Ep 243 Who Owns What, Who Decides What

This is part of a sequence of episodes that will do for a book titled no Bosses that I wrote two years ago , what I have on occasion done for articles , which is to present them in audio as written , however , with me interjecting comments spontaneously as they occur to me while reading .

Last episode in this sequence presented the introduction and the first chapter on values , plus some reactions that I spontaneously added . This episode will present chapters 2 and 3 of no Bosses . Two is titled who Owns what and three is titled who Decides what .

The core content is very carefully developed formulations from the book , but around that I will interject current spontaneous reactions to what I wrote two years ago . I hope this approach of providing not just the book a bit of the time but also my reactions to it two years after having written it will be edifying .

Chapter 2 starts , like all other chapters , with a couple of quotations , first from John Lennon Imagine no Possessions , I wonder if you can . And second from Gore Vidal . There is only one party in the United States , the property party , and it has two right-wings , republican and Democrat . Then the chapter begins .

Economies include ownership relations , modes of making decisions , ways of organizing tasks into jobs , norms for determining incomes and relations that mediate who produces and who consumes what . So , to start , the values that we put forward last chapter should guide us . So what should we think about owning things , and especially owning places where people work ?

Do we need some new approach or can we maintain the ownership relations that we have ? You own your shirt and your cell phone . You decide what to do with them . You decide how to display them , you decide when and how to use them . I don't make such decisions about your shirt or cell phone . You do not make such decisions about my shoes or TV .

That seems right . Owning items we receive from the overall social product makes ethical and economic sense . It has no particular downside vis-a-vis our values , in contrast . Mr Moneybags owns a company . It produces some important good . It mines some important resource . It provides some important service . Mr Moneybags decides what to do with his company .

He oversees the products of his company . He oversees the employees that he hires to make his company productive . I can't decide those things , nor can you , nor can any of Mr Moneybags' employees . Moneybags has dominion over his company , like you have dominion over your shirt and cell phone . Does that make ethical and economic sense ?

Ownership conveys dominion over that which is owned . It's true for you and your shirt and cell phone . It's the same for Mr Moneybags and his company . Mr Moneybags wonders if you can own your shirt and cell phone , why can't I own my shirt and cell phone factories ?

Personal dominion over a shirt and a cell phone doesn't subvert self-management , eviscerate equity , smash solidarity , deny diversity and submerge sustainability .

Personal dominion over a shirt and a cell phone doesn't subvert the participation , dignity and freedom of others , but dominion by Mr Moneybags and roughly 2% of the population over the resources , venues , tools and technologies necessary to produce shirts , cell phones and everything else , and over the work lives of those Mr Moneybags hires to do his bidding , does subvert

self-management , equity , solidarity , diversity and ecological sustainability . It does subvert participation , dignity and freedom .

I believe it is highly likely that people choosing to read this book or to listen to this episode of Revolution Z already agree that the 2% who own what we call means of production or productive assets accrue vastly more income and exert vastly more sayover outcomes than warranted . They severely lack empathy for those below . They aggressively narrow options .

They rapaciously violate ecology . They diminish participation , dignity and freedom . I interject it isn't often that we get to see this in action . We feel it if we work , we understand it . But let me suggest that people consider watching a Netflix film . I think it's titled Pain Killers . I think it's titled Pain Killers .

It's about the oxycodone phenomena horror that has been inflicted upon the United States , and it looks closely to the poignant soprano , socially unknown and not dibujational class of the industry at the impact of the corporation Purdue Pharma on its owners , its employees and its clients . It's a good picture of what private ownership does . The chapter continues .

The property problem is therefore that sensible rules for owning personal possessions become horrific rules when extended to owning resources , tools and workplaces , because resources , tools and workplaces dramatically affect the lives of countless people beyond their owners . The personal rules for owners of shirts and cell phones benefit everyone .

The same rules for owners of society's productive assets munificently serve those owners , but impoverish and degrade everyone subject to the owner's decisions . It turns out that , to abide by our values , we should preserve personal ownership of clothes , swing sets , books and furniture , but not personal ownership of resources , machinery and workplaces .

This is the underlying reason why critics of capitalism have always proposed eliminating private ownership of productive assets . That is , such ownership elevates owners , called capitalists , above all others .

It conveys incredible wealth and power to the owners and consigns the rest to various levels of enforced obedience and imposed impoverishment , all the way down to total subordination and abject poverty called wage slavery . But if Amazon's owner , jeff Bezos , shouldn't own and thereby have dominion over Amazon , what's the alternative ?

