Introduction

Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor on thee.

—From the Hidden Words & selected writings of Baha’u’llah.

***

WE ROCK!!! A moment’s reflection on what Homo sapiens have accomplished in the last 10,000 years—since we first developed agriculture—would leave one awestruck. From science, engineering and mathematics, to sports, architecture and literature; from space travel, to medicine and artificial intelligence—we have accomplished some amazing things. And the pace of our accomplishments continues to increase.

But, if we can work such wonders, why can’t humanity fully engage in a massive global collaboration to improve the lives of everyone? Indeed, human beings have tremendous gifts to bring to bear on this problem. We possess boundless creativity and intelligence, particularly when we work together. We love and forgive. We have strong prosocial instincts for survival, and through these instincts, beauty can guide our behavior. I do not doubt that, among all life in the Universe, God has chosen humanity to fulfill some special divine purpose. And what purpose could be more special, and more divine, than collectively engaging in a massive collaboration to maximize love, fulfillment and forgiveness?

But I see clearly that humanity has not yet fulfilled this purpose—we still fall far short of our potential. Many of us collaborate only to fight each other. We seldom apply our creativity and our intelligence to love, forgive, and help each other thrive, but rather, often, to perpetuate our vicious system of privilege and injustice. Our nasty antisocial tendencies, our egos, mask our beautiful prosocial instincts to the point of threatening our future, and even our survival as an advanced civilization.

Interestingly, I have come across two very different theories concerning why human beings fall short: one attributing our suffering to human history, the other, to human nature. Leftists often say that the problem lies with our historically derived institutions: we need to change our economy and our polity in order to overcome our issues. Many others, particularly those within religious communities, place the blame inward: we must change our inner selves—some might say our ego minds need cleansing and atonement from our Original Sin—in order to overcome the same issues. Others, less focused on Adam and Eve, might say we all simply need to further advance towards God on our divinely guided life paths. Thus leftists look outward to a revolution to solve the world’s problems, whereas people of faith look inward to a spiritual awakening.

Leftists will say that a spiritual awakening without a change in our institutions would leave us vulnerable to the powerful and privileged who do not change their hearts. On the other hand, people of faith, more keenly aware of their own and everyone’s constant struggle with inner demons, consider the idea of revolution dangerously misguided for a similar reason. Without a spiritual awakening, a revolution would replace one group with power, privilege, and no spiritual guidance, with another having these same qualities.

After studying both worldviews, I am convinced that both have important insights that merit sharing. Around the turn of the millennium, I discovered an audacious vision for new economic institutions to replace capitalism—in the form of a thought experiment. Two economists, including a professor from American University, where I now teach,¹ authored the books that presented the ideas: Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. The pair called their vision participatory economics, or Parecon for short. Their plan showed me, in a compelling way, how human life could exist, if we could only erase our history, and our karma, and start over mindfully with a blank slate.

I found their ideas brilliant. And I believe that anyone wanting to make positive changes to human society should start with such a thought experiment. But Albert’s strategy, published separately, to achieve his vision left me feeling that it merited more thought. I doubted that demands and confrontation, by themselves, would erase our karma and cleanse our history. I have given this problem the thought it merits, and fortunately, my engagement in religious communities showed me the missing pieces to the Parecon plan. For example, I learned what can motivate people, privileged or not, to invest a huge fraction of their resources—time, energy and money—to create a better world.

In some religious circles, the term “Beloved Community” labels a vision for a desirable future of human society. Borrowing that term, and some of their vision, I have extended Parecon into my own thought experiment that I call beloved economics, or Belecon for short. I wanted a new name to help keep clear which ideas were mine, and which to attribute to others—the new draws heavily on the old. The vision of Belecon remains essentially the same as the vision of Parecon, however, Belecon requires only a few people to implement, and this implementation encourages, and remains conducive to, exclusively non-confrontational strategies. Of course, the more people implementing Belecon, the closer society will come to reaching its larger goals.

Belecon will succeed if it starts the ball rolling. By themselves, such ideas will not solve the world’s problems. But the world’s problems do have solutions. A massive collaboration to first find, then implement, these solutions, a collaboration that allows participation from all people—not just the privileged few—will assuredly succeed. But how do you build this collaboration? And how do you help the privileged few, and everyone else, voluntarily divert the resources they control away from themselves, to a project that benefits everyone? Belecon addresses these questions.

Aim

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.

—From the Hidden Words & selected writings of Baha’u’llah.

***

As shown on the cover of this book, by the word radical in the title, I mean “advocating a complete or far-reaching change.” Such change must first take place in the mind before it takes place in the world. In both cases, all change I consider aims to advance our civilization by achieving greater unity within our entire human family. Evidently, like the word “radical,” the word “unity” may trigger negative associations in some readers. I mean unity in a uniquely spiritual context: fostering justice, love, fulfillment, and forgiveness. Global unity promises a broad, deep and beloved community of widely diverse participants, each acting with freedom and autonomy, but also each acting with integrity and compassion.

As just mentioned, the word radical can also trigger some readers—and with good reason: many use that term in support of violent revolution. When radicals attempt such a program, it invariably results in the completely opposite effect from the one I aim for. Revolution divides people, often with extreme brutality. I believe that any program to benefit civilization, contemplated by those seeking to help humanity, should multiply the common goodness of people, not divide our society along superficially imagined political boundaries.

In academic circles, radical economics labels a branch of the study of economics that deals with a critical analysis of today’s economic systems, and/or presents a discussion of alternatives to those same systems. In that sense, I justify my use of this long-established, if triggering, term. That said, it does seem to me that many academics who study and research radical economics have sympathies for revolutionaries. I long ago decided that I wanted no part in any revolution, while taking pains not to judge people who do choose that path. Some revolutionaries may have pure intentions at heart, but I suspect that many revolutionaries lack the wisdom and insight needed to arrive at the best course of action for themselves, and for human civilization.

This book is a culmination of more than twenty years of thinking about achieving a just, desirable and possibly radically changed economy—not through revolution, but rather through non-confrontational methods that promise to unite humanity through a “Most Great Peace,” rather than send humanity spiraling into a series of gruesome civil wars.

The precedents in human history that drove my thinking were the rapid spread of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths at different times throughout our shared history. When pursued according to the Will of God, religion changes society in the most helpful ways possible—ways that profoundly help our entire human community. In the text, I explore these ways and why they have had such success.

I have noticed that the path laid out by the great religions sometimes leaves undetermined important footsteps for our civilization on our quest for greater unity with each other. To my knowledge, no major religion specifically provides guidance as to the detailed divinely-ordained functioning of a modern global economy. Thus it behooves us to remain mindful and prayerful of where we place our feet. People of faith, no less than radical economists, have contributions to make in this regard, but the two groups seldom overlap, and do not seem to understand each other well. This book tries to address that problem.

What do I mean by economics? An economy organizes and accomplishes three specific functions: (1) the production of goods and services, (2) the consumption of goods and services, and (3) the allocation of resources needed for the production and consumption of goods and services in society.

Radical economists excel at describing how the current systems fail on certain meaningful aspects of these three functions, while attempting to pose theoretically more desirable alternatives. But the question remains: how do we reach those alternatives? I have suggestions—a two step program—that I introduce in the next two paragraphs, then better flesh out in the remainder of this book.

My first step determines the right way to perform production, consumption and allocation in a desirable global economy—the way consistent with our individual divine guidance and our well-established religious teachings. I do not claim to have the answers, yet. The approach that I advocate performs thought experiments as methods to individually arrive at, understand, then socially deliberate on this right way forward, all taking place exclusively within in our collective minds. As an example, I develop at length one popular economy-of-the-intellect, taken from the literature. These musings need not, and should not, be constrained by what exists in the world today. In our minds, our economy can easily change—as completely and, indeed, as radically as our imaginations allow.

My second step, to be pursued after our divine economic goals become clearer, moves society in the direction of our spiritually identified economic destination by implementing alternative economies alongside of, and interacting with, our current global economy. I take a fully legal and completely non-confrontational approach towards creating and maintaining these economies, aiming to promote greater societal unity and further human fulfillment. Note that this effort still has great value even when again accomplished in the mind alone—as yet another thought experiment. But if implemented in the real world, such a program can illustrate to others, while validating to ourselves, better ways for humans to interact economically. A good illustration can change the hearts and minds of nonparticipants. Simultaneously, it can help us tweak and refine our goals. But beyond mere illustration and tweaking, divinely inspired economic activity can bring immediate benefits to individuals and communities participating in the process—and to human society as a whole.

Unlike a revolution, the path I propose leads to no bloodshed, and no divisions thrust on humanity. Even working individually, we can make substantial progress towards the result I aim for, simply by perfecting our spiritual qualities. To this end, in September 2020, two years after completing the bulk of this book, I joined the Baha’i Community as a member of the Faith. It seemed then, and still seems today, that among all religions of the world, the Baha’i Faith stands best suited to help bring about the transformations in human society that I have long felt our collective survival required. Indeed, long before my birth, the Baha’is had already implemented most of what I have in mind for an alternative economy, including specific pieces needed for production, consumption and allocation, even though some aspects of these economic interactions still require more articulation, refinement and implementation within the community. Already, the Baha’i Faith exists as a truly global and truly massive collaboration dedicated to love, forgive and help humanity thrive, comprised of vastly diverse and strongly empowered participants, interacting as equals.

