In a way it is built in. Work is divided pretty evenly between workers in terms of hours - with exceptions made for workers who want to work more or fewer hours than average allowed as long it does not seriously incovenience others. In short there is no involuntary employment in Parecon. All work must be listed with a single job agency. Worker councils can hire as they please once they are posted - subject to various non-discrimination rules which presumably would be much tougher than under capitalism. Again I think the "job marke" proposal Jennys father made could easily be adapted to a non-market economy with very minor changes. (Although I don't like central planning, I think it could even be adapted to central planning.) If you can't find a job, then training is available at an average wage until you become qualified. (I suppose you could have some personality disorder that prevents anyone hiring you. But if you look at it, that would be a mental disability and probabl y qualifies you for average income without working.)
> this also came up with my capitalist job...i do photo processing and couldn't
> help note that the company is losing money by cutting the
> negatives...(it's very time consuming labor wise and the customer really
> gets nothing). now would i reccomend to the 'coordinator class' that this
> would be a very good way to cut labor costs when i might be the first
> person eliminated?....uh probably not.
which for course does not arise in a Parecon where you are your own coordinator (at least to the extent you choose to be). It would take more detail than I want to go into - but if you make such a change in a Parecon you are not risking your job security. Your workplace either ends up serving more customers (because you can process cheaper than you estimated and prices or lower) or your workplace ends up with a lower workweek - in which case you can either live with less income and have more leisure or choose to keep your income the same in which case more work will be found for you - either as individuals or as a workplace (maybe in something other than photo processing - maybe related maybe not.)
>
> another issue perhaps.....i couldn't help imagining certain 'essential'
> worker councils might gain a dissproportionate amount of power that might
> cause the whole system to become centralised really quickly. For example
> say water workers.....that might become signifigantly more desirable just
> due to the fact of job stability.... folk might be more willing to work in
> water for less pay etc. allowing the water working institutions to employ
> more people allowing them to gain more influence in price
> negotiations......the water workers being paid less might support price
> increases etc. (and this is mostly based on the fact that in just about
> any type of worker organisation there is going to be say a more right wing
> proletariate element etc.....) and if this kind of thing does happen......
> it could have all kinds of unforseen effects that could make it very
> different than what it's supposed to be, one can only speculate.
There are several checks against this. One is that jobs complexes are balance across workplaces as well as within them. So if a water works is a more desirable workplace more people will apply to work there than you would expect for the same compensation. Now one way to handle this is (as you say) to lower wages until you get no more appplicants than any other workplace per job. But parecon does not allow an unlimited lowering of this sort. Beyond a set point you must balance your time at the water works with work at a less desirable workplace so as to have a job complex whose balance is not to far from the norm. One thing this means is that if you workplace is already extremely desirable when it comes time to allocate macro investment, you have more incentive to help raise desirability of the least desirable job complexes than approve investments that tend to directly benefit your workplace. Because if your place is already more direable than average and you make your job
more cushy while other workplaces remain hellish, you decrease the time you spend in your desirable workplace and increase the time you spend in hellish ones. You personally tend to work in a more comfortable job as work is made more pleasant and empowering for everybody.
Again to oversimply, if everybody take turns sweeping up in a workplace than the incentives to automate sweeping are a lot stronger than if it is left to a floorsweeper. This applies when we don't do something as inefficient as have everyone be a floor sweeper but instead have everyone's specialty include approximately the same amount of empowering and unempowering work.
>
> which brings up another issue....it's all very speculative...which is fine
> but some folk are already calling themselves 'pareconists' etc. and it
> seems to me some folk are more interested in promoting it than actually
> examining it...i mean some of the language used to describe it borders on
> cult behavior and that might distract from whatever good ideas there might
> be....good ideas that i've read before...except with some possibly
> invented distinctions. for example i don't really understand this
> 'coordinator class' issue as a distinction from what Marx wrote....was the
> 'coordinator class' a significant or prominant feature of capitalism when
> Marx wrote about it? late 19th early 20th century? and i haven't been
> witness to any folk calling themselves marxist now denying that it
> exist...i mean there are distintions but 'coordinator class' doesn't
> strike me as being one of them.
You must not have been here for the discussion a few months ago when JKS, Carroll and Yoshie pretty much constituted themselves a three person army attacking the idea that a significant coordinator class existed - with plenty of reinfocement from others.
>
> so i guess my advice would be to ditch the invented distinctions and
> actually address in the basic presentation issues that most folk would be
> concerned with like will there be enough work to sustain at least a
> moderate sized population. because so far it seems Mr. Albert has argued
> otherwise....or there is some contradiction. it seems that should be the
> first question answered or something.
>
> ~M.E.
Umm again this really does not seem to be a contradiction. Parecon is radically egalitarian. Work and income are distributed very equally (subject of course to the fact that not everybody wants the same thing in either regard). Depending on technological improvement, what standard of living people want, and to what extent currently unpaid work is transformed into paid work (or for that matter vice versa) you could easily end up with a thirty hour work week, a twenty hour work or even a ten hour work week. (The latter I think would require amazing technical breakthroughs or a big time conversion to "plain living and high thinking".)
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