1. What I mean by a
planned economy
I'm afraid I should not have referred to my version of a natural economy as a "planned economy". Perhaps, the term "decentralized privately planned economy" almost tells the story, except what I mean by "privately" is a little odd. I believe I have constructed a sort of syndicalism. Regrettably, though, I have not looked at the definition of every type of non-market economy. The only role for government in this sort of natural economy is to administer the rule that each consumer use no more than 1/Nth of the total sustainable dividend of the economy (measured in emergy units) where N is the number of consumers and reproduce himself only, pass on his reproductive rights to another, or not reproduce.
Ethan Nagler at America 2.0 wrote:
Ethan Nagler at America 2.0 wrote:
Just read up a little on the "calculation problem" defined by the Austrian
economists. As far as I understand it, their argument is not dependent on
their flawed conceptions of human nature.
It's impossible for a small number of people, no matter how intelligent, to
calculate, without price, the wants/needs/desires of millions of people
across vast distances. That's why planned economies always end up in
famine. Until you can prove that you have an algorithm for calculating
everyone's needs 100% of the time, then any other arguments for a planned
economy are futile, in my opinion.
My answer:
I believe the Austrian economists are right; but, their result
does not apply to my version of the natural economy:
A Natural Political Economy
In Chapter 5 of On the
Preservation of Species, Wayburn describes a society that has abandoned
materialism, that is, a society in which Dematerialism has already taken place.
This might be tested in an intentional community despite the obstacles
presented by the materialistic society in which it is embedded or throughout
which it is distributed. The community would have the following features:
1. A
give-away economy with no monetary system[1]. Each economic
actor[2] notifies directly the enterprises that supply his genuine
needs, which, in turn, tell him when the item or items can be picked up or will
be delivered depending upon which mode has the lower emergy costs. Clearly, delivery syndicates
will need to minimize emergy by solving optimization problems – possibly of
combinatorial complexity – by computer, if computers are available in the wake
of Peak Oil. Otherwise, emergy consumption is not likely to be minimized,
although it may be acceptably low. Being too poor to afford a computer
for each economic actor is another case of the poor communities getting poorer;
but, even in the worst case, it will not be accompanied by the rich getting richer
to exacerbate the situation. These enterprises also report the emergy
values of the item or items to each economic actor and to a public servant if
the community deems this necessary until people have learned the lesson of
minimizing their consumption. Thus, the economy is consumer-planned
subject only to the consumer's responsibility (a) to use no more than 1/Nth of
the total sustainable dividend of the economy (measured in emergy
units) where N is the number of consumers and (b) to reproduce
himself only, to pass on his reproductive rights to another, or not to
reproduce. Life can be made discouragingly difficult for cheaters.
Note 10.25.2018: An economy that can afford to have consumers take what they need might be instituted when the notion of restrained consumption and sustainability is well understood and universally accepted, that is, ingrained. There is no need to go into details of the distribution process other that to say that consumers should deal directly with producers. It is not such a great compromise to provide all economic actors with a sort of debit card linked to land, fresh water, emergy, and human effort upon which they can draw up to 1/Nth of the sustainable supply.
Note 10.25.2018: An economy that can afford to have consumers take what they need might be instituted when the notion of restrained consumption and sustainability is well understood and universally accepted, that is, ingrained. There is no need to go into details of the distribution process other that to say that consumers should deal directly with producers. It is not such a great compromise to provide all economic actors with a sort of debit card linked to land, fresh water, emergy, and human effort upon which they can draw up to 1/Nth of the sustainable supply.
2. Local economic enterprises owned by
workers in the sense of custodianship. Decisions are made by direct vote
– one worker, one vote. It is important that worker ownership not extend
beyond the premises of the plant where the work is done. Decentralization
not incorporation. Each enterprise integrates the plans of its consumers
into a total economic plan for the enterprise and notifies its suppliers
accordingly. This must be achieved with negligible energy costs, probably
with a computer. The economic actor might organize his or her personal
emergy budget well in advance, also with a computer.
