How to solve the allocation problem?
Russ Nelson
to allocate resources among people?
--
--russ <nel...@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> Businesses persuade; Governments force.
david rolfe graeber
>Some people propose a society without property. How do these people propose
>to allocate resources among people?
>
>--
>--russ
Perhaps I shouldn't put this as a response to a propertarian's
post, since I really don't want this to turn into the same old argument
as practically every other thread on this newsgroup, but...
It's true that left anarchists (and democratically oriented
leftists in general) haven't spent a lot of time working on models for
how resources might be allocated in a non-capitalistic fashion: that
is, assuming (as I rather tend to assume) that a free society would
not be made up of small yet completely self-sufficient communes. To
some extent this neglect is understandable: people will figure out
these problems for themselves when the time coms, who are we to tell
them what to do? But at the same time, what with the increasing world-
wide hegemony of so called "free market" models - the latter being
practically the only ideological model that anyone in the Third World
(for instance) is being offered by anyone - it wouldn't be a bad idea
for the left to at least develop some models for what an alternative
might be like.
A couple years ago I saw a review of a book called "Looking
Forward", which seemed to be written with this in mind. If I remember
it was arguing that modern information technology should make it
possible for self-managed industries to coordinate the production
and distribution of goods cooperatively through interactive systems.
The authors did seems to assume there was some rather minimal
government in existence, but it had little or nothing to do with
the economic system they proposed, which seemed like it could get
along very well without one. Problem is I have not since been able
to locate the book itself so I can't say much more about it.
Has anyone out there read it? Any comments? Does it seem
to develop a viable model, or not? I'd be very interested to know.
DG
Paul Leddy
The one by Micheal Albert? Looking Forward: Participatory Economics?
I'll go read it and get back some time soon, or scan in sections and post them