> > > Yes...and some people simply like like more, I suppose...and some
> > > have attributes that give them many daily options that
> others don't
> > > have, and so on. Parecon doesn't address any of that --
> other than
> > > to not reward people for genetic luck (size, brilliance,
> reflexes, and so on).
I think perhaps I misses the post that has the above comment in it -- I don't recognize it -- if so, my apologies.
> >I agree that there's no coherent ethical sense in which one
"deserves"
> >to reap greater monetary benefits because they won the natural
lottery.
Yes...
> >However, wouldn't we need to ensure that there are incentives for
> >competent persons to become, say, doctors? I don't think a lot of
> >people would be willing to go through the rigors of med school if the
> >pay at the end of the rainbow was around $40,000--or would Parecon
med
> >schools somehow be just as good (relative to the ones we already
have)
> >at preparing prospective doctors without being nearly as taxing?
I did, howeer, unless my memory is deceiving me, reply to this...
> If you offer extra incentives in the form of financial
> compensation to people to entice them into becoming doctors
> you are indeed rewarding one for the luck of the draw
> genetically.
Correct...
> Not every human being is intelligent enough to
> be a doctor. I should think that being a doctor and providing
> such a valuable service to the community would be reward
> enough.
I am not sure intelligent is the right word here -- but, yes...
> The social rewards of respect and admiration would
> seem sufficient.
This can be made more exacting -- you have doctor capacity...you can opt to have a balanced job complex doing doctoring and other stuff -- or you could try for something where you are much less able to contribute to the social good. You can't earn more doing the latter. You can't have more power doing the latter. You will have less status -- as you will not do the latter nearly as well. Which will you opt for...
If you opt instead to pursue some other path -- won't it mean that that path just mean a lot more to you, is much preferrable to you, so much so that, indeed, it is right for you to have pursued it?
Will this mean that mozart will forego composition and christian bernard forego surgery...I rather doubt it. Will parecon's overall structure and logic mean that the composition and surgery skills and potentials of many times a many people as under class divided economies will emerge and be manifested -- of course.
> I should also think that becoming a doctor
> would be less taxing under parecon than it is currently.
Beocming a doctor now involves first going through a hazing process -- yes, literally, like fraternities, to make you one of the gang -- and willing to behave in ways that ensure the continued dominance of a small group (relatively) over medical skills and knowledge (to keep their bargaining power high) even at the cost of health. Very ugly. And then, of course, there is the mess that is medicine which you practice for years on end...again constrained by pursuit of profit and maintanence of class and other social hierarchies.
Yes, being a doctor would be very different in a parecon -- not only in having a balanced job complex and in remuneration norms -- but in actually being firstly about health and well being...
> As far as my not understanding parecon fully I am certainly
> ready to concede that I may not. Michael seems to think I do
> not and it is basically his theory. It is not for lack of
> exposure to the idea however. I have read "Looking Forward",
> Moving Forward", "The Political Economy of Participatory
> Economics", and have recently started "Parecon".
Hmmmm... That is an awful large investiment -- if I indicated you weren't understanding something -- it would certainly reflect most of all on my writing, in that case!
> I certainly respect Michaels opinion that everyone should not
> be given equal pay regardless of work but I do disagree with
> it.
That is fine...of course, though the above is a bit hard to understand...what I say is we should be remunerated for effort and sacrifice in socially valued labor.
> You say absolute income equality has no moral basis.
Well, if we have balanced job complexes, and we work at essentially the same intensity and for the same duration -- then we have equal incomes...
> By
> whose definition of morality?
Correct. That is, if you have one morality and I hae another -- we will assess matters differently, and will disagree. We can offer some reasons for our attachments, and discuss their implications, but that's about it.
> I do not see the "moral basis"
> in paying a person more to be a doctor just because they were
> lucky enough to be born with the intellectual capacity to do
> so.
Why are you saying that to me, I wonder. I have asserted that, precisely. A parecon doesn't reward innate differences, luck in the genetic lottery. Nor does it reward luck in the parent lottery -- ownership of capital. Nor does it reward people for being able to take more -- bargaining power. Nor does it reward, even -- and this, on the left, I controversial, output. It rewards only effort and sacrifice.
