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What are additional or deeper properties of parecon or of possible extensions and variations of it?

In exploring and refining parecon as an economic vision, however, we won’t want to make either of two mistakes: 1) thinking that all parecons will be alike and that by naming/describing a possible feature of a parecon we are naming/describing an actual feature that must always be present in all parecons. Or 2) thinking that we have the means and information to closely read the future, or, for that matter, that there is good reason to want to try to closely read the future. In other words, we don’t need blueprints. The details of future economies and societies will of course emerge from the unpredictable and often very varied choices their citizens will make, not from prognostications much less instructions developed in advance. People will do what they want to do. But of course rightly avoiding over-reaching into excessive details should not prevent us from discussing what we are usefully capable of addressing now.

So even while avoiding mistaking possibilities for inevitabilities or over-reaching into excessive details, we can certainly usefully further explore the logic and implications of the key broad defining institutions of parecon, both intellectually and in practical experiments, and use the resulting insights to both improve the vision (without over-specifying the future) and to refine our comprehension of it and thus our ability to advocate and seek it effectively.

So, for example, what more can we say about the specifically economic implications of workers and consumers councils, of self managed decision making, of balanced job complexes, of remuneration for effort and sacrifice, and of participatory planning?

The issue isn’t trying to foresee tenth order or even third or perhaps even second order impact. The issue is to further elaborate and comprehend the main broad defining implications of these structural choices for liberating people’s options, behaviors, views, and fulfillment and development in order to test and investigate the worthiness and the viability of the vision. Likewise, what about demonstrating the mechanisms that would facilitate information exchange and preference tallying, in theory and experiment? That too would enhance the case being made. One could imagine not only practical experiments at various scales – such as workplaces or groups of them, and neighborhoods or groups of them, but also perhaps a larger scale simulation, whether in fictitious but carefully constructed computer form, or perhaps in a kind of parallel economic activity in the real world.

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