I remain hopeful that my effort writing this book will provoke thought—at least among some of my friends, family, and fellow Baha’is. I remain detached from the outcome, ready for feedback, and humbly leave to God this whole process of social change.

Parecon

Let me paint a picture of my day-to-day life in the new society envisioned by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, and extended by others.

The economic institutions in this new society will implement Parecon, short for Participatory Economics, proposed as a desirable alternative to capitalism. Throughout this Parecon chapter, I stay faithful to Albert and Hahnel’s vision, together with the vision of their collaborators, at least as I understand it. I save my own ideas, including extensions, amendments, and action strategy, for the subsequent chapter, titled Belecon. The economic plan I present here derives from Robin Hahnel’s Of the People, By the People and Michael Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism. I also present an extension to government, which comes from a series of essays by Steven Shalom, who calls his ideas Participatory Polity or Parpolity for short.

Currently,² I am a Professorial Lecturer at the elite American University in Washington, DC. I teach mathematics and statistics. My duties include mostly teaching undergraduates, but also some research with student collaborators, and some service to the university. Presumably, in this new world, I will still do similar work. But some of my duties, and all of my work-based relationships, will change dramatically.

Participatory Scholastics

Students in this envisioned economy will not pay schools to provide them with an education. Instead, the society will deem students’ study as socially valued labor, meriting an immediate reward—not an immediate and substantial cost, in exchange for some possible future reward. Attending American University, or any other university, will mean the university hires you to be a student—and pays you for the work you do while in school.

How much will a university pay a student? The answer will depend on the student. Specifically, students’ pay will measure the effort they put into their studies, and the sacrifice they endure from learning in school.

Professors will operate under the same arrangement. Professors’ pay will measure the effort they put into their professing, and the sacrifice they endure from teaching in school.

How will professors’ pay compare with students’ pay? For the same effort and sacrifice, professors’ pay will equal students’ pay.

How will this new society measure student/professor effort and sacrifice? A big part of the equation will consider hours spent on task, but effort and sacrifice for learning and teaching will also depend on the energy and focus put into the work. These intangibles will be assessed by peers.

Peer assessment of effort and sacrifice may not always attain perfection at measuring the social worth of labor, but any widespread attempt to achieve equal pay for the same effort and sacrifice will likely lead to more equity than the system we currently have. Today, people are paid for their bargaining power in the labor market, as well as for the property they amass, and/or inherit—or paid less, sometimes much less, according to their lack of bargaining power and lack of property.

Evolving Relationships

The remuneration of students and professors only scratches the surface of what will be different in the new society. The social relationships between students and professors will completely transform. Indeed, the titles professor and student will probably not identify any individuals. Instead of titles, we will say a person acts in a student role or, alternatively, acts in a professor role. Most people at a university, young or old, will act in both roles.

Dichotomous roles in education already exist. American University hires students who do well in introductory classes to tutor other students taking the same introductory classes during subsequent semesters. Tutors benefit greatly from this arrangement, and not just monetarily. Teaching material to others helps solidify tutors’ understanding of the material, just as teaching new courses helps solidify professors’ understanding of their own fields. Indeed, the best student tutors can undoubtedly teach introductory material as well as many of their professors. In a new society, students will already be hired to work for the university as learners. Once they have the credentials, why not let more of them be teachers to further their education, and help others learn?

Each semester, as students progress in their academic careers, they will gain more and more credentials, which will come with more and more encouragement to teach their skills to others. The difference between someone like me, and a freshman in my class, appears in the length of our curricula vitae. I have far more teaching credentials than they have—simply due to my age. I have lived more than twice as long as most college freshman. Undoubtedly, in my time on Earth, I have learned many more things than they have, at least so far. But here is the important point: while it is true that I tend to know more about my fields, mathematics and statistics, than my students, my skill set is never a complete super-set of theirs. When I talk to students about the classes they take in other departments, they always tell me about things that I am interested in, but I know little about. In a new society, I see no reason why a young person can’t teach something to an old person, and get paid for it!

Instead of identifying as “professor” or “student,” we will all identify as something else, maybe as “scholars,” recognizing that we have a lifetime to be learners and a lifetime to be teachers. Of course, there is an asymmetry between old and young. More experience in academia will tend to make you a better teacher. Additionally, more experience in academia will tend to make you a better learner of new things—things you haven’t yet studied before. Thus, it would make sense if older academics spent more of their time teaching than younger academics, and younger academics spend more of their time learning. And when more senior scholars spend time learning new material, even when paid to do so, they will likely spend more of that time engaged in self-study. Experienced academics typically have the skills needed for these endeavors which can save scarce teaching resources for those who need them more.

Here is the key point: despite the enhanced skill and ability that more experience and more education conveys, for the same effort and sacrifice, young and old will be paid the same. Neither differences in experience, nor education, nor skill, nor ability—learned or innate—justify differences in pay. Only differences in effort, and differences in sacrifice, justify differences in pay.

Axiom 1: Remuneration According to Effort and Sacrifice

I repeat the point I just made: in a parecon neither differences in experience, nor education, nor skill, nor ability—learned or innate—justify differences in pay. Only differences in effort, and differences in sacrifice, justify differences in pay.

Discussion of Parecon’s Axioms

Think of the above paragraph, and more material that follows, as the axioms of the new society. Albert and Hahnel call such statements the norms of Parecon. Perhaps because of my mathematical training, I prefer the axiomatic analogy, which I develop below.

If you studied geometry in school, you might remember that the entire mathematical structure of Euclidean Geometry derives from five simple axioms. Many books alternatively use the synonym “postulates” to identify these building blocks. But you might not know that the Euclidean postulates do not define the only geometry around. Non-Euclidean geometries exist. Different postulates make different geometries different. Albert Einstein made use of one particular non-Euclidean geometry in his general theory of relativity. Even in physics, general relativity finds use in some contexts, whereas Euclidean space find use in others. And in mathematics, there exists no notion of the “right” postulates for geometry—there are only the “right” postulates for the type of geometry that you want to study, at the moment. The type of economics we currently want to discuss is Parecon, so we are using the “right” axioms for that purpose.

Here’s the point: when doing mathematics, the author of a treatise settles on axioms—their own, or someone else’s—then proceeds to derive beautiful theorems from these blocks, often building on the work of others. A mathematician would only consider a set of axioms “wrong” if they were contradictory, or perhaps, much less egregiously, if they were redundant. True, each field of mathematics generally has an accepted set of axioms, and a discussion of axioms generally remains absent. Nevertheless, mathematicians do not consider creating alternative axioms as a subversive act—certainly, not since they recognized the beauty and utility of non-Euclidean geometries. Indeed, most mathematicians agree that the best axioms are ones from which the most beautiful and useful structures can be built. From this attitude and perspective, I want you to judge the axioms of Parecon. Note that the mathematical analogy is my own, and that for clarity, not for change of content, I use my own system of organization to present Parecon’s paradigms.

Utopia?

Proponents of Parecon sometimes use the phrase real utopia to describe their vision. I insist that one should meet this description with a good deal of healthy skepticism. From the outside, a utopia, real or imagined, may seem worthy of a comparison to Divine Heaven. However, I doubt anyone actually experiencing a good society will actually feel that way. I expect that living in a Parecon will feel a lot like living in a good marriage—or in any domestic partnership where two people both thrive together in close intimate involvement. A good marriage provides tremendous joy, happiness, and love, but it also requires tremendous effort, engagement, and forgiveness. A good marriage comes with a full share of pleasure, personal growth, and fulfillment, but it also comes with an equally full share of stress, emotional suffering, and difficulty. A successful marriage may seem like Heaven from the outside, but ask anyone enjoying such a marriage if my more realistic description of conjugality does not ring true. Life in a utopia, like life in a successful marriage, will shine wonderful and magical, but I would not expect either one to be any easier than the other.

For the abusers of today’s world, Parecon will require a difficult adjustment. Indeed, what we have today could never be compared to a marriage—good or bad. The right analogy is a gang rape—and anyone comfortable in today’s society derives their comfort—innocently, or otherwise—from the extreme violation of many others, in ways both subtle, and sometimes more obvious.

Our Interconnected Human Family

Let me repeat to clarify this last point: anyone comfortable in today’s society derives their comfort—innocently, or otherwise—from the extreme violation of many others. Few, if any, people in today’s world live completely off the grid, without interaction with our capitalist economy—it is not even clear to me whether such a reclusive life remains possible, anymore. We all depend on others to grow our food, make our clothes, build and maintain our domiciles, provide us with clean water, take care of our health, educate our children, and sometimes care for ourselves and our loved ones. Many of us also enjoy diversion and entertainment from the economy, in ways too numerous to name—luxuries compared to the other things listed—but important for our productivity and mental health. The functioning of the whole economy requires that we travel back and forth from our homes to our places of work: we need cars, buses and/or trains, and a maintained network of roads and/or rails. In richer countries, many of us own cars, as well as computers, cell phones, kitchen appliances, and countless other gadgets both needed, and less needed. All of these gadgets require manufacturing, which in turn requires energy, labor, and raw materials.

