I love how succinct this is, will be sharing this around with some local gays
Great little read. The author is very eloquent and concise at explaining the solarpunk ideal, one of the best I've seen to quickly get the point across.
Thanks for the compliment!
How does a fully planned economy that's also decentralized and democratic work?
You know how most anarchist collectives decide what they are going to do and their ethical choices in a decentralized and democratic way? It's like that except you make explicit that this includes decisions classified as economics.
For example: Extinction Rebellion has an arts circle, which makes banners and other action activity. This production is limited in capacity and people decide what they work on. So prospective actions pitch concepts for art pieces and artists may choose to produce them, and there is a commonly understood rate of production that everybody consents to. If specific actions were left without art and XR in general saw this as a problem they could discuss it. If specific actions treat the arts circle like a factory that will put a certain amount out, the art circle can raise that issue and people can discuss it.
The economy is planned: there are soft projections of the artistic production. Consumption is planned in accordance to projected production and production is planned in accordance to projected consumption.
The economy is decentralized: each artist can decide their own work and each action can pitch its own concepts, and they can communicate freely to coordinate without needing to go through any centralized intermediary.
The economy is democratic: every member is part of nested circles where they can express concerns or objections about any topic they have a stake in, and if they have an objection in something they have a stake in then that part of the process halts as safely as possible.
But this is just one example. Most glaringly, this example preserves producer-consumer relationships that many anarchists want to dissolve. Artists feel somewhat alienated from the products of their labor when it is used in actions they don't attend, a gap partially filled by sending back pictures, but only partially. And as I said before, people in actions can start seeing it as a factory, or even as a magically appearing baseline.
This helped, thanks.
It could potentially be planned with a federated Cybersyn style system, perhaps combined with a bidding system used by food banks for resources that are more scarce (or perhaps not if it doesn't test well).
The Dispossessed explores the concept of a planned gift economy in a grounded and realistic sci-fi setting, if you'd like to see one way of how it could work.
What do you think makes it hard to combine planning, decentralization and democracy?
I can't tell if you're joking, but I'm going to assume you aren't. It seems to me that a planned economy inherently requires a degree of centralization, at least cooperative agreements, between producers. My question is how "Fully Planned Queer Solarpunk Communism" can be fully planned and decentralized.
You've already gotten good answers so I just wanted to reply that I indeed wasn't joking.
You can have decentralized planning. Those aren't mutually exclusive.
Decentralization doesn't mean you can't have organization, communication or coordination.
I guess I'm hung up on the "Fully" part of "Fully Planned". I am aware that cooperation and coordination can happen among communities that don't have central authorities, but to my mind that decentralization of authority has to imply that each group comes up with its own plan for what to do with its own resources at least somewhat independently. In my mind, "fully planned" means that production planning is fully centralized, or at least there is a central mechanism by which all parties must get their part of the plan approved by the whole collective before it becomes part of the plan.
If an individual member has the freedom to alter the plan, is it fully planned? And if it's fully planned, does that mean that every member is completely constrained by the plan, and therefore has no independent authority? That's what I'm struggling with, they seem like contradicting ideas.
It sounds like you've answered your own question.
A minor degree of centralization, coop agreements, etc. Decentralization and no centralization are two different things. We are after all on a decentralized, federated social media network.
The space to discuss Solarpunk itself and Solarpunk related stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.
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