Re: Participatory Planning and Inventions

[FAC_BROSSER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Response to Paul Cockshott:
     Two issues:
1)  The key issue is the incentive of the enterprise.  When Allin
Cottrell wrote of firms reporting to each other their process
improvements, the question that needs to be raised is, what is
their incentive to even bother making process innovations, much less
report them to each other, at the firm level, much
less at the level of the individual worker?  Inertia is very powerful
and the natural tendency of most is to not change. (PS:  British laws and
practices, the latter more significant I imagine, differ from those
of some of the other market capitalist countries, e.g. Japan)  We
know that under market capitalism there are both carrot (heightened
profits) and stick (threat of bankruptcy and layoffs) motives.  What
are they in your system?  Allin's "love of intellect" only goes so far.
2)  With regard to "technical or intelligentsia workers" the inventions
may be a side show to their main work.  My mother-in-law was a
practicing dermatologist, not a "skin cream engineer."  She was paid
(not very well) for the former, and never for the latter.
    My more general point is that whatever the "ownership" structure,
there needs to be a material incentive system for both process and
product innovations, both at the enterprise and individual levels.  The
stagnation of the British as well as former Soviet economies are good
evidence of this.
     BTW, no substantial disagreement with your "pollution" remarks.  I
generally concur with the many who have argued that political democracy
feedbacks, etc. are the most important factor in any system for
environmental quality to be maintained or brought about.
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University