We depend upon each other. And the many people we depend upon, in turn, depend upon many others, and so on. This maxim will hold in a participatory economy, just as it does in today’s capitalist economy. But in a capitalist economy, a large number of laborers make great sacrifices for society, some under horrible conditions. Many of us give up our whole lives in the process—without a real choice or a realistic possibility of a way out.

Other people sacrifice less—some not at all—while living comfortably, benefiting from the social product, and deriving their comfort from the discomfort of countless others. But even people who live comfortably, often live hugely stressed that they will lose what they have. Such suffering undoubtedly includes nearly everyone near the bottom. But, in addition, I believe this pain strikes many of the most privileged in society, who then feel excruciatingly motivated to leverage their special status to protect their coveted place in the world—often at a tremendous cost to others and, yes, even often themselves. When judging Parecon, please keep in mind the entirety of our struggles, both rich and poor, privileged and less privileged.

The first axiom of Parecon says, without yet taking people’s special needs into account, a person’s right to consume the product of social labor should reflect the effort and sacrifice they endure to create it. As an extension, we give people a choice concerning how much effort and sacrifice they contribute, and consequently, how much of the social product they can consume. To me, this first axiom possesses an elegance as compelling as any of Euclid’s postulates.

Axiom 2: Remuneration According to Need

The second axiom of Parecon in my list posits that to the extent that people remain unable to contribute to society—to exert enough effort and sacrifice to merit enough consumption to cover their needs—society steps in to help them thrive. You should not take this second axiom to mean that a Parecon will enable people to live as freeloaders. In exchange for rights to consume from society, a Parecon will expect everyone to work for what they consume—to the extent that they can. Tough love will remain an option, ready to be exercised, but there exists a huge difference between tough love and abuse or neglect. A Parecon will neither abuse nor neglect anyone.

About a job as tough love: meaningful work builds confidence and self-esteem, and many tasks also impart skills, and knowledge, on the laborer that prepare them to more effectively participate in the decisions that will affect their lives and all of society. Thus, labor in a Parecon provides workers and society with a win-win exchange. When the abuse is taken out of employment, insisting that all those who can work, actually work, indeed becomes an act of love.

But not everyone can receive this gift. As a member of the future society, I will need not be concerned with my short- or long-term care, in the case of an injury, a sickness, or my old age. Moreover children, still too young to participate in the economy, will rest well cared for in a Parecon. But education, from early life onward, will groom all children to transition into the stewardship and leadership roles awaiting them. Ample resources will insure that all members of the next generation have what they need to thrive, including socialization to excel as confident members of society, trained and expected to participate in the decisions that will impact their lives, and determine the future of human society.

Axiom 3: Balanced Job Complexes

Beyond teaching and learning, there are many more roles at the institution of higher learning where I currently work that need to be filled. As at other schools, staff keep things running—including janitors, cafeteria chefs, grounds-people, and administrators, among perhaps many others. In the transition to a new society, staff roles will transform as well.

The university will welcome all staff as scholars. To the extent that they have the interest, people acting in the staff role will also act in the student role, gaining credentials to act in the professor role, or to work elsewhere. And to the extent that they have both the interest and the credentials, people acting in the staff role will act in the professor role.

Will the janitors have time to study or teach? Absolutely, because it will fall on all of the scholars, indeed on all of the employees at the university, to clean the toilets, mop the floors, run the cafeteria, attend to the gardens, and everything else the staff takes care of. These tasks will remain part of everyone’s regular duties for which the new society will pay them for their labor, the same as everyone else, according to their effort and sacrifice. Moreover, society might deem the drudgery of mopping floors more of a sacrifice than the excitement of studying statistics.

Of course, not everyone will do every job, but everyone will perform what Albert and Hahnel call a balanced job complex. The authors distinguish a job complex from a job in the sense that a job complex has considerably more varied roles. Today, professors already have to balance teaching, research, and service. As described above, learning and career development may become part of everyone’s regular academic duties, perhaps, for many, they already are. But in the new society, scholars will need to add much less desirable, much less empowering, and perhaps much less skilled labor to their job complexes to balance the load with all of their currently less privileged colleagues.

In what sense will job complexes need balancing? Job complexes will balance for desirability and empowerment.

The easiest of these senses to understand is desirability. Let’s face it: most scholars would rather learn or teach in their chosen field than clean toilets in the bathroom. Indeed, I prefer my job to the janitor’s. But would you prefer to clean a toilet once in a while, or have your institution pay a desperate immigrant less than a living wage to slave under all-to-often abusive management to do the unpleasant task of cleaning up your bathroom mess—together with keeping up the rest of your entire building, all day, five days per week? Think deeply and carefully about the implications of this arrangement before you answer that question.

A balanced job complex, in the sense of Albert and Hahnel, also requires balancing for empowerment. What is empowerment? Some duties to society impart knowledge, confidence, and skills on the agent that allow them to more effectively participate in the decisions that affect society. Certainly learning and teaching statistics has this effect on the learners and teachers, whereas planting trees has less of the same effect, however fun and beneficial planting trees can be. If we are going to socialize people to be good stewards of our civilization, we need to socialize all people to take that role. Having only privileged people trained or permitted to participate in decision making inevitably means that decisions affecting society reflect and pursue the special interests of the privileged, not our common interests. For this reason, we balance for empowerment as well as for desirability.

As large as many of our universities are, they are not economic islands onto themselves. They depend on farmers to grow the food that the scholars eat, factories to manufacture the products that scholars consume, truck drivers to bring the food and other products to the area, and construction workers to build and maintain the buildings, on or off campus, that the scholars use. Indeed, all of the goods and services consumed by the university and its scholars require the functioning of the whole economy. So, to balance job complexes fairly, we need to balance work across the whole economy, not just the university.

What this means for an industry like education, which enjoys a greater share of the desirable and empowering work than many other sectors, is that most scholars will work outside of the educational sector to achieve balance. Many of us will spend some time on a farm, or in a factory, or perhaps we will work for the transportation sector, or in service industry. How we fulfill our duty to society will be our choice. And we will be able to change our minds—the options will always remain wide open. Perhaps a colleague with a knack for baseball will help clean the stadium after games. Differently inclined and differently abled scholars may choose differently.

Labor will be much more fluid in a new society. Indeed, many scholars at American University may have other highly desirable and empowering tasks elsewhere in the economy, as well as other less desirable tasks that balance their job complexes. For instance, maybe the scholar who cleans the bathrooms in the chemistry building every Friday morning is also the lead actor in a major motion picture, under production at a nearby studio, during part of the rest of the week.

The spirit of teaching and learning will carry over into the rest of the economy. Why learn only at a university? There is a lot to learn on a farm. After working on a farm for a few years, I will earn credentials for teaching farming to new farm employees—just as scholars at my university will earn credentials to teach their fields of study to new scholars. Perhaps a lot of the teaching and learning that now goes on in schools and universities could go on in other workplaces. On a farm, I could teach the statistics needed to analyze experiments on new farming techniques—just as they could teach me anything I wanted to know that they could teach. Teaching and learning will be expected of everyone, throughout their lives. Citizens will be trained and socialized for these, and many other, roles, starting as young children.

Axiom 4: Producer Councils

Even for your favorite sports team, picking up trash in a stadium may never be fun. But it doesn’t need to be demeaning either. The difficulty with so many jobs at the lower end of the capitalist spectrum is not just the lower pay, and long hours, together with the stultifyingly boring, disgusting, and/or dangerous tasks required, but rather it often made excruciatingly more difficult by the egos of those in the hierarchy above you—especially your boss, your manager, or your supervisor. Ubiquitous racial and sexual prejudice, privilege, and abuse of privilege adds a profoundly disturbing dimension to this problem, if you are not both white and male, and especially if you are neither. These problems become profoundly egregious in capitalist societies.

Albert and Hanhel propose getting rid of the role of manager entirely. Management will become self-management.

Under self-management, society will still hold workers accountable. But instead of having a manager, workers will be accountable to a committee called a producer council, of which the worker will be one of about 10-50 members.

Most workers, having a wide array of different tasks, will belong to several producer councils. Members of a producer council will have a symmetric relationship with each other—there will be no designated leader.

Axiom 5: Decisions made by those affected

How will producer councils make decisions? Producer councils will make an effort to allow each person a say in each decision in proportion to the degree to which they are affected by the decision. This axiom defines what Albert and Hahnel call self-management, and this principle extends to all decisions made in society.

The manner in which people make decisions in a Parecon will be flexible. To achieve self-management, some decisions will require consensus of those affected, while others will require a simple majority. Many others decisions will require something in between.

Albert gives the following example to illustrate the idea: a mother will have dictatorial control over whether she puts a picture of her daughter on her desk. Likewise, the decision to play music at work will be made by all those in earshot—but by no one outside of hearing range.