3. Public
servants chosen quasi-randomly, somewhat as jurors are chosen, for limited
terms that cannot be followed by another such appointment. Recall is by
direct vote of all members of the community whom I call citizens for lack of a
better term. The term fractal government denotes a system of small
communities wherein every citizen belongs to a local parliament that is tied in
a loose federation with other such communities in similar parliaments that are
tied in loose federations to other parliaments of parliaments. This is
similar to fractal structures, except that a loose federation of the world can
have only a finite number of sub-levels, as does every representation of a
fractal in the real world. Among a very small number of public servants
are the members of local communities who sit in the parliaments that determine
public policy for the community’s eco-region, which randomly selects members of
itself who make policy for a collection of eco-regions. And so on.
Every one of these “members of parliament” is subject to immediate recall by
the direct vote of the body that chose him or her. Thus, the only
permanent members of the government are the people themselves who share
political power at the community level in the sense of
one-person-one-vote. Naturally, some people will have more influence than
others if they are widely respected; but, they cannot convert this influence to
greater wealth. Ultimately, this arrangement should evolve into no government at all.
 |
| Figure 1. Fractal |
 |
| Figure 2. Fractal Political Structure |
4. The Fundamental Principle of
Neighborliness in dealing with neighboring communities, so that the dependence
of economic well-being on geography is minimized. (Wealth flows always
from richer communities to poorer communities or not at all.)
5. Defense by citizen militias if necessary.
The decision to bear arms is up to the citizens.
6. It is recognized that the federal
government is likely to suppress any effort to form an intentional community
(or reform an existing community) along egalitarian lines, i. e., with a
Natural Economy, unless collapse has already commenced, in which case the
federal government will no longer be able to function because the most powerful
people in government will have given up in despair and will be trying to save themselves
- at least Dmitry Orlov has made a good case for this in “Closing the
Collapse Gap”,
which compares the collapse of the Soviet Empire with the very likely collapse
of the United States American Empire.
Wayburn writes, “I regret very much
employing the expression ‘natural economy’ because, if you google ‘natural
economy’, you get 136,000 hits, and most of them do not agree with my
definition. My paper ‘Energy in a Natural Economy’ doesn't show up until
the second page. Fortunately, the first google hit is from the article in
the Wikipedia where we read, ‘Natural economy refers to a type of economy in
which money is not used in the transfer of resources among people’ and ‘German
economists have invented the term Naturalwirtschaft, natural economy, to describe the period prior to the invention
of money.’ The definition by Karl Marx is included too, which argues
against a modern capitalist interpretation – as does the article under
discussion.”
There is a slightly better description in
Energy in a Natural Economy, which is listed in the hyperlinked table of
contents at http://dematerialism.net/demise.htm#NaturalEconomy.
It just begins to describe the Earth as a Garden as I envision it in a
post-industrial, decentralized, eco-community with a steady-state economy in the wake of Peak Oil. Such an economy should not be based on buying and selling;
and, although people might still compete for importance or the recognition of
their own importance by the rest of the community, they would not compete for
status. I take “status” to refer to resource dominance or the acquisition
of power over other people the purpose of which is to increase personal
wealth. One could convert fame to personal wealth too, but that needn’t
be the case. I take “importance” and “recognition” to refer to the sort
of fame and influence over people that most of us would like – perhaps even
seek, but we do not want them for the money. I picture a community where
one can compete in a hierarchy of personal importance but not in one of
personal wealth or power. This accounts for so-called human nature, which
may or may not be universal and immutable.
In a Natural Economy good citizens are trying to minimize their
personal consumption. They might even take personal pride in doing
so. Ultimately, they might welcome the animal kingdom back into the
Garden, which will have become much more hospitable to nearly every
species. Some readers might find The Parable of the Shipwrecked Brothers illuminating.
The Earth as a Garden should have a number
of easily-identified necessary characteristics:
1.
As in Erewhon, Samuel Butler’s version of Utopia, the manufacture of energy intensive inventions of the
Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries should not be permitted. This does
not apply to energy-saving inventions that replace inventions of earlier
centuries and are immune to Jevons Paradox. This follows from Item A of Addendum 2 of “On Capitalism”. “Every
technological ‘improvement’ results in the exchange of one set of nuisances for
another.”
2.
