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In the U.S. in 1988 there were 91 million households with an
average of 2.69 members. Regarding consumer outlets, in 1986 there were, for
ex ample, 187,430 food stores, 362,895 eating and drinking places, 36,037
general merchandise stores, 141,884 apparel and accessory stores, 205,597
real estate offices, 54,759 banks, 18,543 movie theaters, and 2,018 museums.
"Similarly, our personal work proposal implies what we
think the average work effort should be and therefore what society's total
production and consumption should be. "
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Preparing First Proposals
Last year our
economy carried out various acts of production and consumption that
constituted "plans" for individuals, consumption councils,
workplaces, and industries. As this year begins we have records of all these
"plans." We also know last year's final indicative prices and per
capita consumption, as well as the average ratio of social benefit to social
cost for workplaces last year. Additionally, each unit knows how it altered
its proposals during last year's planning process, moderating its own
requests in light of other's needs. Similarly, each unit has access to the
same data for the history of any other unit's transactions.
Readers who think we are beginning to write science fiction should know
that contemporary database systems are already sufficiently powerful to
sustain this kind of information storage, manipulation, and retrieval. A few
major credit companies now possess and
regularly use substantial data files on tens of millions of consumers
which approaches the level required to describe and record the various
economic operations we want to track. Regarding the task of bringing everyone
into communication with this data, we already have a comprehensive phone
network, and the only thing needed to establish a fully interactive hookup is
unlimited distribution of computer terminals and phone accessories called
modems. Produced on the scale we require, cost per participant could drop as
low as a hundred dollars or less for units that would last many years.
Similarly, memory storage and operating capacity are growing so fast that
technical means of accommodating participatory planning will surely exist
before social demand for such a system matures.
So how does
an individual consumer or worker plan? First we obtain relevant data about
last year's plan. Second, we receive information from various Iteration
Facilitation Boards (lFBs) about anticipated indicative prices, income, and
value of product that should be attained per value of input used
(benefit-to-cost ratio) this year, all arrived at by adapting last year's
final figures in light of investment decisions and changes in the work force
and consumer population. Third, we receive information from higher-level
production and consumption councils and from production and consumption
facilitation boards regarding major investments agreed to as part of long-run
planning and their implications for the present.
Finally,
taking into account our intended work levels and any borrowing or saving we
are planning, we develop a personal consumption proposal for the coming year.
Assuming the eventual result will be equitable, our proposal is implicitly
our "vote" for the average consumption the economy should have,
and, by way of the fact that all this must be produced, also the average
amount of work we think people should do. Similarly, our work proposal
implies what we think the average work effort should be and therefore what
society's total production and consumption should be. In short, in making an
initial personal proposal each actor proposes their own consumption and
production but also, implicitly an average and overall workload, and an
average and overall level of consumption. In fact, each individual implicitly
proposes all this twice, once in their personal consumption proposal and once
in their personal work proposal.
But does this
mean we must itemize every single good down to size and color? No, because
lFBs group goods into classes according as they are roughly interchangeable
regarding the resources, intermediate goods, and labor required to produce
them. So we need only choose from among types of goods. Similarly, we don't
bother with sizes or colors, since demographic data allows producers to
extrapolate within an acceptable range of error from total requests say, for
7 million sneakers, to more precise demands for so many size 8, so many size
9, and so many of each style and color.
As an
individual, therefore, you present your consumption request to your
neighborhood council. where it is summed with others. Neighborhood collective
consumption requests are added to form the neighborhood council's complete
request which is submitted to the ward council where a similar process
ensues, on up to the national consumption council.
In the same
way, workers access a summary of the history of their proposals last year
including the initial proposal, changes made during planning iterations, what
was finally agreed on, and also what was actually carried out if there was
any discrepancy. lFBs also provide estimates of what changes in demand are
likely this year based on extrapolations from demographic data and last
year's demands before they were reduced during iterations.
Workers
consider this information, discuss their own desires, and enter work
proposals which are assembled into the workers' council's first proposal for
"inputs" and "outputs" by procedures we discuss next
chapter.
In addition,
both workers' and consumers' councils provide qualitative addenda to their
proposals, including descriptions of changes in their circumstances and
conditions. If the quality of work in a workplace has altered due to previous
investments that have reduced noise or made surroundings more agreeable, it
would be noted. Similarly, if the purpose for which a consumer council
requests a good is different from last year, this too would be noted.
However, when we say units would assemble information and make their
proposals available, we do not mean they trudge around searching for data and
send off copies of proposals to every unit in the country. Planning is
computerized. All councils can access data banks of all facilitation boards
and all other councils. The only thing demanding about flexible information
access is that the computer system not only automatically accept but also sum
and compare proposals to ascertain the status of any good-which brings us to
the problem of "planning iterations."
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