That is the property problem , for which anyone who wants a better economy beyond capitalism needs to have an answer . If a bunch of money bags can't own and thereby accrue a very large part of the contribution to society's social product from Amazon or any other company , who should get such wealth ?

We will soon make a case that workers should get income for the duration , intensity and onerousness of the socially valued work they do , while people who cannot work should get an average share . Additionally , of course , some of society's product should go to meeting collective needs for healthcare , safety , public roads and schooling .

Some should also go to new construction and research for the future . The property point is only that none should go to anyone on the grounds they own productive assets . However , that is only half the issue . It is only half because the dominion that ownership currently conveys is not only about income . It is also about control . I interject .

This is an important point . I don't find anything disagreeable about what I wrote so far in this chapter , but maybe I could have indicated that some folks look at the property problem as important only because of the effect on income and wealth . But in fact the control effect is equally or arguably even more important to highlight .

But I should also add that while it is an important point alone , or even with accompanying nice sentiments , it doesn't take us far . The chapter continues . Owners in our current economy make decisions about what to produce , how to produce it , who does the work , what they are paid and much else .

If there are no longer owners of companies , mines and workplaces , who should make such decisions and by what calculus and methods ? We will soon propose that such decisions should not be the purview of some individual or group simply because they have a document that says they own the company's mines or workplaces in question .

We should all be able to agree on that . Some say the alternative to private ownership should be that the state should own the companies . Others say that the alternative should be that workers in the unit in question should own it . Still others say that nearby communities should own it or that the entire population should own it . I interject .

These possible solutions to not having a couple of percent of the population own all the productive assets are favored by socialists . Some favor one option , some favor another . They all try to move in a good direction , away from capitalist rule .

But they have different costs and benefits and for the most part often leave those unstated and say little about what other institutions are needed to have a desirable economy . Still even sticking to just ownership itself . There is more to say . The chapter continues .

A conceptual problem is that all these proposals fixate on ownership as if owning is somehow essential . So we have to allow ownership somewhere . But why Imagine being shipwrecked with a bunch of others on some unreachable island ? You all know that you will be there for many years . You have to arrange yourselves to produce , distribute and consume goods and services .

You have a big meeting of the new residents of the lost island . Some confident , gray-suited fellow stands and says In the real world I own a big company . I should own a big chunk of this island's land and resources . Then I can run those , hire many of you and help everyone thrive .

I see 20 others like me among you and 980 folks who worked for people like me before . So let's establish ourselves here as we were before 20 owners and 980 workers . 4 owners my land , my resources , my workplaces once you build them and your wages Received from me 20 owner deciders and 980 beneficiaries of owners' decisions .

I hope you will agree that this wannabe owner should be given a shovel and the patient's due to a person suffering a severe mental malady On our imagined island .

It is easy to see that if we say people's income should have nothing to do with something called ownership , and if we also say people's influence over outcomes should have nothing to do with something called ownership , then there is nothing left for ownership of productive assets to convey .

The immediate conclusion is that no one and no thing should own society's productive assets , just like no one should own the sky or the oceans . The concept of owning makes no sense when applied to the island's land or resources , and it also makes no sense applied to its mines and workplaces . Such ownership should not exist .

The issue at stake isn't some abstract notion of deeds to mines and workplaces . It is instead the very tangible issue who should get the wealth created by mines and workplaces and who should decide what mines and workplaces do and how they do it . If not owners and surely we can agree it ought not be owners then who I interject ?

I am happy to see that I emphasize both aspects of the problem . If you remember from the discussion of values , our task is going to be solving both aspects , consistent with our values . The chapter continues . Our equity value will guide us toward a proposal for income . Our self-management value will guide us toward a proposal for decision-making .

But before we take those steps , if no one is to own them , how do we view resources , workplaces , tools and even knowledge and skills ? A useful concept to apply is the commons .

All these productive assets are either gifts of nature , like warmth from the sun and resources from beneath the ground , or they are products of a long history of human creative activity , like technology , knowledge and skills . They are parts of a natural and a built commons which should together be respected and used responsibly for the benefit of all society .

To misuse or to waste them is a sin against nature and our own history that diminishes our future .

The property problem is thus partly eliminating the usual arrangement in which some few people own and oversee productive assets , but it is also partly replacing those few owners as beneficiaries and rulers of these gifts of nature and these products of human history , with instead a new and different approach .

And it is also a matter of having the rest of a new economy interface compatibly with that new approach to our natural and built commons , which approach is in turn a matter for coming chapters .

