Why -- that is -- you aren't making widgets to try to compete with the others -- in a parecon that makes zero sense. You aren't going to run a widget company or get profits from it. You would work in it, no differently than in either of the others. It makes sense to have another if it makes economic sense -- not otherwise.
> I send my proposal to
> the industrial council of widget manufacturing, presumably
> made up of people who work for widget company one and two,
> since these are the people that would be most directly
> affected and have the most knowledge of widgets. Why on earth
> would they let me open a competing business and risk losing
> their market share and therefore their bargaining ability in
> determining their remuneration?
John ... This is not a question about parecon. There is no market. There is no bargaining power impacting income. There is no competition for market share. There is no desire by any firm to sell any more than people really need -- it doesn't benefit by doing so and who wants to produce books to be doorstops, etc.
I think to talk about the model you are going to need to take a real look at it. I am not saying you should...I am only saying that it is a kind of precondtion, I think, to addressing it.
? Entrepreneurialism is not an
> overriding concern of mine in parecon but your answer seems
> to run counter to human nature. In my opinion most people
> would not risk both job security (reduction in sales of
> widget company one means a reduction in workforce) and power
> (with fewer players in a given field more power is assigned
> to each player) for the sake of some sort of perception of
> fairness. Perhaps I'm overly pessimestic.
No -- you just haven't really encountered the institutional structure of a parecon...which you may or may not find compelling once you do.
You have in your mind settings that arise in market systems, etc., and in those settings your question makes sense. But those settings don't exist in a parecon.