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A different but associated problem regarding vulnerability of participatory
planning is the question of outright sabotage of the system which might be
quite important in the early years of its implementation, if not later.
Safeguards protecting against sabotage might well have to be incorporated,
but this concern exists in any economy, and arguably, once it has had time to
mature, far less so in a participatory economy.
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Preparing Data for the First Round of Planning
How do
iteration facilitation boards estimate overall production and consumption for
the coming year? How do they come up with initial indicative prices that
economic actors can use, and what exactly do these prices convey? Most
important, does proposing likely outcomes and indicative prices make a sham
of our claims that no single agent has greater say than others? Can
facilitation workers exert undue influence on planning?
Various
planning boards begin with last year's results including what inputs
generated what outputs in every unit. They know what the final indicative
prices were and therefore can calculate the value of last year's production.
Moreover, qualitative information is included in extensive reports from all
units and federations and quantitative information can be easily manipulated
using computer terminals that allow users to see inputs required for any
outputs desired.
Facilitation
boards modify last year's data to estimate this year's likely outcomes based
on comprehensive demographic data regarding likely changes in population by age
and gender, the distribution of people between city and country, and so on.
They know what investment projects have been completed and how they should
affect production potentials. As a result, facilitators can make educated
guesses about changes in production work level, and indicative prices.
We could
provide more detail, but nothing about this type of data manipulation
warrants it. The techniques are well known and noncontroversial-tedious, but
not difficult. Facilitators are merely taking last year's data and massaging
it in light of projections about investments completed, growth of the labor
force, and changes in tastes-die latter being estimated from last year's interchanges, and, if desired, polls
of particular constituencies.
Facilitators
could do their data massaging following only prescribed steps, or with
latitude for discretionary and hopefully creative adjustments. In the former
case, facilitators' ability to influence outcomes would be nil, but they
might provide less than the best possible guesses. In the latter case, there
is greater risk of subjective bias, but also potential for better
projections. We will talk more about this trade-off later when we discuss
examples, but here we make four preliminary observations.
1) It is hard
to see any way facilitation board workers (whom we call facilitators for
short) could gain by maliciously biasing data even if they went about their
work without supervision.
2) The choice
between using more flexible but also more subjective techniques and using
less flexible but also less creative techniques lies in the hands of society,
not facilitation board workers.
3) There is
no reason facilitators' discretionary calculations could not be supervised
and checked by anyone who wished to.
4)
Facilitators' projections are, in any case, only guidelines to help economic
actors make decisions.
Facilitators
themselves don't make any production or consumption
proposals, nor do they revise,
veto, or approve any proposals. Indeed, facilitation could be automated with
computers taking last year's data and alter it according to rules that tell
what changes to make. Facilitators would then only update the program rules
as they better understand how variables affect one another. A less rote
approach would allow facilitators to use their experience to refine automatic
projections. But in either case, facilitators make no decisions about what
the economy will do. They only provide information whose formulation is open
to public scrutiny and which economic decision makers are free to ignore if
they mistrust it.
At the outset
of planning everyone in society has access to projections for indicative
prices and production and consumption at every level, including summaries of
related assumptions. Actors use this information as they please in developing
their own plans for the year. It is therefore hard to see how facilitators
could bias outcomes even if society chose, as we think it ought to, to give
them leeway in their means of calculation and projection.
Revising Data in Subsequent
Iterations
The tasks of facilitation boards in subsequent iterations are not
particularly complex. After each economic council and federation submits its
first proposal, facilitation boards respond by preparing new data for the coming
round. They no longer have to guess based on last year's results. Once this
year's initial proposals are in, lFBs calculate the excess demand or supply
for every good and adjust the indicative price of each good up or down
accordingly. There is room for practical experience and artistry in making
the indicative price adjustments or, if preferred, the changes could all be
made according to fixed rules. In either case, not every price must be
adjusted by the same function of its excess demand or supply. One possibility
is that lFB workers with experience in particular industries or with
qualitative information indicating whether proposals are relatively soft or
hard could expedite con vergence by discretionary, informed adjustments. But
in any event, in early rounds, IFBs only summarize qualitative information in
data banks for councils to assess calculate excess demand and supply, adjust
indicative prices, and revise projections of predicted final outcomes. Of
course the updates of predicted final outcomes are still guesses, but they am
based on more information with each new round. Reports of excess demand and
supply and qualitative information, however, are a matter of accurate record
keeping.
As before,
adjustments of indicative prices and projected outcomes could be handled by
-automatic procedures" or by allowing greater personal discretion. And
again. if we choose to allow more human intervention we would to guard
against bias disturbing the process. But it is possible to make the lFBs' activities
as logical and rule-guided as we like and to grant all councils and
federations access to IFB deliberations and procedures in any case. We are
not urging that all these safeguards be employed. We are merely pointing out
that the safeguards we available for those who are nervous about potential
abuse.
It is
important to note, however, what facilitators would be "updating"
in each round. Before planning commences, lFBs use last year's results
including information about investment projects, polls taken during the year,
and various demographic data to project anticipated results for the coming
year. But obviously the actual initial proposals will not be identical to lFB
projections. Once this year's planning begins, lFBs are revising information
based on the most recent set of proposals actually submitted. So at the
outset of round two, workers and consumers receive summaries of qualitative
information, new indicative prices, the percentage of excess demand and
supply for every good, and new projections of what average consumption and
the average social benefit to social cost ratio will be for workplaces this
year. Workers and consumers use all this data, as we have discussed, to
modify their requests in subsequent rounds.
During the
planning process facilitation boards at different levels would regularly
communicate with one another and with plant boards regarding logjams, unusual
requests that remain far from expected averages, reluctance among producers
or consumers to compromise, and especially changing labor requirements that
require transfers of workers.
But
facilitation boards carry out only communicative tasks; they never make
decisions for others. This is not to say that whether they do their job well
or poorly, intelligently or myopically, will not affect die final plan.
However, as mentioned earlier, it is hard to see exactly what motive IFB
workers might have to intentionally bias outcomes, and it is certainly
possible to have oversight mechanisms as well.
In later
iterations, in addition to adjusting indicative prices and providing new
projections, lFBs could generate alternative feasible plans for councils to
assess and vote on. Indeed this is the case in the version of participatory
planning we have been describing. This approach would increase the potential
for lFBs to influence outcomes since in late iterations they would be
actually formulating options. It is conceivable, for example, that lFB
workers might present five internally consistent plans but not a possible
plan that would actually be most preferred. But notice that the only reason
for having lFBs present options for a vote is to reduce the number of
iterations required to arrive at a final plan. It is, a matter of practical
convenience, and, should councils be suspicious or unsatisfied with what IFBs
present, the councils and federations can always choose to continue the
iterative process as they had been. In other words, this stage of the
planning process can be postponed until the councils feel that the time saved
warrants any diminution in the quality of results. Moreover, the idea is that
this time-saving part of the procedure would only begin when the major part
of the plan has already been settled on. We are talking about final moves
after the essential outcome is no longer in doubt. Moreover, councils could
always insist that an additional alternative plan be included with those
generated by the lFBs to be voted on.
Finally, we
point out to those who fear that computers could become the new dictators,
the computer programs are human products, socially evaluated and improved
each year. The computer is acting on data and directions emerging directly
from the social planning process and the preferences expressed by all actors.
The computer uses socially determined data and socially prescribed rules and
only carries out data manipulation and calculations. Moreover, and as we
indicated, all the "choosing scenarios" we have outlined for
producers and consumers allow amendments. In short, neither consumers nor
producers need accept computer facilitated alternatives.
Society could
have IFB workers play a substantial role in refining options to embody
people's preferences, but as with other procedural choices, there is no one
right way. If society chooses a more mechanical approach, the need for
special oversight to guard against bias is minimized, but planning might take
more time. If lFB workers are given more leeway, as we tend to prefer, the
possibility of human error or bias is increased and provisions to correct for
it become more important. But workers and consumers probably save planning
time.
Whatever
combination of automatic procedures and human discretion is adopted for IFB
work, unlike in coordinator and capitalist economies, no aspect of
participatory planning is immune to critical oversight and social evaluation.
Nor is any part of the plan finalized without being filtered through the
social barter process where all actors' preferences, evaluations, and
opinions interact.
The difference
between participatory and central planning is that in the latter, "plan
workers" generate the plan, submit it to those who will carry it out,
get feedback about whether actors can or cannot accomplish what planners
propose they do, and then impose a plan. In our system "plan
workers" only facilitate the process whereby workers and consumers
propose, haggle over, and revise their own
plan. And if facilitators formulate any proposals, it is only after all the
important decisions have been made.
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