What this chapter has already set forth , however , is that we propose no private ownership of productive assets , which means we propose no capitalists , which means we propose no more capitalism . What we don't yet know is what we propose to take capitalism's place .

I interject , so a short first and second chapter get us to well where most anti-capitalists , who don't offer greater detail , reside , that is , many want to get beyond capitalism and know what means lots of change , but aside from getting rid of owners of means of production , they don't think about what the needed new institutions are .

And so now comes chapter three with its two opening quotations , and it is titled who Decides what , and it finally begins to address additional new institutions . It begins like this First , a quotation from Alice Walker the most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any .

And then a quotation from Woody Guthrie Most everybody , I see , knows the truth , but they just don't know that they know it . And then chapter three begins . We have proposed collective self-management as a value for who decides what in a new economy and in any other realms of life as well .

We can easily see that to fulfill that ethical aim , even if not to the third decimal place of precise accuracy , at least to everyone's broad satisfaction , is a quite demanding standard . It would treat everyone fairly . It would respect equity , solidarity and diversity . It would be ethically admirable . But can we do it ? And if we can do it , how can we do it ?

And finally , if we can do it , will the way we do it introduce any offsetting debits ? I interject that little run of sentences to my hearing applies to how to think about and assess proposed new institutions , not just regarding the economy but any side of life . Chapter continues To see why it is hard to attain self-management .

Consider that when I decide to consume some item from the overall social product , something goes to me that could have gone elsewhere . This means the choice affects others elsewhere . To have collective self-management requires that those others elsewhere have some say and altogether have quite a lot of say .

Similarly , a decision to consume some particular item often impacts the environment when items production , use or disposal might entail pollution that affects people elsewhere . Perhaps slightly for each , but a lot in total . Again , to have self-management , everyone has to have some say and altogether have to have a whole lot of say .

Another example If I decide to wear my black socks tomorrow and not my blue ones , overwhelmingly that cherry's affects only me . So I should decide dictatorially , with no one else getting much or even any say . But suppose I decide to consume some of my audio equipment ferociously loudly . It dramatically affects all in hearing range .

In that case , shouldn't they have some and perhaps a lot of say , maybe even veto power ? Finally , if a workplace is spewing fumes that contribute to global warming and thus threaten human existence , somehow all those who will suffer the effects need their preferences to count .

These are all manageable complexities , albeit they will entail institutions beyond the relatively simple ones focused on in this chapter . But for now let's start simple . Consider inside a workplace . Suppose we assume for the moment that influence from people outside the workplace is well addressed by structures still to be discussed , which is admittedly a large assumption .

In that case , what implication does advocating collective self-management have for decisions inside the workplace ? A question one can of course ask for families , communities , religious institutions and political institutions . I interject . There is a famous joke . A chemist , a physicist and an economist are stranded on an island and they have some cans with food in them .

How do they get the food ? The chemist says they create a fire and they heat the food and it expands and it blows the lid off . The physicist says something quite similar , except he invokes some additional forces . The economist says assume a can opener . Well , that is what I did when I wrote .

Suppose we assume for the moment that influence from people outside the workplace is well-addressed by structures still to be discussed , I assumed . But truth to be told , chemists , physicists and indeed everyone thinking through positive proposals step by step does that .

What makes temporary assumptions worthy of manipulation is whether you return to them and compellingly demonstrate their validity . This is what economists often fail to do .

But there is another facet of this process of making abstractions and assumptions , which is how does one know in the early stages that the later stages will bear out the expectations , since if they do not , all the early thought and design will have been for naught .

If I'm starting on a project , let's say thinking through economic or some other kind of vision and I make some assumptions about broad matters while dealing with more specific ones . How do I know that the assumptions I've made are going to come true ? If they don't , I'm going to have wasted my time . There is no real answer to this .

It is intuition or experience , or who knows what , a leap of faith that gives us the courage , I guess , to make assumptions , think things through and eventually determine whether those assumptions were valid . Sometimes this pans out sometimes not . For economic vision . You can't even really judge until you get to the end .

Half a bridge or a half an argument or a half a vision is never worth too much , though it may have promise enough to keep going . The chapter continues from having said , before my interruption consider inside a workplace .

Suppose we assume for the moment that influence from people outside the workplace is well-addressed by structures still to be discussed , which is admittedly a large assumption . In that case , what implication does advocating collective self-management have for decisions inside the workplace ?

