From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon May 21 2007 - 07:20:05 EDT
> There is a bandwidth mismatch here. I think the cellphone mechanism you > suggest is in principle practical, but is only worthwhile for more major > issues - should more railways or more roads be built, should a particular > major road project go ahead or not, should production of some major class > or good be restricted or expanded - for instance should cell phone > networks > be constructed, should free wifi networks be built? > The vast number of different individual industrial products, most of > which are consumed only by a minority of people, means that the process > of having prior votes on all new products or changes in quantities > would be quite infeasible. Hi Paul C: I see the issue you are talking about. It could be addressed as follows: 1) major issues, which everyone would be encouraged to vote on and have participation in, could be publicized in one venue; 2) decisions about the mix of individual consumption goods could be left to groups who have a concern and interest in it. For instance, "group concerned with bicycles", "group concerned with stereos", etc. In a way this is already done in many online forums -- what would change is that the members would make *decisions* about what to produce, etc.; 3) As for industrial goods, proposals could be made about different means of production to produce and then the workers who, after all, jointly and democratically determine most factory policies (there is some degree of workers' control and autonomy in our ideas about socialism, right?) can decide which of those goods to order. Of course, this sounds a lot easier than it would be in practice. Nobody ever said socialism would be easy, did they? In solidarity, Jerry
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