> I also see no "moral basis" for paying a person more
> because they were born with the energy and determination to
> work 80 hours a week. This is also, to a degree, the luck of
> the genetic draw.
There is a point here -- but I think it is getting muddied.
In fact, people will opt to work longer overwhelmingly to receive income. I did mention, by the way, that a parecon could put a limit on overtime -- I wonder if you will notice that.
But you are right about something here, I agree.
Parecon does not even try to -- as a guiding principle -- equalize fulfillment.
It doesn't say, if you choose some job, and I choose another, things should be massaged until you are identically happy with yours as I am with mine.
Suppose you have two kids. One likes piano. The other likes harmonica. Both a whole lot. Let's say they are twin. Birthday comes along. You get a piano and a harmonica for them. They are both ecstatic. Do you now give the harmonica recipient a small car or something, too, so that you will have spent the same aount on both? Is the goal that each has gotten the same amount -- or that each has gotten the same measure of leasure and fulfillment, etc.? There is a difference, you are correct.
Parecon does not seek to determine each person's level of pleasure and development and then every other person's juggling conditions and remuneration to equalize. Rather, it seeks to create conditions and remuneration that is just, and, yes, as you note -- because of our make-ups, because of our backgrounds, because of luck in love and locale and other variables too numerous to mention -- we will not all live equally happy lives.
So there is an ethical difference -- I may side with you in thinking about how to relate to a family -- but we may differ on how to deal with a society.
> You say that equal pay introduces horrible
> implications for incentives. This assumes that people need
> these incentives either to work or to do their best.
Incentives have more than one role -- but, yes, people do need to have a reason to do things that are otherwise unpleasant and unfulfilling or worse.
To whit, if ociety doesn't need street cleaning and coal mining, and so on and so forth -- do you think people will line up to do these things anyhow...presumably for pleasure? I don't. And if not, then the amount that people do line up to do these things should be correlated with the amount that we desire clean streets and coal -- or whatever...or else we are squandering our time and energy on tasks that simply don't need doing.
But if we need to know how much, then we need an allocation system that determines how people value, relative to each other item, the items we might or might not work to produce.
Removing remuneration obliterates the allocation systems ability to indicate these relative values and desires.
That is the "pracitcal" reason I am against it -- plu removal of incentives which is correlated -- along with the moral reason...
> There is a great deal to like about parecon but I believe it
> has the problems I've outlined. If pay is different for
> different jobs of course people will compete for the jobs.
Pay is not different for different jobs -- jobs are balanced and therfore the pay rate per time and effort is equalized.
But suppose -- and it could occur that a parecon balances for empowerment effects but permits differentials in quality of life effects of jobs -- some jobs are somewhat more onerous than others. If everyone is lining up for such jobs, they are being remunerated too much. It should be the case, that for the social community as a whole, the demand ofr those jobs, and for others that are more fulfilling, would be comparable (given different volumes of output for each) because the extra remuneration for the former and the reduced onerousness of the latter, should be valued by the road public, on average, equally.
Now some individual may want more income, as compared to more relaxed and pleasant work conditions, yes...but this is not a systematic injustice of any sort.
> The idea that having a greater income which means greater
> influence which means more power is a given for me. If I can
> buy more "things" I can buy influence over the production of
> those things and that translates to power. I guess we'll
> simply have to disagree on this as well.
Yes, we will...because what you say depends on institutional arrangements. It is not simply a given. More, the differences are relatively tiny, and, as noted earlier, and which you ignored -- if you were correct that some amount of income difference due to working longer at a balanced job complex could interfere, over time, with justice -- a parecon could simply set a maximum for overtime. You seem to have ignored that.
> There is no perfect way to arrange the finances of society.
> Some people will believe that firefighters, because they risk
> their lives, NEED more financial incentive to do the job. I
> believe that people will gravitate towards the skills they
> like the best or perhaps follow in the footsteps of someone
> they admire.