A question one can of course ask for families , communities , religious institutions and political institutions . First , all the workers in the workplace will be affected by many workplace decisions , so they will all together need a venue and methods by which to have their say . Let's call this , as have others before us , the Workers' Council .

We propose that the Workers' Council is the whole workforce empowered to meet deliberate and tally votes to arrive at decisions when need be . What else could it be If we call a collective vehicle for workers to make decisions in a workplace ? By any other name , it would still be a Workers' Council .

Some decisions will affect all workers essentially equally the length and timing of the workday when the lights are on or off , duration and time of breaks , use of air conditioning and the total output and therefore total work level , also norms , if needed , about clothing , noise levels or what holidays to observe .

So a first thought is that perhaps the Workers' Council , a time-outed structure that has long been considered central to any kind of worker self-management , can operate totally according to one person , one vote , majority or rural . But wait a minute . Do all these decisions in fact actually affect everyone equally ?

What if those with families and those without have markedly different dependency on the timing of arrival and departures from work ? What if some people have conditions that make air conditioning far more important for them ? What if different workers of different nationalities or religions are differently impacted by holiday choices ?

The answer for how to handle such variations within workforces is ultimately up to each workplace to determine . After all , we have in mind that they collectively self-manage themselves .

As one approach , sessions of workers' councils in each workplace might first arrive at various procedures deemed sufficient or , when possible , ideal for giving affected parties appropriate say in particular types of decisions .

This menu of mutually ratified procedures might include one person , one vote , majority rule for some situations , but two-thirds needed or consensus needed , and so on for other situations . Likewise , different workplaces might settle on different methods of conveying information and on different durations and procedures for deliberation in different cases .

Perhaps the list of available options for deliberations and tallies would be revisited yearly or bi-yearly , and it certainly would be different in different workplaces due to their different features and their different preferences of their workers . However , one such agreed procedures exist in a workplace .

One could be quickly chosen as appropriate for each new issue or for categories of issues , and deliberations could proceed . It would be in everyone's interest to handle such matters without undue time wasting , while attending to the needs of all involved . I interject . The case of South Indian Press has examples here too .

In South Indian Press , for example , we felt that editorial decisions had dramatic effect , more dramatic effect on somebody who didn't like them than on somebody who did so .

Somebody submits a book and we go over it and we have as our tallying procedure that I forget whether it was one person or two people are sufficient to veto it , reason being that if you publish a book that somebody doesn't like , it does more harm or painful , is more painful for them than to not publish it is to the rest . So that was a case .

In that case . Many other decisions were just one person , one vote , democracy . There were occasional decisions . Well , for example , hiring it's a small group and in a small group , when you hire somebody , that person is basically constantly present for everyone .

So if somebody doesn't like a potential hire , even though others do like that potential hire , the first person is going to be far more adversely affected . And so , again , that was a case where we wanted to have the procedures overbalance for the person who doesn't like the outcome . It's just examples , but it gives an idea of what's being talked about here .

Anyway , the chapter continues , complicating deliberations and votes within workers' council . Many workplace decisions reverberate outward . What technology we employ affects what we produce and therefore what others get to consume , what energy we use and what we do with our waste affects our neighbors and perhaps far more widely .

To implement collective self-management , such decisions would have to be made in ways that give appropriate influence to affected workers in the specific workplace , but also to affected folks outside that workplace . This trajectory of thoughts about how to make decisions is the purpose of settling on guiding values .

The guiding values provide standards for generating and also for assessing proposals for new institutions . Some would reply Fooey on self-management . Let's just let one person decide . It's much less messy . Let's strive to have the best decider be that person . It's more efficient .

Our contrary claim for democracy , and beyond democracy for self-management , is that imposed order is not in fact less messy . Instead , imposed order merely obscures messiness . Imposed order hides , ignores people being alienated and even suffering inferior outcomes . It appears less messy only if we don't value the input that is excluded and don't count the accruing damages .

Within the guidelines of seeking collective self-management , one workplace could lean toward using more streamlined methods of decision-making . Another workplace could lean toward more careful methods that had a lot more time for hearing and exploring minority views .

Indeed , people might very sensibly choose where they want to work , in part due to their tastes for more or less detailed workplace decision-making procedures Over time and with experience , we would expect , various approaches would presumably prove better at arriving smoothly and rapidly at desirable and collectively respected decisions .

Those approaches would presumably be used more often . However , within each firm , it would be up to the firm's workers' councils . The workers' council would , in this view , become the main repository of decision-making power within each workplace . Not an owner , not a boss . Collective self-management I interject .