Banking, finance, fiduciary instruments of every sort including stocks, bonds,
options, and money, in short monetary systems themselves, must be rigorously
excluded. Otherwise, the economy will grow and will not be sustainable as
shown in Items B and D.
3.
The necessity of reasonable equality in wealth in a steady-state economy follows from Item C.
Note 1. In case a monetary system is required
– perhaps just to determine what an equal share is – I have written a
regrettably long document despite my best attempt at brevity: See http://dematerialism.net/cc3.htm
.
Note 2.
An economic actor is a member of a community who makes decisions regarding
consumption for herself and any dependents.
2. Answers to the
question: Can you name a planned economy that was not a dismal failure?
a. Can you name one successful economy of any
description?
b. Even discounting the complaints about the
limited amount of consumer goods and the handling of the criminal class, that
is, private profiteers, probably, planned economies have not done well; however,
…
i. there have not been very many,
ii. most of them tried to solve the economic
calculation problem mentioned by Ethan Nagler,
iii. almost none of them attempted to achieve
equality in a straightforward way,
iv. none of them were pure democracies in the sense
of Aristotle,
v. none of them had a rational monetary system,
that is, a method for determining economic equality,
vi. none of them embraced degrowth,
vii. not every form of planned economy has been
tried.
3. The advisability –
if not necessity - of devising an
economy without markets. By referring to
Bureau of Labor Statistics data from a time when the United States produced
everything it needed domestically, I determined an upper bound on the fraction
of energy that cannot be saved by eliminating markets. See “Energy
in a Natural Economy”. This thesis
is strongly supported by “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism
Scenario” and “Energy
in a Mark II Economy”.
4. What I expect
from serious people who wish to make the best of a very bad situation: Don’t waste your time arguing that a planned
economy won’t work; get busy devising economies that will work.
5. Schumacher’s
famous list (and diagram)
Many people believe that communism is pure
totalitarianism and capitalism is pure freedom and that we must choose one or
the other. The notion is sweeping the world that, since planned economies
have failed, market economies represent the only hope and, indeed, the only
possibility. These are very dangerous beliefs as far as the preservation
of Earth’s remaining species is concerned. It rules out every idea that
has a chance to work and makes the extinction of life on earth very
likely. No one will escape to outer space for a number of reasons chiefly
related to those who won’t have that option.
If, following E. F. Schumacher [1], the famous
economist, we make strict binary choices between (i) freedom and
totalitarianism, (ii) market economy and planned economy, (iii) private
ownership and collective or state ownership, we get, not two only, but 2 to the
3rd power or 8 pure political-economic systems. I reject
totalitarianism on humanistic, utilitarian, and aesthetic grounds and I have
already shown why I reject market economies. This leaves two pure
systems: freedom-planning-private and freedom-planning-state.
Table 12-1. Schumacher’s Chart
|
|
FREEDOM
MARKET ECONOMY PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM
MARKET ECONOMY PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
FREEDOM
PLANNING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM
PLANNING PRIVATE OWNERSHIP |
FREEDOM
MARKET ECONOMY STATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM
MARKET ECONOMY STATE OWNERSHIP |
FREEDOM
PLANNING STATE OWNERSHIP |
TOTALITARIANISM
PLANNING STATE OWNERSHIP |
I believe we are in a position, now, to reject
state ownership because it leads to the concentration of power into the hands
of a large, inefficient, corrupt, and tyrannical bureaucracy that appropriates
an unfair portion of the wealth to itself, which, in turn, demoralizes everyone
else. The last thing a bureaucracy has in mind is to “wither away”.
I believe that the means of producing goods and providing services, including
services we normally think of as government services, should be owned by the people
as private individuals – but in the sense of custodianship. Workers would
own the enterprises for which they work. One worker – one share; one
share – one vote. This sort of combination of private and collective
ownership differs from ordinary ownership in that it cannot be transferred by
sale; moreover, it must be forfeited by individuals who voluntarily abandon the
enterprise. Due to these and other complications we shall refer to
capital as generalized private property. [Note in proof:
As of October 3, 1993, it appears that Russia is headed toward
totalitarianism, a market economy, and private ownership.]
Now, in 2014, I might want to alter the above slightly; but,
I think I’ll let it stand.
