Well, certainly.
Who would want that?
But what does that tell us...
Does it say that some people can't be good doctors, engineeers, composers, ballplayers, and on and on and on. Sure it does.
But does it tell us 80% of the population can do nothing well that confers empowerment -- I don't think so.
> I think that may not be a problem in many industries (like
> retail, catering, amusement, etc.) but it could be a serious
> problem in other (esp. health care, transportation, and mfg,
> as well as certain other services). So assuming as you do
> that job specialization breeds hierarchy, this would pose a
> serious problem - we should either compromise safety for the
> sake of equality or leave some "bastions of inequality"
> intact for the sake of safety.
Yes, if the trade off you envision exists, we would have to assess it, Sure. But I don't think it exists, at all.
Take doctors--the reality is the AMA exists to prevent too many people from becoming doctors and to prevent medical capacities from being utilized by nurses, etc., bringing down the bargaining power of the doctors.
Our problem isn't that there aren't enough people capable of each type of desired work -- our problem is there are social structures that prevent people from becoming competent and that prevent types of work from being done in pursuit of fulfillment and development and consistent with equity and other values we hold dear.
> My preferred approach is to recognize that there will always
> be inequalities among people, including inequalities in
> desirability, power, wealth, skill etc. - the point is not
> to eliminate them, but to recognize their existence and
> implement social control mechanisms that prevent them from
> totally poisoning of social life as they do it now in the US
> and many other countries.
Parecon doesn't deny differences among people. That would be idiotic...and a world in which there were none would be horrific. We are not the same, of course. We have different inclinations, dispositions, preferences, and also capacities, in a myriad of ways.
And we should celebrate that, and benefit from it. But we don't have to unduly reward some, or empower some. Nor should we adopt a division of labor that prevents most from discovering and utilizing their capacities.
Parecon does precisely what you call for, but not taking as given institutions contrary to the aim -- rather, at the level of those institutions themselves.
Again, it might be intersting to debate or discuss experiences in the eastern bloc societies at some point -- but -- not now. These societies were in my view in large degree horrific...not really relevant, I think, to parecon, which has different institutions at every point in the economy.
Had I lived in Poland, or Russia, etc. etc. I would have been a revolutionary there, like here -- albeit I am not have survived as well....