Who decides how much each person is affected? Parecon expects all people to protect everyone else’s right to self-management. That said, a judiciary, governed by randomly selected juries, described below, will adjudicate any disagreements.

Axiom 6: Nested Council Structure

Of course, some decisions made on the job affect more than just the 10-50 nearest coworkers. Indeed, some directions set by my department at American University impact the students and professors in other departments. Indeed, many decisions, especially those made at higher levels of campus administration, can affect the whole university. Beyond American University, some governmental actions have changed the whole educational industry, for better, or for worse. And educational policy, set by the government—past, current, local and federal—together with the administration of my own school, affects various stakeholders outside of education, producers and consumers across the whole economy, far and wide. Finally, expansions and other capital projects initiated by American University can substantially impact its neighbors.

Provided that we want to give each person a say in each decision, in proportion to the degree to which they are affected, how should we make decisions affecting many people?

We could conduct referenda among those affected. Perhaps, sometimes, this approach will be the best way to proceed. However, referenda do not allow people of different opinions the opportunity to productively interact to come up with the most wise solutions.

To allow such deliberation, Albert and Hahnel propose, instead, to create nested councils—called federations. For now, we will talk about federations of producer councils. Later in this chapter, we will also discuss their proposal for nested federations of consumer councils. In the next chapter, my one amendment to the Parecon vision involves a third type of nested council which I propose to facilitate the transition to a participatory society because it will be easier to create today within capitalist economies.

Each higher council will consist of delegates from all of the next lower councils in its jurisdiction. Ideally, councils at all levels will consist of approximately 10-50 members. Each council will be accountable to its next highest body, until the highest council which will be accountable to everyone, across the whole economy.

For example, at American University, each work-group producer council at the lowest level will be accountable to, and send a delegate to, a department council. Then all the department councils will be accountable to, and send a delegate to, the university council. But the university council will not be the highest governing body, because other schools, universities, and workplaces exist across the economy. About 10-50 nearby schools will send delegates to a single regional educational council, perhaps overseeing all primary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate education in the Washington, DC area, or perhaps just a part of it. Each regional educational council will, in turn, be accountable to higher councils, until the one for whole educational industry, across the whole economy. Finally, different industry councils—including the one for education, but also, for example, ones for agriculture, energy, construction, service, transportation, health, among others—will send delegates to a high producer council, making production and allocation decisions at the level of the whole economy, across industries.

Councils beyond the first level will have staff to help them make decisions. The staff and the representatives in these councils will be paid the going rate for their effort and sacrifice, and work balanced job complexes.

Producer councils will hold each other accountable. In particular, higher level councils will assess the effort and sacrifice their next lower councils. These assessments will affect the determination of individual effort and sacrifice.

Education: Who Produces, Who Consumes?

Education presents a special case to Albert and Hahnel’s plan. Indeed, most economic activity involves a clear distinction between producers and consumers. But try to pinpoint the economic product of education.

After a moment’s reflection, the reader will easily realize that economic activity in the area of education produces mental representations in learners’ nervous systems—and it stops there. All value derived from education comes from the value of these mental representations—including their value to the students, and their value to society, at large.

A capitalist economy identifies the student as the consumer. In capitalist societies, students seek education primarily because the mental representations it provides, together with socially conferred credentials—e.g. degrees like Bachelor of Science—give the consumers bargaining power in the labor market. Education affords laborers the ability to negotiate higher salaries, and more desirable and more empowering working conditions—usually, far in excess of what coworkers without education manage to extort.

Of course, the consumers—the students—pay a hefty price for this bargaining power, especially in countries, such as the United States, where tuition is high. Unless students come from wealthy families, or remain lucky and privileged enough to secure substantial scholarships, they must take on debt that takes many years to pay off. With debt comes significant constraints on early career choices, forcing graduates to buy in to the money making frenzy of capitalism. The price of the much coveted bargaining power is conformity with the unjust system. And some groups remain excluded, even from the opportunities to buy in. In many cases, you need good credit to secure student loans, and, to be sure, many victims of the system need not apply: think of the hapless children that have gone through the prison-industrial complex.

From education in a participatory economy, learners will still gain useful mental representations, together with door-opening credentials. But no learner will ever enjoy more pay, or more desirable or more empowering working conditions as a result of their education and academic credentials. In a Parecon, the capitalistic costs, constraints, and incentives of education will all vanish. Education will still enrich scholars’ lives, build pupils’ confidence, and empower learners to more effectively take charge of their destinies and engage in the stewardship of society. But achieving these ends, benefiting all of society, will now become the focus of the entire economy, not just a side-effect of the a privileged academy.

Indeed, Parecon identifies the consumer of education as society. Certainly many roles that a modern economy demands require years of preparation, training, and education. In this sense, education is pursued for the economy. But beyond workers’ specific roles, Parecon also recognizes the tremendous value of a universally educated populace to the functioning of the whole social unit. When everyone participates in the decision making for society, all benefit when most can discern fact from fake news. Education and the other paradigms of Parecon will allow our whole population to engage in a massive collaboration to fulfill our common human potential, rather than a massive fight to pursue the special interests of our elite class—for the crumbs they and our current system throw at us.

In a Parecon, the real consumers of education are not just the students, but also, more importantly, society at large. Moreover, Parecon recognizes all the producers of education—the teachers and students who work together to create mental representations in themselves and each other. Society pays these producers—from kindergarten pupils to professors emerita—in accordance to each’s effort and sacrifice, at the same rate as as everyone else doing socially-valued labor for the economy.

Incentives From Job Complex Balancing

In education, certain subjects, like fiction, may prove more desirable to study, than others, like waste water treatment engineering. However, a complex society demands diverse scholars—more diverse than unchecked desires may produce. This observation is a special case of more a general maxim: certain jobs may prove more desirable than others. But the key to achieving the right mix of individual freedom and sufficient social diversity is the stipulation that job complexes must balance for both desirability and empowerment. Albert and Hahnel propose an elegant solution to maximize individual freedom while trading off the needs of society. They call their idea Participatory Planning, which I describe in a section below.

Axiom 7: Consumer Councils

Parecon will manage consumption in a similar fashion to production. Specifically, it will implement nested consumer councils, with each lower council sending a delegate to the next higher one.

Parecon will organize consumption councils geographically. The lowest level council, the neighbors’ council, will have the narrowest scope, managing individuals’ consumption decisions, as well as managing the decisions that might go to a condo board or homeowner’s association in today’s society. Higher level councils will exist to make consumption decisions for larger neighborhoods, wards, cities, counties, regions, then larger regions, etc. The highest level consumer council will make consumption decisions at the level of the whole economy.

Each consumer council will make the consumption decisions that affect their own level. For example, a city consumer council might decide to invest in a subway transportation system. Such a decision, affecting a whole city, will not be made at the smaller neighborhood level, nor at a larger national level. But for a subway, everyone in the city will need to sacrifice some of their personal consumption rights, for their collective consumption right to a new subway. These decisions will be made to allow each individual in the city a say in the decision in proportion to the degree to which they are affected by the decision to build or not build a subway.

In a Parecon, personal consumption is planned and managed through each person’s own neighbors’ council. However, individual consumers can perform these interactions anonymously. In the next chapter, I make my own slight modification to this part of Albert and Hahnel’s plan, involving the third type of council. In my proposal, consumers must still plan their consumption socially. In both cases, Participatory Planning accomplishes economic allocation in a deliberately foresighted way, while affording everyone the most individual freedom possible.

Axiom 8: Benefits Go to Those who Suffer Costs; Costs Go to Those who Enjoy Benefits

People living downstream from a factory that proposes to dump toxic chemicals into a nearby river will have a large say in the decision—because the decision will greatly affect them—but downstream neighbors, and any others negatively affected, will also be the ones who benefit from any economic advantages of cutting corners, in this way. If this principle were in place today, we would allow those more hurt by climate change to have more say in the decision to exploit our fossil fuel resources, as well as enjoy more of any economic benefit stemming from exploiting these resources over, or in addition to, alternative energy sources. In today’s world, people making decisions to pollute are typically the ones benefiting from the polluting economic activity—and are typically not also the ones suffering the costs.

Axiom 9: Participatory Planning for Allocation

A trained economist will immediately recognize that the above proposal, at least as it stands so far, omits an explanation of how the economy will allocate its resources—and who will make these decisions. How does a Parecon decide what goods go where, making sure right stuff moves to the right places to keep the economy running. Moreover, how does a Parecon ensure that the these decisions are made in way that promotes efficiency and remains consistent with the other values and aims conveyed here? Participatory Planning addresses these omissions.

In my opinion, Albert and Hahnel’s answer to these questions, Participatory Planning, shines as pair’s greatest contribution. Participatory Planning solves these difficult problems in a brilliant and extremely elegant way.

