Hello from London. I'm Jason

Hi, I’m Jason. I live in London, UK, and work in digital technology. I helped to develop this website and I am a moderator on the forum. My hope is that it will serve to connect people interested in the Participatory Economy economic vision.

I was first introduced to a Participatory Economy and Participatory Society theory through the independent media website ZNet over 15 years ago. A long time ago! I’ve found it to be the most convincing and comprehensive systemic alternative to capitalism I’ve come across, and believe that popularising vision and developing long-term strategy are important ingredients for informing our activism today.

Over the years, I’ve been involved in various past advocacy projects around the vision, including Project for a Participatory Society UK and the International Organisation for a Participatory Society, through which I’ve given talks and organised speaking events for Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, the creators of the model. I’m also involved with environmental activism, worker co-operatives and a member of the Labour Party.

Get in touch with me if you are also interested in developing ideas for games and tools that use technology to promote the Participatory Economy model. I’m currently working on an idea for a participatory planning app.

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Howdy, Jason! I’ve actually been interested recently in simulating different types of economic systems (including parecon, of course), but I haven’t gotten the time to really start mapping it out. I’d love to help out in any way I can with making parecon games/tools.
My main concern for the time being is how to properly calculate value indicators for products (specific stuff that comes to mind is the value of land when calculating social costs). Have you found any solution for this type of issue, or is that something I might be able to help with?

Hi Nicolai
Great to hear that you are also interested in ideas for developing PE software/games/tools. There seems to be a few of us on here interested in this. Have you seen the excellent work that our colleague @msszczep has been working on to do with an agent based simulation of participatory planning? I’ve posted a video on the site now. Take a look and let us know what you think.

This is a really promising simulation so far! This makes me more excited to read Hahnel’s next book.
I think my main concern for now is if its possible to implement either the same methods or more refined methods for a real parecon. Although, like I said, this is really promising, a computer will never hold the same power as a group of people.
Its possible in the future there could be something of a real-life experiment for parecon, a la The AI Economist tests with human participants. I imagine, though, for the time being that there will need to be more work put into simulations of this type before we can start to consider human experiments.