From: topp8564-AT-mail.usyd.edu.au
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 11:55:38 +1100
Subject: Re: AUT: ParEcon


On 25/2/2003 1:10 PM, "Ryan Graham" <ryan.graham-AT-utoronto.ca> wrote:

> From what I understand ParEcon is based on the assumption that people must be 
> compelled to be productive by way of material incentive, which I have always 
> assumed is a primary aspect of capitalist relations.


I thought that Albert's thing was to 'reward effort'. The argument for this 
needs not be couched in terms of compulsion. It could be couched in terms of 
justice: why should I get paid the same as some slob who doesn't do one 
twentieth of the work I do? On the other hand, why should I be paid by output 
if it turns out I am somehow unable to work as efficiently as other people?

In my view this stuff is as right as it is vacuous.  How do you measure effort? 
With brain-scanners? Or - horrifyingly, as per ParEcon - should this be left to 
my coworkers to decide. What if they are a bunch of malicious twits? Not 
everyone can afford to work in a nice boutique publishing house in a plush 
first world country.

ParEcon  seems as silly and evasive as the feeble efforts people have made to 
formulate anarchist notions of justice. It's really dispiriting - between the 
hopes that the mighty proles will fix everything and the substandard sci-fi 
proposals there isn't much space left.  It makes it seem that the alternative 
to neoliberalism is a bunch of D&D freaks who think an economy is another kind 
of RPG.

It was wonderful to see Albert walking around the WSF grumpy as all hell, 
cooking up weird conspiracies about why his Truth was being repressed by the 
evil PT forces which changed his rooms around. The mix of megalomania and 
pettiness is very amusing. But all in all, he just looked out of place in a 
country where the MST is burning the property registries without much care for 
the finer points of anarchist distributive justice.

If it works, it works.

Thiago

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