Unfortunately, Participatory Planning remains by far the hardest part of their plan to explain and justify. The key ideas involve facilitation and iteration, but let me concede that I believe that many of the fine details have yet to be worked out, through practice. However, I have some ideas, conveyed in the next chapter as to how the paradigms and micro-paradigms of Participatory Planning can be tested, tweaked, illustrated, and validated in smaller scale “alternative economies,” similar in scope to the ones that sprung up around local currencies, thriving in Ithaca, NY, Baltimore MD, and other locations in the United States, and perhaps elsewhere.

How does Participatory Planning work? Once a year, workers will propose what they want to produce and consumers will propose what they want to consume. Most people will do both. Then facilitators will process the information and come up with salaries and prices—how much consumers have to spend, and likewise, how much goods and services of each kind will cost: the indicative prices. Actors in the economy will revise their plans—usually by proposing to work more hours, and/or buy less goods and services—to make ends meet. The process iterates until achieving a feasible plan, a non-trivial task, due to the inter-dependencies that exist within a complex economy. Albert and Hahnel have specific strategies, backed up by rather obtuse theory, for guaranteeing convergence to such a feasible plan, after a reasonable number of iterations.

Participatory Planning will take place between producer and consumer councils, at all levels, and bodies that will be known as iteration facilitation boards. Iteration facilitation boards will also exist at all levels of the economy.

Participatory Planning will do for a Parecon, what central planning did for communist economies, and what markets do for capitalist economies—except, in both cases, hopefully better. The key thing to realize is that Participatory Planning, with its facilitation and iteration, allows allocation decisions to be made in a decentralized way, giving each person a say in each decision, in proportion to the degree to which they are affected by that decision.

Facilitators get no special privileges for helping guide the process. They are paid for their effort and sacrifice at the same rate that everyone else is paid for performing other duties to society, for the same effort and sacrifice. Moreover, facilitators work balanced job complexes. Thus, to improve their lot by facilitating Participatory Planning—to increase what they consume, relative to their effort and sacrifice, or to arrange to work under more desirable and/or more empowering conditions—they must improve the same situations for everyone. To live better in these ways, they must, like everyone else, make the economy run more efficiently, with less wasted effort, and less squandered resources. Facilitators have no avenue to pursue special interests—the only interests they can advance, as they facilitate, are interests common to all. Facilitators remain no different from everyone else, in this regard. Everyone in society has the same common interests. Common interests encourage everyone to engage in a massive collaboration to advance the shared aims of all humanity. With privilege removed, no one has special interests to advance themselves to the detriment of others.

Throughout the year, once the Participatory Plan is in place, people can change their minds, on a whim, but in some unanticipated situations, iteration facilitation boards may impose incentives or penalties for changing minds, or for not changing minds. Indeed, some situations may call for a reassessment the of the Participatory Plan, while not necessarily requiring the involvement of everyone in the whole economy. Such measures may be taken to avoid shortages or surpluses of goods and services.

Balancing Job Complexes Through Participatory Planning

As the iteration of workers proposals proceeds, job complexes will become increasingly balanced across the economy. To achieve this end, at each iteration, a workers’ spending allowance will depend not only on the hours of labor proposed, but also upon the desirability and empowerment of the work they plan to perform. The process will penalize proposed job complexes that either not sufficiently empowering, or take too many of the empowering and/or desirable tasks from others. For the next iteration of planning, workers will have ample resources to determine the myriad of different ways they can adjust their proposals to achieve better results.

Accurate Assessment of The True Costs of Goods And Services

Burning gasoline has increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other pollutants, and has already started to have a dramatic effect on our climate. To the increase in atmospheric \(\mbox{CO}_2\), we can attribute stronger storms, and rising sea levels.

Of course, the danger of climate change goes well beyond hurricanes and inundating coastlines. Leading climate scientists and other intellectuals understand that climate change threatens to negatively impact our agricultural system. Without food, our whole civilization could collapse, losing most of its socioeconomic complexity in the process. In the past, similar collapses have meant that most or all of the collapsing population dies of starvation—if not murdered for their meat by starving cannibals. Our history and prehistory can guide us here—including the stories of the Pacific Easter Islanders, the Greenland Norse, the Anazai of the North America, and the Mayans in Central America—not to mention the recent histories and currently unfolding situations in places like Rawanda, Yemen and South Sudan. That said, a collapse of global proportion, which looms as a menacing cloud over our common future, remains wholly unprecedented. But rather than scare us, the danger should give us profound hope that upon facing such a menacing cliff, we will start to make substantially wiser choices.

The costs of stronger storms and rising sea levels are easier to quantify and understand than the costs global socioeconomic collapse. Indeed, we have recently had uniquely damaging weather events that warmer oceans have exacerbated. Moreover, water is starting to rise, affecting low lying communities, particularly those without resources to build dams and levys. The rest of this discussion will concern these more tangible costs.

When we buy 10 gallons of gasoline to burn in our cars, do we pay our share of the damage caused by future storms strengthened by the \(\mbox{CO}_2\) we will release? Do we pay poor or even rich communities to build dams and levys to protect themselves from rising water? Including these costs with the cost of extracting and refining gasoline, seems logical, but it is next to impossible in a capitalist system controlled by fossil fuel interests—who have even scuttled efforts to move quickly to alternatives, or even to admit that climate change has or will continue to occur.

The cost of storms and rising oceans are real costs of gasoline, but they are what economists call externalities: costs beared by third parties to the market exchange that neither the seller nor the buyer pays. Externalities remain a ubiquitous problem in traditional market-base economies.

Accounting for these costs would help us make wiser choices. Green energy presumably has fewer external costs, and if it were valued accurately, people would have no problem making the lowest cost choice, unless there were some reason not to. Why would people still pay more for gasoline if it were accurately priced to reflect its true cost to society? Some people may be willing to pay extra to drive their performance gas-guzzling sports car once in a while—and in a Parecon, they would be free to do so, to the extent that they had earned the right to that level of consumption with their effort and sacrifice. But if all externalities were accounted for in the price of gasoline, and alternatives were available, people would have to work that much harder, with greater effort and sacrifice, to burn gas. To be sure, we could expect choices to be wiser.

Albert and Hahnel push an idea that they call endogenous preferences which says that if gas were more expensive relative to greener energy, people’s preferences for electric cars over gas cars will actually shift in favor of what they can afford. Yes, the theory holds that people’s preferences change, not just their choices, based on what they can afford and based on what the economy makes available to them.

I find the concept of endogenous preferences clearest with fast food. The food industry maximizes its profits by selling us the cheapest, most processed, nutrient starved food, that they engineer to make us addicted. “Food scientists” strive to create edible products that hit the bliss point, that is, containing the right combination of sugar, salt, and fat that make people maximally crave more of the product. Why, then, should anyone be surprised that so many people endure their choice of the Western Diet. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia are the predictable results with far too many people.

Healthful food is expensive and it is hard to prepare. But I am sure people will prefer not to consistently abuse their bodies, if that choice becomes the cheapest, most convenient one in the moment. However, in a Parecon, people will still be able to eat the trash they eat today, but they will pay their medical bills up front. Likewise people who smoke will pay for their cancer treatments as they purchase their cigarettes throughout their smoking life. Of course not every smoker will get cancer, but in a Parecon all smokers will pay the health bills for the unlucky ones who do.

But the opposite holds for people who make healthful choices—they will get an immediate dividend for the future money they save the health care system. For example, exercise equipment and gym memberships will be subsidized, to the extent that they can save society money.

How does Participatory Planning account for costs that remain externalities in capitalism? It is actually very simple: when iteration facilitation boards, at all levels of the economy, collaborate to set indicative prices, they set prices that account for all costs and benefits of all goods and services to everyone. The key institution that makes this work is that no one enjoys special privileges from any economic decisions made. All laborers work balance job complexes, remunerated according to effort and sacrifice. Thus if the economy performs more efficiently, all will benefit equally, and no one will lose out. In other words, all share the common interest that the economy performs as efficiently as it can. The best outcome for one is the best outcome for all.

Albert and Hahnel argue that Participatory Planning will allow all stakeholders in all economic decisions to have a say in each decision in proportion to the degree to which they are affected. An implementation of Participatory Planning will have to specify the details of how this happens, however.

Participatory Planning and Education

In most sectors of a participatory economy, there exists a distinct dichotomy between producers and consumers: consumers pay the cost of production of goods and services with their consumption rights. Not counting for need, the fraction of the economic product that a consumer can consume depends on their share of the total effort and sacrifice they expend for the economy. Participatory planning, through its iteration and facilitation functions to achieve a balance between what producers produce, and what consumers consume.

Education differs. The educational sector presents a specific challenge to a Parecon with its blurred lines between producers and consumers. I have not seen this topic discussed elsewhere, but I will proceed with this discussion in this chapter because I deem my ideas fully within the spirit of Parecon.

Let’s say waste water treatment requires 50,000 trained engineers for the functioning of the economy. If not enough students want to study waste water engineering, the training will be deemed an undesirable job, which students can study, as part of a balanced job complex, instead of other endeavors that they may find even less desirable. The costs and opportunity costs of training these engineers will be shouldered by the waste water treatment industry, then passed to the consumers of waste water treatment. In economics, opportunity costs—lost opportunities stemming from decisions not to devote resources elsewhere—can become significant. But in this case, the costs will be shouldered by everyone in society—everyone, that is, except for the occasional lone souls who use outhouses off the grid.

