Re: Participatory Planning

[Trond Andresen <Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley Rosser said, on Thu, 3 Mar 1994 :


	 I note the "if the planner has the requisite information,"
    caveat which remains crucial.  I do not think anyone involved
    in this discussion has denied the computational possibility of
    a supercomputer selecting economy-wide optimal output streams
    (ignoring the capital investment issue, which is non-trivial as
    previously noted) within a known state space.  The problem is
    the incentive of the individual firm to lie to the planner about
    their own production possibilities in order to maximize the
    inputs allocated to them by the planner.

How about this scheme:

Envisage a market economy, but with worker-controlled plants, i.e.
some sort of non-capitalist "market socialism".

The planning authorities (PA) collect, update and continually publish
economic information neccessary and sufficient for the planning in
different sectors/plants.

A given firm makes its own decisions on output, employment, use of
resources etc. for the coming period (let us say year), and reports the
plans to the PA.

The point is now that the while the firm has the right - inside some
upper and lower bounds - to choose targets for the next period, it is then
responsible for keeping to the targets chosen and reported to the PA.
When the period is over, the firm is levied an extra tax if it diverges
from the targets set, greater the farther away it ends up in relation
to those targets. The tax is levied both if the firm undershoots or
overshoots the targets.

This system should have the following benefits:

1) Realistic planning for firms.

2) Good-quality information to the PA. The firms have an incentive
   for helping the PA to have a correct data base, since they are in need
   of that in the next round for local plan-making.



-------------------------------------
Trond Andresen	(Trond.Andresen@xxxxxxxxxxx)
Department of Engineering Cybernetics
The Norwegian Institute of Technology
N-7034 Trondheim, NORWAY

phone +47 73 59 43 58
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