanis or Parecon? Markets or not? See, no balance here at all. Just well mannered discussion between learned souls from and after which, I, an unlearned soul, must “collapse the wave function” and make a decision.
Maybe it comes down to who’s more hip?