This discussion says to me even these core features , parts of the participatory economics scaffold itself , are not without options left to experience and preference to fill in differently in different contexts , in this case different industries and firms . The scaffold is what defines and is essential to the proposed economy .

Beyond it are details , additions , refinements that emerge with practice . No bosses doesn't propose a blueprint , but nor is it anything goes . Different councils and different workplaces and different industries in different countries are free to and , we can predict , will likely in many cases adopt different procedures and even additional structures . The chapter continues .

The above brief discussion applies as well to the consumption side of economics .

Individuals consume individual goods and services from the overall social product , but so do neighborhoods , counties and states consume collective goods and services From the overall social product and , like for workers , consumers' choices affect themselves , whether individually or in groups , but also affect others .

So , by analogy for collective consumption of neighborhood pools , county parks , state utilities or national security , we propose consumer councils as the venue of consumer decision making , with the same kinds of reasoning and flexibility regarding their methods noted above for workers' councils .

Various day-to-day implications of all this will become more concrete when we eventually address how workers and consumers can arrive at actual choices of what and how much to produce and to consume via new allocation institutions . But even for this brief introduction to economic decision making , we have to raise two additional concerns .

One is a complaint that turns out to be rather simple to resolve . The other is a derivative need that is far more complex and consequential for a future new economy and society and even for how we might win such a future economy .

First , some complain that extensive participation in decision making would diminish the quality of decisions made , Whether in a workplace or a neighborhood . Why shouldn't Joe get more or less say , depending on how good a decision maker Joe is ? By preventing that , doesn't the participatory approach undercut the benefits of expertise ? Won't we suffer bad decisions ?

The answer to this complaint is that the opinion of experts are , of course , incredibly valuable , but should the fact that Joe is an expert in engineering or in chemistry or whatever else that's consequential to some decision convey to Joe more say ?

Even in a decision that quite strongly involves engineering or chemistry , we should certainly consult Joe's expertise , but for a choice affecting Joe's work team or Joe's workplace , after he is consulted , why shouldn't Joe have a say like all others , rather than an elevated say ?

The point is Joe is not an expert in how much a decision matters to you or I , or in how you or I feel about it .

We are the world's foremost experts in our own preferences and to honor our special , unparalleled expertise regarding our own preferences , collective self-management says we should have a say in the decision , even while we should also , of course , pay close attention to Joe's expert insights .

Consider an intimately connected concern Susan has proved over time to have an incredible facility for always advocating decisions that experience later shows to be exceptionally wise . She is a very good decision maker . She is simply the best decision maker in the workplace . She is best by a large margin .

Okay , why not simplify everyone's time commitments by having Susan make all decisions ?

Even if we ignore that these assumptions are highly unreal in virtually any context and are certainly highly unreal once we have fully participating and highly prepared workers who each bring to deliberations and votes different experiences , and even if we ignore the corrupting impact Susan's lordly influence would likely have on Susan's consciousness .

This logic ignores the value of each person feeling that decisions respect his or her input . And say To think experts shouldn't just offer their wisdom for others to evaluate and even learn from , but should themselves decide outcomes would not only rule out collective self-management , it would also rule out even limited democracy .

The reason we shouldn't rule out either is both that no such general or universal expertise as Susan's exists and , even more important , people's exclusion from decisions that affect them creates problems far worse than a somewhat worse choice being made , even if that did happen . Now and then Participation matters .

That sounds compelling , but a related , more complex issue that collective self-management and workplace and consumer councils raises , in addition to raising the question of finding actual institutions able to provide appropriate say relative to those outside the councils , is how to ensure that all workers and consumers are prepared to contribute positively to social decision making

.

For even after agreeing that we are each the world's foremost expert in our own preferences , we cannot deny that if we have lots of workers who lack the confidence , skills and knowledge to make important decisions , well then , even if we apportion voting rights appropriately and provide relevant time for deliberation , their informed and unskilled involvement will give us

seriously flawed results In a good economy . What prevents that ? More specifically , we will soon argue that in most current workplaces the number of people in the whole workforce in position to have informed opinions is roughly one out of every five . Why is that ?

And how do we raise it to five out of five as a precondition for having effective , optimal self-managed decision making ? We consider universal preparedness for decision making , next chapter , and there we also consider related issues of class relations and class rule .

Our answer for the economy , as we will see , turns out to raise the issue of how to better apportion tasks into jobs via a new non-corporate division of labor . I interject Again . This indicates an intrinsic dynamic of creating viable , worthy vision , but really viable , worthy anything ? Elements you arrive at and initially ratify may or may not remain .