The highest consumer council, with input from producer councils and lower consumer councils, will deem certain training and credentials of value to society for all its members to possess. Training demanded at this highest level involves everyone as consumer, so, again, everyone will shoulder the costs.

Other training may be pursued for the pleasure and fulfillment of the learner of the material. In some cases, the students themselves will pay for their own training. But in other cases, training will have true social value, but funded only by certain interested sectors of the economy.

For example, many students will want to get training in fiction—how to write it and how to read it with discernment. Perhaps, many scholars will find this subject desirable to study. But consumers of fiction demand writers of fiction and they can fund the training. Nevertheless, if more students want to study fiction than consumers want to pay for, then that line of study would be deemed desirable and needing of balance with less desirable economic endeavors, driving demand down.

Here we reach a dilemma best illustrated with a discussion of the task of composing classical music. We would not want the passion of the many less gifted rival Salieris to drive away the interest of few exceptionally gifted Mozarts. The solution is that though many people have interest in certain areas, consumers can demand tasks from select groups with appropriate credentials. Obtaining these creditials can require possessing and developing certain gifts. These gifts would not earn you more pay, but if your gifts were in high demand, you would not have to balance applying your gifts with “less desirable” tasks. The same holds for motivating the most promising students to pursue subjects that they find most promising.

Consumers Pay Only Marginal Costs; Free in Many Cases

Fiction writing illustrates an interesting point: it costs a lot to pay a writer to write a book but then each book costs essentially nothing to copy electronically. In a capitalist society books cost consumers money—for some titles, like textbooks, a lot of money—but in a Parecon the authors get paid the same for their effort and sacrifice, no matter how many copies sell. Therefore, it makes more sense to have the writers’ producers council pay for the initial investment up front and then charge the consumer just the marginal cost, the additional cost to produce one more item after the initial investment is made. In many cases the marginal cost is zero, so the good is offered free for all. The same goes for most digital products, including nonfiction, movies, music, software, video games, and practically any intellectual property protected under capitalism: all free to the consumer in a Parecon, with the initial fixed costs subsidized by everyone in the economy.

Authors will still want to write bestsellers. The more people download a book, the more they justify its initial investment, which can justify similar investments in the future. Indeed, only authors who give their writers’ producer council the expectation that their work will cover its initial investment will be offered the opportunity to get paid to write. That said, aspiring authors who remain not officially supported can choose to devote part of their free time to their close-to-heart projects, leading to their recognition as promising writers. Indeed, in a Parecon, anyone can choose have more free time if they become willing to forgo greater consumption rights.

Axiom 10: Government

With Parecon extended to Parpolity, by Steven Shalom, the nested consumer councils, in addition to their economic function, will also constitute the entire legislative branch of government. As such, they will collectively perform all the duties of legislatures in today’s system.

In an effort to hold representatives accountable and to create a more direct democracy, lower level councils will always have the option of recalling their representative to the next highest level council. Additionally, these positions will regularly rotate.

People acting as representatives to higher-level consumer or producer councils will still work balanced job complexes and will still receive the same remuneration according to effort and sacrifice. Higher level consumer councils and producer councils will have regular staff to help them perform research, or otherwise guide their decisions. As with the representatives on these bodies, this staff will work balanced job complexes and receive the same remuneration according to effort and sacrifice.

Steven Shalom’s Parpolity also posits a judiciary and an executive branch. Judicial decisions will be made by randomly selected juries, drawn from the whole population. Juries will have a courtroom staff to help them reach decisions. Society will consider working in the courtroom, as permanent staff or as temporary jurors, as socially valued labor, remunerated as other duties, according to effort and sacrifice, and as part of a balanced job complex.

As today, cases will divide into criminal and civil proceedings. But unlike in most places today criminal law will derive from the principle of restorative justice. Civil proceeding will adjudicate disagreements about the functioning of society.

I should reemphasize that all people working in government, regardless of the branch, and indeed all of the economy, will earn the same pay as everyone else—for the same effort and sacrifice—and will work job complexes balanced with everyone else. Government will make decisions, whenever feasible, in such a way that everyone affected will have a say in each decision in proportion to the degree to which they will be affected by the decision. However, people in the executive branch will be empowered to make quick decisions in emergencies. Shalom uses the example that no time exists for meetings when deciding to evacuate a city for an impending hurricane.

Results of Parecon’s Axioms

In mathematics, theorems result from axioms. A theorem means a true statement derived from axioms using what mathematicians call a formal system of logic. Based on axioms, and agreed upon logical rules, the truth of a mathematical theorem can never be questioned, once a valid proof has been discovered. Unfortunately, the analogy between mathematical axioms and the building blocks of Parecon breaks down here. The results of Parecon, listed below, differ from mathematical statements. Instead, they list the qualities that I, and others, believe would derive from Parecon’s paradigms, if they were veridically implemented. I have no formal system of logic to guarantee the truth of these assertions. I only pose mere logical plausibilities to assert “truths” that I consider open for discussion. Moreover, the truth of these “theorems” is not a binary yes or no, like in mathematics, but rather it is a measure of degree, which remains itself questionable.

Indeed, one’s values and opinions underlie the tacit implication that these qualities stand as desirable features for a hypothetical society to have. I would delight in seeing my exposition spark a vigorous debate. Finally, even once successful, the axioms do not guarantee their continued success. The truth of Parecon’s results will depend upon the continued engagement of the community. Indeed, the divinity of human behavior will never become inescapable. Maintaining a society inspired by love will require constant vigilance from all involved.

Result 1: Equity

Equity means fairness. Parecon balances job complexes and would replace our current system of allowing a minority to monopolize the empowering and desirable work. Parecon remunerates for effort and sacrifice, and would replace our current system of remunerating for property amassed or inherited, and for bargaining power in the labor market. Finally, Parecon implements, across the board, self-management in the workplace and would replace our current system where a hierarchy of egotistical abusers rules the day. All of these changes would foster greater equity.

Result 2: Solidarity

Solidarity means unity through shared interests. Parecon makes great strides to give everyone such shared interests. In Parecon, you can make essentially no economic gain, without simultaneously advancing the same gain for everyone. You cannot have more pleasant or more empowering work duties, unless everyone else does, too. You cannot consume more than your need, effort and sacrifice warrants, unless the efficiency of the economy improves for everyone. Finally, you only have decision making power to the extent that you are affected by the decisions, in a symmetric way with everyone else.

Parecon would replace our current system with ubiquitous zero-sum games. Today’s universities resemble other workplaces in this regard: one department’s gain is another’s loss. When jobs are on the line, and with loss of jobs go health care benefits, retirement, mortgages, and children’s education, hardly anyone can make decisions for the benefit of all. Privilege exists in today’s society as its ones most important characteristic—and in capitalism privilege matters. People take on the pursuit of privilege for both sympathetic and less sympathetic reasons. And when privilege is on the line, people can make bad decisions for society. Human nature makes it rare for people to take the interests of society into account when it conflicts in any way, small or large, with their own interests. Capitalism forces people into decisions that bring out the worst in them. In constrast, Parecon’s shared interests would foster solidarity and better decision making.

Result 3: Diversity

Diversity mean variety. The axioms of Parecon allow a great variety of different outcomes, different job complexes, different levels of effort, sacrifice and time spent on working and on leisure, and different life choices. Moreover, Participatory Planning allows for great diversity of different goods and services to be produced, consumed, and exchanged. The paradigms of Parecon would foster diversity.

Result 4: Freedom

Freedom means liberty that does not impinge on the rights and liberties of others. Parecon’s inspiration comes from libertarian socialism and has a design intended to give people maximal control over their lives, but only under the stipulation that the freedoms given to one do not take away the freedoms of others. Parecon would foster freedom.

Result 5: Efficiency

Efficiency means functioning with minimal squandered resources. In Parecon, all people do better when the economy runs more efficiently. People can have more leisure time, and/or can consume more, or can have more desirable and more empowering job complexes. Parecon will lead to a massive collaboration to improve the efficiency of the economy with everyone’s economic interests aligned. Further efficiency gains of Parecon derive from the fact that Parecon values goods and services accurately, according to their true cost and benefits to society. Parecon would foster efficiency.

Result 6: Sustainability

Sustainability means a high probability of surviving intact for many generations. In our current system, with short-term profits driving decision-making in our economy, the result is a fossil fuel industry that scuttles efforts to replace the power in our grid with green energy. Green energy would protect our environment that supports our agriculture. Without food, we remain vulnerable to not surviving for even one or few more generations. Without Parecon, the future looks bleak, but Parecon will allow human civilization to continue. In this sense, Parecon would foster sustainability.

Belecon

Albert and Hahnel leave one aspect of social life glaringly absent from their vision of Parecon: how will a good society include religion? Perhaps the pair saw no need to discuss faith: presumably religious institutions could operate like any other actors in the economy.

