Am I wrong, or isn't PROUT the cult that Ravi Batra is associated with?
MJB's comment about small organizations and inefficiency is important. It
seems that multinational corporations are coming up against some limits
to size because of the difficulties of governing large, diversified
organizations. But the small organizations idealized by PROUTists,
greens, New Leftists, populists, and the like, may not be up to the task
of running a complex industrial society. There may be a big free rider
problem with lots of small-is-beautiful schemes - visions of
technologically enabled independence cum autarchy want to skim the cream
off a world that still needs AT&T's, Intel's, and Apple's, only safely
out of sight of the bioregion.
Decentralizers are also very vague on what will govern relations among
these smallish enterprises and semi-autonomous regions. PROUT calls for
barter, which seems immensely impractical on anything but the smallest
scale; other greens seem to imply market relations - only this market
will be decentralizing rather than centralizing. No one under Marx's
influence can seriously believe that market relations don't tend quite
forcefully towards concentration. It seems that lots of these New Visions
are merely old populist, petit bourgeois, small business, Proudhonist
fantasies in new guise.
Yay! Thank God someone finally spoke up for rootless cosmopolitans. Some
of us find these small scale, localist visions suffocating.
Doug
Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)
On Mon, 20 Jun 1994, Michael J. Brun wrote:
>
>
> I have heard of PROUT, but cannot place it for now. I'm a
> little suspicious, for a number of reasons. Two of those
> reasons pertain to many "localistic" agenda, not just PROUT,
> so they are worth mentioning in a broader context.
> (1) A lot of the inefficiencies associated with group activity
> appear to appear quite rapidly. I think that when you go from
> an individual to a small group, the "inefficiency curve" rises
> steeply, and then levels off as you go from a small to a large
> group. It's only a hunch; I would be curious to know if anyone
> has tackled this issue formally. But if it is true, that means
> that beyond some point, one large organization would be less
> "bureaucratic" than many small ones. Localism would then lead
> to more hassles of all kinds, not less.
> (2) Most localist agenda refer to "local people." What place
> will there be for "rootless cosmopolitans"? Will mobility be
> reduced as part of this agenda?
> .......................Michael Brun
>
> --
> Michael J. Brun ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> 408 W. Elm, #3, Urbana, IL 61801, USA, (217) 344-5961
>
