From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Tue May 29 2007 - 08:53:47 EDT
Dear Jerry; is the quantum of freedom gained deciding the placement of pumps justified by the efficiency loose of a democratic planning of that kind? Maybe people would be willing to place the time, otherwise consumed by the design of pumps, reading Nove's Feasible Socialism. If not, they have the possibility of becoming pumps engineers. Hi Alejandro: I belong to an online board in which, I can assure you, hundreds of members would (and have) happily spend time discussing the merits of different designs of pumps for boats. That is by no means unique: just look at a listing of the thousands of 'yahoogroups' devoted to the discussion of special interests. And, yes, engineers and engineering students and laypeople who have an interest in engineering have already shown a willingness to discuss matters online related to specialized branches of engineering. It is true, I think, that there may be a democracy / efficiency tradeoff. Certainly, democracy takes longer than some authority issuing commands and a temporal lag may in many circumstances be deemed to be inefficient. This question, though, has to be put in a historical context: we already have experience with highly bureaucratized and over-centralized and non-democratic forms of "socialism". The *key* issue which must be overcome is the belief - based on the historical experience of those nations, as perceived (perhaps incorrectly, in some ways) by the masses - that socialism is inherently non-democratic. In that sense, unless we have a democratic model of socialism then *no* model will be "efficient" since no model would be feasible. Another *key* issue will be constructing a society that doesn't rest on *capitalist* norms of efficiency, profitability, and "choice". For example, the doctrine of "dollar votes" is antithetical to socialism and democracy since it is not based on the principle of 'one person, one vote' (instead it's 'one dollar, one vote'). Where, then, there is income inequality, this would give a disproportionate vote to those with a higher income and this would undermine the social solidarity which is a necessary characteristic of socialism. In solidarity, Jerry
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