I beg to differ. Even today, communities of worship differ in important ways from other organizations. In a good society, churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious bodies should be treated separately from the other producers and consumers in the economy—even though religious bodies sometimes fill the same economic functions.

A number of other authors, including Steven Shalom, mentioned previously, have extended Parecon into a plan for a fully participatory society. But every piece I have seen about their vision invariably mentions religion only in passing, if at all.

By ignoring and denying religion, many of these authors remain true to their self-professed identities as leftists. Leftists have a long, sad, and even brutal history of ill-conceived conflict with religion. People often quote Karl Marx as saying “religion is the opium of the people.” I found the full passage on Wikipedia, translated from German: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” The Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union went as far as to criminalize religion—and many suffered painfully and pointlessly as a result.

These leftist responses stem from a profound ignorance of why we have religion and spirituality. To say they “throw the baby out with the bathwater” understates the gravity of the problem. Their ignorance proves devastating when they try to create a better world.

Our spiritual instincts promote love, peace, forgiveness, and justice. They exist to help us survive—individually and as a species. They lead us to sacrifice for our community—in service to a truth perceived as greater than ourselves. We need these instincts to make a good society become real—and to keep it real.

Where did these instincts come from? Ultimately, they come from God, if you like. But skeptics need not tax their brains with any metaphysical interpretations. Behavioral ethologists fully understand prosocial instincts within the paradigms of evolutionary biology. These two interpretations support each other, and in no way conflict.

I find many parallels between religion and ethology. They both speak to the interplay between good and evil—our prosocial tendencies and our antisocial tendencies. Some religions might say that our common ancestors bequeathed Original Sin to us because they ate of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. On the other hand, ethology says that our common ancestors bequeathed selfish genes to us because they expressed both good and evil as strategies that simply insured their survival. Religion has millennia of tradition behind it, with great success inspiring consistent devotion and sacrifice, throughout large stretches of human history. Such success matters to a good society. Ethology has science behind it, with its own set of triumphs in making sense of the world. Both lines of thinking offer valuable perspectives, once you accept that each speaks to the same truths concerning the human condition.

Our prosocial tendencies, those that bind us together into a beloved community, those that promote love, peace, understanding, and forgiveness, and those that insure our survival, and only those tendencies, deserve the label spiritual. Tendencies that derive from fear, hate, anger, greed, jealousy, lust, xenophobia, and ill-will have no place in our sacred heart—and should never be attributed to God.

But often our spiritual instincts conflate with our less desirable qualities. As social animals, we are a complex mixture of altruistic and selfish—giving, taking, and expecting to receive. The interplay our egos and our divine natures makes our inner psyches and our outer relationships deeply complex. This complexity arises even between just two people. Albert and Hahnel should know this truth painfully well. According to Albert’s autobiography, his relationship with Hahnel used to be a strong and important part of his life. Unfortunately, as of the time of the publication of Albert’s memoirs, his friendship with his collaborator had completely fallen apart, and he had not spoken to, or published with, Hahnel for quite some time. Interpersonal relationships between people are tough, even between those who aspire to change the world. Likewise, spouses, can remain deeply in love, steadfastly committed, and legally bound to each other, but still face significant challenges keeping the union together. A good society is like a good marriage, but with millions, even billions, of people.

Many people have indeed tried to create good societies on a small scale—including countless religious communities, as well as many leftist groups, and perhaps others. Any such group who has gained any measure of success, or certainly any group who has failed, knows that it takes hard work on a personal and individual level—work on the inside from everyone involved—to keep a beloved community together. We will not shed our antisocial tendencies simply by wiping away and replacing our economic institutions, any more than by all of us taking up the same religion, however much some people think to the contrary.

Skepticism of the prospects of a good society has justification, but that does not mean we should not try. I believe that Parecon does indeed differ from everything tried before. Never have we made a large scale attempt to eliminate the institutions of social privilege—as Parecon proposes. Communists may claim to have accomplished this feat, but, in reality, they elevated the party apparatchiks—i.e. those in charge—to extremely privileged positions in society.

To insure that all people maintain control over their lives, Parecon proposes remuneration for effort, sacrifice, and need, balanced job complexes, and decisions made by those affected. Communism did not implement a massive collaboration to improve the lot of everyone involved. Communism, like capitalism, and despite its powerful rhetoric, implemented rule by the few to oppress the many—undoubtedly to the horror of countless former supporters, such as the fictional Rubachov, facing Stalin’s purges in the historically inspired novel Darkness at Noon.

We have a lot to learn from our mistakes and we have lot to learn from each other. We share a vast wealth of strength, creativity, and intelligence when we work together. The many religions of the world, the leftists, the ethologists, and everyone else who cares about the world, all have many things to contribute to a good society. Excluding anyone from participation in this massive collaboration seems like a recipe for disaster. Together we can bring the pieces of society into a whole that uplifts our divine nature and suppresses our primary enemy—our own egos, often stoked, inflated and enabled by our own social privilege.

Belecon’s one amendment to Parecon’s vision

Beloved economics proposes one simple amendment to the vision of a good society put forward by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. Parecon envisions two federations of councils: consumer councils and producer councils. Consumer councils derive from where the participants live. Producer councils derive from where the participants work. I am using the word federation of councils to indicate that all people belong to a lowest level council, and each council, save the single highest, sends delegates to the next higher council.

Belecon’s vision keeps these two types of councils and adds a third. All people in Belecon can choose to participate in this third institution, or not. I call the new type of council a beloved council, deriving, not from where people live or work, but rather from where people worship. The reader should interpret the word “worship” loosely—I envision that any group can become a beloved council, no matter where they stand on faith. But usually beloved councils will consist largely of like-minded people, ideally working together to create and maintain a better world—even if “better” remains only as the group understands the word.

In my experience with religious communities, I see tremendous synergies in fellowship, collaboration, and communion among like-minded people. Indeed, many individuals find themselves more ready to sacrifice their time and money to their church than to their employer, or to their homeowner’s association. Belecon leverages this energy for building and maintaining a good society by institutionalizing religious and other groups as beloved councils.

The ideas behind Parecon have the advantage of having been vigorously debated and refined, since at least the early 1990s among a small but exceptionally gifted group of radical economists, led by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, but including others. My proposal for beloved councils has not benefited from the same scrutiny—at least not yet. Therefore, my ideas remain provisional. But let me now explain what I see as the true pièce de résistance of my plan: not what will happen in a hypothetical future society, but rather what can happen with this vision today amid our flawed economy, while promoting the vision it shares with Parecon.

Why Belecon makes good strategy for Parecon

Federations of producer and consumer councils cannot easily arise alongside existing capitalist economies. To create producer councils, actors in a capitalist economy must create, then operate, their own businesses—often requiring substantial resources. This feat, though possible on small scales, remains difficult to accomplish on scales large enough to test, tweak, illustrate, and validate Participatory Planning. Similarly, creating consumer councils demands the participation of all those living near you, and in any event, consumer councils need producers to create the products they consume.

A better strategy pursues the same vision of tomorrow by building alternative institutions today. Beloved councils are easy to start: it just takes a collection of two or more like-minded individuals to agree that they belong to such a group. Moreover existing organizations, religious or otherwise, can facilitate the creation of beloved councils. A vision of a transformed society, with a central place for these newly created or repurposed groups, will add impetus and purpose behind their creation or adaptation.

Once formed, beloved councils can pursue societal transformation. To this end, members can aim to transform themselves individually, aim to help transform each other, or aim to help transform others outside of the group. As I envision it, a beloved council can exist today as a support group to assist people doing one or more of these things.

For transforming oneself, there exists a wealth of experience and literature within religious communities that beloved councils can draw upon. Each spiritual tradition has a slightly different approach but they all share common themes. It remains beyond the scope of my presentation to survey all spiritual methods for self-transformation but suffice to say that this endeavor is largely what religion teaches.

Organized religion, like leftist activism, can also include prodding others to transform, but there remains a diversity of different approaches. Beloved councils can learn from all of them, and apply what they find appropriate.

Activists often take an confrontation-based approach, targeting people with power who actively resist change. This approach is less common with religion, although the money-changers in Jerusalem probably felt confronted when Jesus famously evicted them from the temple. Leftist activists often suffer arrest, prosecution, jail time, and even death in pursuit of transformation through confrontation, just as Jesus suffered crucifixion. But what followed Jesus’ death shows just how transformative such a sacrifice can become—even a skeptic who considers the historical record must admit that through His passing, Jesus set in motion a chain of events that completely changed the whole world.

A second method for helping others transform, used commonly in both religion and leftist activism, is education. Education, like confrontation, pursues active involvement with those transformed, but with education, the targets actively facilitate their own evolution, whereas with confrontation, the targets typically resist it. New members of the Baha’i faith, and anyone curious about it, commonly take a series of courses from the Ruhi institute that aim to get everyone on the same page with their understanding and attitude toward the faith. These courses involve a commitment from its pupils who often actively seek to align their thinking with the group’s. Likewise, the “teach in” is a common institution of leftist activism.