In a final analysis , the point is they will have implications for or needs that need to be met by other elements , and unless the former prove positive and the latter prove attainable , the initially favored element will fail . In this case , self-management needs participants ready to self-manage .

If other relations and institutions can't provide that , self-management won't be viable . The chapter continues , but for now .

Inside a workplace , we can already propose that how a work team allocates its time and arranges and conducts its activities is largely , or even completely , the team's choice , assuming that the team operates in accord with broader agreed decisions taken by the whole workplace or the whole society for the timing of holidays , the length of the work day , the level and

character of workplace , product and output , and so on . Within a team , what affects only the team is theirs to decide . Within a team , if someone is dramatically affected by some aspect , then according to our self-management ethic , he or she would get more say about that aspect .

And within a team , if folks outside are affected , then by some means they too would impact the decisions that affect them . This approach to decisions in context of overarching other decisions will recur at many points in thinking through economic but also other social structures .

For now , however , to achieve collective self-management , it follows that some decisions may best be taken by one person one vote , majority rule because everyone is comparably affected , but other decisions may best require two-thirds to pass , or even a variant of consensus in cases where anyone might be horrendously adversely affected , so that everyone should have a veto .

Likewise , some decisions will presumably have more time set aside for deliberations , especially of dissenting views , and some less . Maybe hiring a new member requires , in one workplace , for example , two-thirds to pass , though anyone can veto , but perhaps not in another workplace , which opts for a different approach .

It turns out that , with a self-management view , diverse ways of tallying preferences become methods that we judicially choose so as to best approximate self-management . Self-management is the overarching principle , not one person , one vote or consensus or any other approach chosen in a particular case to serve self-management .

In that case , we propose that councils choose among deliberation and voting procedures to attain self-management as best they can without spending more time or resources than they wish to allot to the process . In other words , we choose to not always favor one person , one vote majority rule . One person , one vote majority rule is not an absolute to always respect .

We instead propose to have one person , one vote majority rule only when it is the best way to attain , or to at least best approximate , self-management for all who are affected by a particular decision . One person , one vote , majority rule of everyone on my work team about my choice of socks would be idiotic .

One person , one vote , with three-quarters support required for adding a new hire to a work team , but anyone on the team who feels strongly that the proposed addition would make his or her life miserable can veto might make excellent sense .

Using different methods in different situations may seem strange , but it turns out that when you are free to do so , it is how caring friends or workmates most often relate to one another . Even now , it is not as unfamiliar as an abstract description might make it appear . You are with a group deciding on a movie to go to .

If a movie is proposed that someone has seen , he or she likely gets a veto . Otherwise , perhaps majority rule or maybe consensus , different strokes for different folks and for different situations I interject .

It is a strange reality and perhaps worth noting that , at least in the US , which I am most familiar with , people seem to often have a hard time accepting that a diversity of options chosen among as conditions warrant is better than having only one method elevated to perpetual priority .

In this case , there are those that favor one person , one vote and only that , or consensus and only that . Despite that it is— totally trivial to show that neither of these fits all situations well . It is as if , once having said I like such and such , I am incapable of acknowledging that I could also like so and so more .

In some situations I become vested in being pro-familiar democracy or pro-consensus and against all else . It is very strange , yet very commonplace . It has a lot to do with the roots of sectarianism . The chapter continues . So the answer to the question who decides what is that ?

We propose that everyone participates in deciding issues that affect them , which , each person having a level of influence and proportion to the degree they will be affected . This is not mere rhetoric , it is not for academic sessions and then back to humdrum reality . It is a serious goal to attain .

As such , even if councils agree with this goal , the who decides ? What problem for an economy , still has true critical issues to address . First , how do we ensure that everyone has experiences and circumstances that convey sufficient skills , confidence and information to make good decisions ?

And second , how do we incorporate the desires of people who are affected at a distance so that they can appropriately influence decisions enacted locally ? Societies are socially entwined systems of institutions and people . Each new feature we propose for a new economy puts limits on and establishes requirements for other features that will need to work along with it .

That is an unfolding characteristic of thinking about vision , whether economic or any other . And so we proceed to consider the character of work in a new economy , and I interject Apparently when I wrote the chapter two years ago , I was as attentive to the last point as I am now and was in the interjections . My apologies for the repetition .

And that said , this is Michael Albert signing off until next time when our Revolution Z guests will be Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson .