Removing Annual Participatory Planning from Participatory Allocation?

[MichaelHicks]

@tfroberg

“The IFB would adjust prices for products on the consumer side with an algorithm that just adjusts prices up if demand is high and down if demand is low, but in real time and not through an iterative planning procedure.”

Yes, prices could either change or stay the same throughout the year. If people wanted the prices to update that would be the role of the IFB. I think in one of the Parecon books they touch on this a bit.

@tfroberg

But what are your thoughts on post-plan adjusting?

I think if the IFB does a good job calculating the excess supply threshold each industry can have, and the workplaces ask for enough inputs to cover surprise demand, they should be able to adjust to most of the changes throughout the year without much trouble.

When workplaces need access to more inputs, I think it could work something like this (copying from another post I made years ago):

@MichaelHicks

• A computer system detects a shortage for a particular product and signals the relevant worker councils responsible for making the product.

• Each workplace that was signaled then has an opportunity to submit a proposal that basically says “we commit to producing x more of these products if we can get access to these inputs”.

• If an input they require is an intermediate good, the computer system will signal the worker councils responsible for it so they can submit revision proposals too.

• Once all relevant workplaces have had a chance to submit revision proposals, all federations will take a vote on which proposals should be approved to meet the demand increase. This is similar to how everyone has the right to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to production and consumption proposals during the annual planning procedure.

Here are some extra things to note:

1. An important part of these negotiations is that someone needs to provide sales data and prove that the supply is low enough to warrant some kind of change in the plan. I would prefer the IFB computer system to do this since they would have information regarding how much excess supply is appropriate and have all of the sales data.

2. Only the workplaces who are signaled by the IFB should be allowed to participate, and they should only be allowed to submit proposals for the products that are relevant. For example, if there’s a banana pie shortage the workplaces should only be able to submit adjustments for banana pies, not apple pies. This will speed up the negotiations for urgent products.

3. Workplaces could also initiate adjustment proposals for any product they want during the year, and these could not have all of the restrictions I’m talking about above. However, by default, I don’t think these should be treated as urgent. These are the types of adjustments that are going to be prone to prolonged debates because the other councils would need to agree that there’s some good reason for the adjustment. The IFB method I describe above is automated and would just immediately get people into sending proposals like during the annual planning process.

4. I’m personally in favor of not adjusting prices during the annual plan, but if you wanted to do that you could easily incorporate that into the procedure I proposed. However, the prices shouldn’t be made public until the final plans are approved.