I love how succinct this is, will be sharing this around with some local gays
Decentralized planning is ultimately needed but unfortunately coordination problems of that variety are still not solved.
Library Socialism presents the curated framework for a potential solution but still depends on a shared common database of record.
Which presents the same centralized knowledge problems but adds a single layer of indirection that with appropriate privacy laws might be sufficient if we as a society can unite behind the necessity of library checkout privacy.
Great little read. The author is very eloquent and concise at explaining the solarpunk ideal, one of the best I’ve seen to quickly get the point across.
How does a fully planned economy that’s also decentralized and democratic work?
You know how most anarchist collectives decide what they are going to do and their ethical choices in a decentralized and democratic way? It’s like that except you make explicit that this includes decisions classified as economics.
For example: Extinction Rebellion has an arts circle, which makes banners and other action activity. This production is limited in capacity and people decide what they work on. So prospective actions pitch concepts for art pieces and artists may choose to produce them, and there is a commonly understood rate of production that everybody consents to. If specific actions were left without art and XR in general saw this as a problem they could discuss it. If specific actions treat the arts circle like a factory that will put a certain amount out, the art circle can raise that issue and people can discuss it.
The economy is planned: there are soft projections of the artistic production. Consumption is planned in accordance to projected production and production is planned in accordance to projected consumption.
The economy is decentralized: each artist can decide their own work and each action can pitch its own concepts, and they can communicate freely to coordinate without needing to go through any centralized intermediary.
The economy is democratic: every member is part of nested circles where they can express concerns or objections about any topic they have a stake in, and if they have an objection in something they have a stake in then that part of the process halts as safely as possible.
But this is just one example. Most glaringly, this example preserves producer-consumer relationships that many anarchists want to dissolve. Artists feel somewhat alienated from the products of their labor when it is used in actions they don’t attend, a gap partially filled by sending back pictures, but only partially. And as I said before, people in actions can start seeing it as a factory, or even as a magically appearing baseline.
This helped, thanks.
It could potentially be planned with a federated Cybersyn style system, perhaps combined with a bidding system used by food banks for resources that are more scarce (or perhaps not if it doesn’t test well).
The Dispossessed explores the concept of a planned gift economy in a grounded and realistic sci-fi setting, if you’d like to see one way of how it could work.
Both of those depend upon a single centralized database for fair allocation. It represents the centralized planning problem.
What would prevent them from being federated?
The double spend problem and true inventory requirement. Not to mention how to solve the multiple identity problem of federated systems.
I’m not sure how specifically that would be an issue for the cybersyn concept, as that would, I assume, mostly be a way for communities to show what they have in surplus for others in need, and what they require for themselves. In a gift economy, there’s not much incentive to game that, AFAIK.
As those problems apply to the food-bank option: As much as I personally dislike crypto currencies/blockchain ledgers, it is an example of a (poorly) decentralized market-like system, though it happens to almost always be used for scams in our current society, due to profit motive.
If the food-bank fake money option was to be employed, it seems like it’d be possible to develop a method that is able to keep track of who bid on what, and who has what available each day through a decentralized fake-money system without the obvious downsides of crypto currencies (As an example, there would be no reward for keeping track of the ledger, so no one would have any incentive to create giant computer farms). And like the food bank system, at the the end of each day, it could redistribute all spent funds across the participating federated communities:
For Feeding America, an important wrinkle was a clause that redistributed to all members the sales proceeds at the end of each day. At midnight, any fake money spent on a given day was split up and returned to food banks. That went a long way toward assuaging disappointment a food bank might have felt after losing out to a higher bidder, as everyone benefited from the higher price paid.
However, it’s possible that a market-style system may not be ideal, even under a gift-economy, it’s just one potential idea.
As for:
Not to mention how to solve the multiple identity problem of federated systems.
I’m not sure how the multiple identity problem would be an issue in a federated system, could you elaborate on that more?
What do you think makes it hard to combine planning, decentralization and democracy?
I can’t tell if you’re joking, but I’m going to assume you aren’t. It seems to me that a planned economy inherently requires a degree of centralization, at least cooperative agreements, between producers. My question is how “Fully Planned Queer Solarpunk Communism” can be fully planned and decentralized.
It sounds like you’ve answered your own question.
A minor degree of centralization, coop agreements, etc. Decentralization and no centralization are two different things. We are after all on a decentralized, federated social media network.
