Have you ever tried to calculate the human labor costs of all the planning involved in parecon?
Or maybe I should say “time” not dollar “costs.” Yes, in the various books the issue of time allotment is certainly addressed. And the discussions not only look at the time it takes to plan, which is only one side of the coin, but also at the time gained due to eliminating diverse kinds of no longer needed activity when we change to a parecon. Some people, especially when hearing a brief summary of parecon, worry that self consciously deciding on what to produce and consume by a negotiated cooperative process will take too long. I have two answers. First, no, it won’t. The planning process in a parecon is confined to a couple of weeks and only takes part time attention over that span. But, second, even prior to that answer, we have to decide what would count as being too long. That is, when someone asks me about the cost of planning in time expended, I want to try to communicate that this is at worst a trade off. Let’s say the total time that you as a consumer have to spend thinking ab
