I don't wish to revisit old arguments about market socialism vs planned socialism, but in this context here is what looks reasonable.
Let there be a planning board that determines the infrastructure and the general transportation layout. Let there be sufficient redistribution so that nobody is poor. Also make sure that there is excellent mass transit (determined by the planning board). Then let people have non-polluting automobiles and make them pay congestion fees by automatic Vickrey-style recording mechanisms.
The basic problem with your "planning board rations car use" scheme is that it implies a horrendous degree of oppressiviness and arbitrariness. On what grounds will this be decided? Who will be doing the deciding? Who will make exceptions and how? How does one avoid corruption in such decisionmaking? etc. etc. etc. Barkley Rosser On Fri, 08 May 1998 11:29:59 -0400 Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com> wrote:
> >Louis Proyect's notion of a global planning board rationing the use of motor
> >vehicles meanwhile strikes me as utter madness. I understand why socialists
> >are reluctant to make use of the pricing mechanism. Yet it is far and away
> >the most efficient method. Correctly pricing motor vehicles, not to mention
> >electric cars, mass transit, and even bikes decentralizes decision-making.
> It
> >allows each and every user to decide what is the most cost-effective way
> to go
> >from A to B without having to await instructions from command central. It
> >encourages "the praxis of everyday life" in which people, individually or
> >collectively, are free to develop solution to a myriad of mundane problems.
> >This strikes me as far more democratic and creative.
> >
>
> (clip)
>
> >Personally, I want to change everything.
> >
> >Dan Lazare.
>
> Pricing, ie. market socialism, is the opposite of changing "everything." In
> some respects, China embodies market socialism and the proliferation of
> luxury automobiles among the red bourgeoisie shows that something different
> is needed. Two years ago, at a Socialist Scholars Conference, David
> Belkin--coauthor of a book on market socialism with Frank
> Roosevelt--debated Harry Magdoff. Belkin argued that if workers wanted
> cars, they should have them. This is not socialism, it is adaptation to the
> current consumerist status quo, which favors the industrialized nations
> against the third world. Pricing is besides the point as long as artificial
> blocks to the free market exist, namely death squads and censorship.
> Indonesia will produce cheap oil because the army and cops and fascists
> murder trade unionists. The only way that prices will reflect reality is
> when the bourgeosie is overthrown. A mind-blowing task, but we'd better
> roll up our sleeves now or it will never get done.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu