Sunday, June 4
More than just the sum of its parts
ENVIRONMENTALISM, SOCIALISM, ECONOMICS
If you haven't already, I'd advise you read Towards a New Socialism, by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell (hereafter referred to as C&C). It's free to download as a pdf and postscript in the link I've given to you, and if you've ever wondered how exactly you would go about co-ordinating a socialist economy - or if you don't believe it's possible, C&C provide a pretty impressive model. Note that the book was written over ten years ago, and describes teletext systems and supercomputers of yesteryear; the former can be better replaced with an internet-based programme, while the time it would take to calculate the pricing for an economy the size of the UK would take about a minute on a computer as powerful as an Xbox games console.
That said, I don't want to spend all my time commending or explaining their theories: you may as well read them in the original. But I do want to criticise. First, I disagree with C&C's historical analysis - or rather, their terminology. Essentially, they classify the USSR as a socialist state simply because it was a planned economy. Whis this I must stronly disagree: by that criterion alone, socialism and fascism (which advocates a form of planned economy) are prety much redundant synonyms - and, let's face it, socialists and fascists have been fighting for a long time (Spanish Civil War anyone?). What makes a planned economy socialist, in my view, is democracy. Not necessarily the elect-a-bureaucrat kind of the West: ideally something more hands on, but that's a debate for a different day. The USSR was strongly anti-democratic, and therefore not socialist. But that's by the by; the book is a guide to economics, not political taxonomy.
What I don't understand, however, is how dismissive C&C are of the question of depletable natural resources (NB: Section 5.2 is where they deal with the issue). They try to deflect the criticism that their model doesn't take depletion into account by pointing out that capitalism certainly has no solution: while true, this is no defence. I should concede that they state "In a socialist democracy major environmental issues should be settled by referendum after a prolonged and open debate in the media", which is, of course, important for many issues. But they refuse to accept that the costing calculations need change, when, in my opinion, a small alteration would make all the difference.
I propose that, as well as the labour cost of extraction (and if you've kept up with the book, you'll know that already includes all tools, transport and so forth), the costing of depletable resources should include the cost of replacement. That is, the pricing for each barrel of oil should include a small percentage of the cost of the research and development for a more viable substitute. Note that this isn't just for conventional non-renewable resources, either; it'd apply the same for pollution (think of clean air/water/etc as the resource being depleted).
The formula would be fairly straightforward. Once you've got an estimate for the cost of R&D (a generous one might be worth it here), which would naturally be democratically approved, you divide that cost over the amount of the natural resource left. So if we had a billion barrels of oil left and replacement would cost a billion labour hours, you'd add one labour hour to the cost of each barrel.
Now I think about it, I'd also suggest that the cost of oil be averaged out over time: as we run out, we have to dig deeper, so the cost of each barrel increases. In addition to my above amendment, then, I'd also suggest that the costing take account of this - except, of course, when we're at a stage when replacement is possible, in which case, we don't take account of costs lowered by previous increases.
Surprises me that C&C didn't see any of this - but I hope to be surprised to find someone pointing out even better way of doing things.
ENVIRONMENTALISM, SOCIALISM, ECONOMICS
If you haven't already, I'd advise you read Towards a New Socialism, by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell (hereafter referred to as C&C). It's free to download as a pdf and postscript in the link I've given to you, and if you've ever wondered how exactly you would go about co-ordinating a socialist economy - or if you don't believe it's possible, C&C provide a pretty impressive model. Note that the book was written over ten years ago, and describes teletext systems and supercomputers of yesteryear; the former can be better replaced with an internet-based programme, while the time it would take to calculate the pricing for an economy the size of the UK would take about a minute on a computer as powerful as an Xbox games console.
That said, I don't want to spend all my time commending or explaining their theories: you may as well read them in the original. But I do want to criticise. First, I disagree with C&C's historical analysis - or rather, their terminology. Essentially, they classify the USSR as a socialist state simply because it was a planned economy. Whis this I must stronly disagree: by that criterion alone, socialism and fascism (which advocates a form of planned economy) are prety much redundant synonyms - and, let's face it, socialists and fascists have been fighting for a long time (Spanish Civil War anyone?). What makes a planned economy socialist, in my view, is democracy. Not necessarily the elect-a-bureaucrat kind of the West: ideally something more hands on, but that's a debate for a different day. The USSR was strongly anti-democratic, and therefore not socialist. But that's by the by; the book is a guide to economics, not political taxonomy.
What I don't understand, however, is how dismissive C&C are of the question of depletable natural resources (NB: Section 5.2 is where they deal with the issue). They try to deflect the criticism that their model doesn't take depletion into account by pointing out that capitalism certainly has no solution: while true, this is no defence. I should concede that they state "In a socialist democracy major environmental issues should be settled by referendum after a prolonged and open debate in the media", which is, of course, important for many issues. But they refuse to accept that the costing calculations need change, when, in my opinion, a small alteration would make all the difference.
I propose that, as well as the labour cost of extraction (and if you've kept up with the book, you'll know that already includes all tools, transport and so forth), the costing of depletable resources should include the cost of replacement. That is, the pricing for each barrel of oil should include a small percentage of the cost of the research and development for a more viable substitute. Note that this isn't just for conventional non-renewable resources, either; it'd apply the same for pollution (think of clean air/water/etc as the resource being depleted).
The formula would be fairly straightforward. Once you've got an estimate for the cost of R&D (a generous one might be worth it here), which would naturally be democratically approved, you divide that cost over the amount of the natural resource left. So if we had a billion barrels of oil left and replacement would cost a billion labour hours, you'd add one labour hour to the cost of each barrel.
Now I think about it, I'd also suggest that the cost of oil be averaged out over time: as we run out, we have to dig deeper, so the cost of each barrel increases. In addition to my above amendment, then, I'd also suggest that the costing take account of this - except, of course, when we're at a stage when replacement is possible, in which case, we don't take account of costs lowered by previous increases.
Surprises me that C&C didn't see any of this - but I hope to be surprised to find someone pointing out even better way of doing things.
# posted by Phugebrins @ 20:57 