Fine...but will they do that to do work that isn't needed? Is that useful if they do?
If they won't -- then won't they sometimes think something isn't needed which, in fact, is needed.
And how much work will they do? You might say, I believe people -- overwhelmingly -- will want to do the appropriate amount. Me too...but who will they, or anyone, know what that is? How will anyone know when they are working more than is warranted by their being a socially responsible person...
And so on.
We do disagree. I honestly think that to fulfill your broad aspirations and do so without inducing offsetting problems...parecon will prove otpimal.
You think otherwise... Okay. For now, I think we should just leave it there, probably.
> Firefighters will chose to do so because they
> want to do something beneficial to society and feel that this
> is where they can contribute the most. The same for farmers,
> miners, bridge builders, etc.
How do they know what society needs -- where their labors will be of use...and how much? Why will they want to do something useful that is onerous, instead of something useful that Is pleasant? Why, if they do overwhelmingly empowering things -- won't they come to feel they deserve more, and take it...
> As far as a coordinator class I can see that it is not
> necessary for parecon but I would fear that the temptation to
> create such a job would be great. For any individual who
> wants to get a job, again such as a firemen, there would have
> to be the perception by the other firemen that another
> position was needed and then they would seek to fill it. This
> means people would compete for it.
There is a sense in which you are correct. That is, suppose I want to play shortstop for the yankees, and you do, and others do. We can't all...one will be chosen, not the rest. I may be very upset about that. So be it... Parecon isn't nirvana. There is unrequited love. There are people with passions they can't pursue in the precise ways they wish to. I can still play ball, but I may not be good enough to be remunerated for it.
What you are saying, I think, is that the number of firefighters will depends simply on how many people deide they want to fight fires -- regardless of the fact that they get no income for doing so -- they get it automatically -- and they have no responsibility to do so, and there are no requirements for the job, and no one is hiring, and no one can fire, and so on.
Okay....it is a vision. And so we favor different models.
> If they compete then some
> people will naturally seek to gain an advantage. If money
> buys things it makes an effective bribe. I don't have a
> solution to the problem because there isn't one in my opinion.
Look more closely, I guess, is my reply.
But I do think you have maybe lurking here a simultaneously cynical and inflated view of people. On the one hand, the slightest differentials in income will be exploited -- somehow -- to generate onerous social divisions. On the other hand, people will sponstaneously apportion themselves even to the most dangerous or onerous labors, without gaining anything back...and somehow in accord with social need despite the absense of social indicators.
Okay...let's agree to disagree, is all I can offer, I think.
> Some people will just be disappointed that they can't get the
> job they want and have to settle for something else.
Yes, true enough...this will happen in a parecon...in any remotely rational economic arrangement that isn't hugely wasteful, I think...
> If they
> receive the same pay whether they work or not they are truly
> free but if not then they are being coerced into doing a job
> they don't want to do to avoid being homeless and hungry.
> Coercion is coercion whether by capitalists or workers councils.
Okay, it is one way of viewing the world...but we do disagree.
Back to the island. You and fifty others are stranded after some kind of crash. You work your ass off all day generating food, water, shelter, other amenities and even luxuries for play and study.
I spend all day chatting with friends (who are working while I just roam around), playing, swimming, sun bathing, reading books (we have some from the crash, and so on).
But I dip into the food and housing and water and luxuries.
One view -- I am a freeloading asshole and oughtn't be given this option. I should be told I can go to the other side of the island and pursue my play and what not to my heart's content...but if I want to reduce everone else's consumption, I need to do my fair share of labor. I should not be rewarded for having decided to play rather than work my fair share.
Another view -- I have a right to the social output I take...other's can choose not to work if they don't like it as much as they would like playing...I should not be punished just because I prefer to play then to work.
Of course, the real situation is it would be good if our little island community found a way to work up to the amount that its onerousness was no longer offset by the benefits of the output -- and to share those benefits justly...and to do all this without inducing social divisions which corrupt the good intentions -- such as a division of labor on our island which in time has about 20% making all the decision and accruing sufficient power and also status to reorient all manner of relations to their own benefit...