On Wed, March 19, 1997 at 20:57:38 (PST) Rosser Jr, John Barkley writes:
>...
> What is your solution to the problem of aggregating
>upwards of the participatory planning process? I see your
>approach as working well in localized situations and
>worker-managed situations, etc. But, how about as higher
>level issues are to be determined over larger and broader
>areas? How is the participatory process to work? Do we
>have everybody constantly voting on everything all the time?
I'm curious as to Hahnel's response to this, as well. I'm
particularly interested in bringing in the notion of (private)
property (but we can leave this out 'till later).
George Stigler wrote an essay which briefly touched on the costs of
democratic decision-making. His take on it was roughly the following:
There are differences between choice in the market and voting. He
says that democratic decisions must be made simultaneously---one day
of voting. This means that the transaction costs of democratic
action, because of this "simultaneity constraint", are more costly than
market transactions.
This is an interesting contention, but why should it be so? One
could have a six-week political "season" during which people voted when
they were ready, changing their minds if they liked, and then all the
votes tallied up at the end of the period.
Stigler also notes that democratic decisions should in theory involve
the entire community. Again, though, is this always necessary? We
vote in local, state, and federal elections depending on where we
live. Could there be more fine-grained divisions than that based on
geography or other areas of interest? If we had a society based not
solely on greed, in which our information system was not used as an
incredibly powerful instrument of deception, but one in which useful
information predominated, and therefore trust among people was
heightened, could not delegation prove to be much more viable, and
also help to cut costs drastically?
Imagine if we designed our neighborhoods to facilitate social and
political intercourse; imagine if we reworked our society to provide
for vastly greater opportunity for intellectual enrichment and social
development; imagine if we dismantled the "webs of endless deceit" of
indoctrination in schools, journalism, and elsewhere; imagine if we
removed the countless legal and other hurdles to learning, inter alia,
how to "get along" with others... Wouldn't this also lower costs of
participation?
I'm also curious about the difference in frequency of decisions which
might need to be made at local and global levels (and numerous
"intermediate" levels). If local-level decisions were frequent
(daily?), nearly cost-free (telephone/computer/TV voting), and
required participation of only small segments at a time, while
global-level decisions were the "opposite" (except for cost?), we might
indeed have "everybody constantly voting on everything all the time"
(as Barkley queries) at local levels, while global-level decisions
were more ponderous affairs (as we would like?).
Perhaps, though, I'm overlooking the fact that much of daily life
takes place within "structures" of institutions and laws. If these
were laid down fair and square, perhaps they would be less in need of
constant twiddling (attack and defense). As Mill noted, we spend
under capitalism ("the best state") a great effort on "merely
neutralizing one another".
Of course, self-serving fakes like Paul Krugman, while putting on a
fraudulent Keynesian face, are doing their best to dupe everyone into
believing that our entire society is "self-organizing", hence with no
need for such frills as democratic participation in the economy, or
anywhere, since the economy *is* all there is to consider.
The reference to Stigler is "The Theory of Economic Regulation",
originally published in _The Bell Journal of Economics and Management
Science_, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 1971), pp. 3-21. This is reprinted
(with deletions) in Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, _The Political
Economy: Readings in the Politics and Economics of American Public
Policy_ (M. E. Sharpe: 1984, pp. 67-81).
Bill
--
William S. Lear | Who is there that sees not that this inextricable labyrinth
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | of reasons of state was artfully invented, lest the people
quid faciendum? | should understand their own affairs, and, understanding,
quaere verum | become inclined to conduct them? ---William Godwin, 1793