Both education and confrontation differ from a third method that I call inspiration. For inspiration, the targets initially remain passive toward their own transformation, neither resisting nor facilitating it, but change their heart simply as a result of observing the agent who seeks the transformation in others. Legend has it that the third-century-before-the-common-era emperor Ashoka converted to Buddhism simply by observing the composure of a monk walking through a gruesome battlefield. The historical record shows that Ashoka later spread Buddhism widely throughout the Indian subcontinent. Likewise, in leftist activism, people who passively observe a direct action, can find themselves moved to join the cause.

Inspiration: Evangelists versus Leftists

I consistently see inspiration guided adeptly by skilled evangelists. In my experience, successful ambassadors of God invariably present themselves as happy and well adjusted beacons of beauty—seemingly, or actually, free of fear, anger, hatred, and other negative emotions, and seemingly, or actually, full of joy, love, compassion, kindness, and commitment to the happiness and well-being of others. Wanna-be missionaries who don’t show these qualities remain much less effective. Those skilled in sharing God’s love show love’s benefits, giving all whom they encounter the sense that love can protect, nurture, and cherish us all.

Leftists who decry the indignities of capitalism may not always do so with the same skilled ways of a gifted evangelist. Successful inspiration often depends on positive emotions. Who wants to cower in fear over the threat that our civilization will collapse if we do not wrest control of our fate from our treasonous fossil fuel industry? Who wants to fume with anger at the egregious injustices of our terrible economic system? And who wants to consume our spirits with hatred toward our conniving elite class? Fear, anger, and hatred do not benefit the person feeling the emotions, nor do they benefit anyone else, for that matter. Not only do these emotions feel terrible, they also often destroy people’s ability to see clearly and behave most skillfully—both for the benefit of themselves and for the benefit of others. On the other hand, when observers see someone truly filled with love for all humankind, forgiveness for all wrongs, past and present, compassion toward all beings, and with a sincere commitment to help the world, they recognize the happiness, and freedom from suffering, that these positive feelings bring. They think to themselves: "I want that happiness! I want that freedom!"

The promise of freedom, given in words by the evangelist, but, more importantly, reinforced by the evangelist’s behavior and demeanor, delivers hope that brings new people into the faith, and keeps people coming back, week after week. Even if hope were all they ever got from their faith, for many, hope would suffice to secure their sincere commitment, and often substantial monetary support. At the same time, one should never belittle the power of hope. Hope can allow us to engage to most skillfully pursue our goals and dreams—even in the face of difficult odds. Moreover, hope can greatly increase our odds of reaching our goals and realizing our dreams. Hope can bring us a partner, allow us to conceive a child, help us through anxiety or depression, or cure us of an addiction or a disease. A skeptic may call these benefits “the placebo effect,” but if our cancer goes into remission, who cares how the doctor labels our cure? Invariably, people come and go from a faith, but when people leave the fold that gave them hope, they will remain much more likely to return, in a new time of need, if the positive emotional associations linger.

Evangelists have a huge advantage over leftists, in this regard. The religious memes prevalent in today’s world remain precisely the ones that for millennia have been good at sticking with people, and spreading to others. But these memes are often precisely the ones that conjure up positive emotions: love, joy, kindness, compassion, empathy, respect, hope, faith, and devotion, and suppress the negative emotions mentioned above.

To me, the insight that religion promotes these positive emotions rings universal, coming from several religious groups I have been involved with, across widely different denominations. But I can testify that an observer, like Karl Marx, quoted above, may not always be able to discern religion’s true value to the faithful, from the outside. The people most visible to outsiders often fail to convey this value to nonbelievers. Indeed, the true paragons of religious piety, to the extent that they are even visible, can seem like exceptions to outsiders. But these most pious truly stand out to insiders, because they beautifully illustrate lives lived the way the rest of the faithful only aspires to live. These aspirations do matter to the individuals, and to the world, because they keep people engaged with moving forward along their spiritual paths toward transformation and enlightenment—both individual and collective.

Leftists would do well to study the methods of “evangelists” of all faiths—or of any faith. But the world’s faith traditions are so deep and rich, and so proven successful—for often such mysterious reasons—that leftists may find more success adopting any one of them, rather than starting a new one. Indeed, leftists might be tempted to envision a “participatory religion,” to go with Parecon and Parpolity, but rarely in human history does a new religious movement ever spring into being, and take lasting hold—and even when one does, there invariably exists considerable continuity between previous traditions and new traditions. Even success adapting existing faiths for new purposes proves historically exceptional. Better to invite all faithful to participate in adapting, to their liking, a shared vision of a new society, than to proceed with an academic adaptation of the world’s religions to an equally academic vision of an imagined society.

Leftists certainly have a lot to contribute, but without millennia of accumulated experience, they will likely continue to fail to provide sufficient emotional motivation to the others to adopt their point of view, or even, once adopted, to sustain their point of view over time. I specifically speak of my participation with the Green Party around the 2000 election. I can attest to the fact that the party left me feeling spiritually unfulfilled, despite my initial considerable enthusiasm for the group. The Greens provided no home for me that I ultimately yearned to come back to. Judging from this experience, I have no doubt why leftist movements do not stick around very long, nor grow as large as many revivalist movements do. I find this insight ironic, and painful, because I also feel a strong conviction that atoning for the wrongs of the past through creating a equitable, efficient, and sustainable society, based on love, kindness, compassion and solidarity, is without a doubt, the most deeply spiritual program ever contemplated.

Societal Transformation Benefits from Self-Transformation

All of the methods for transforming others become more effective when the agents seeking change have, in themselves, greater love, greater compassion, greater empathy, greater composure, greater equanimity, among perhaps other positive qualities. Therefore, members of a beloved council will hopefully support each other in their own personal transformations toward these virtues.

I remain deliberately vague about how members of beloved councils can support each other in this way, but I suggest that they seek outside assistance. In my humble opinion, the best, most easily accessed help comes from within any one of a number of different established spiritual traditions, even if it is just spiritual texts and self-help books. There is no one-size-fits-all here: different people become inspired or become triggered in different ways. Perhaps groups that do not know where to begin can start by just seeking, exploring, and brainstorming such tools for self-transformation. Purely secular materials can also have tremendous value, particularly for those who have been turned off to religion. Indeed, there is no stipulation that beloved councils need to be religious, in any way, but I suggest that members cast a wide net in looking for inspirational materials, and keep an open mind.

Beyond the sources of their inspiration, beloved councils should decide on the scope of their activities and what they want to do for the world. Some may stay focused on self-transformation for everyone’s benefit. Others may also include charity, service and outreach. Many will seek to transform people outside of the group through some combination of confrontation, education, and inspiration. Since confrontational methods can involve legal vulnerabilities, all members of a beloved council, and perhaps of the whole parent federation, if there is one, should stay on the same page in this regard. Some beloved councils and federations will seek to grow their numbers into an organization with many beloved councils, while others may want to specialize in purely academic pursuits and thought experiments by posing, refining, and publishing ideas and strategy behind radical economics. Whatever the group decides to do, it matters that the members all feel rewarded, fulfilled, and sustained by their participation but also, importantly, that everyone has a chance to engage in something to deepen their involvement with the group. The strongest organizations are the ones where members feel a profound commitment to each other in the face of life’s vicissitudes; beloved councils could explore ways of establishing such bonds—but that task is not easy. Certainly, if there ever were ever a large-scale economic crisis, a network of strong beloved councils could help its members, and humanity, through it.

When Many Beloved Councils Exist Amid Capitalism

Beloved councils might set a goal of growing a beloved federation large enough to allow the organization to test, tweak, illustrate and validate Participatory Planning. The questions of how such a test could occur, as well as how large a group such a test requires, will both need to be studied carefully by others. Nevertheless, my own ideas and insights follow.

My inspiration came from my experience with the “Ithaca Hours” local currency in Ithaca, New York, where I lived in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ithaca Hours invigorated Ithaca’s local economy by facilitating barter. Ten dollars could be exchanged for one Ithaca Hour. If you spent an Hour you knew that the money would stay local to Ithaca, if not carried away as a souvenir, which was discouraged as bad for the economy. People could earn Hours by selling goods and services to those with Hours to spend. Additionally, one could “earn” the currency by advertising goods and services in the Hours directory. In other words, in this periodical, you were paid to advertise, not charged. This enticement stimulated production, and simultaneously put Hours into circulation.

I once thumbed through the Hours directory—then called Hour Town. It was much larger than one might expect. Many local individuals and businesses participated and it was clear to me that the program had indeed stimulated economic activity. I do not remember specifically, but people may have advertised music lessons, language lessons, tutoring, art work, crafts, bake goods, handyman services, yard work, photography, event planning, among many other things.

I made an Hour by selling some of my old books to a local used book store. I wanted to keep my Hour as a memento, but my girlfriend at the time insisted that I do my part for the local economy. So I played along by buying her smoothies at the vegan health bar near where we lived. Like many businesses in Ithaca that accepted Hours, they only accepted one quarter Hour per purchase; the rest had to be in dollars. So we got change and returned four times.

The idea of an exchange between buyer and seller as a hybrid between dollars and Hours is an important analogy for testing and illustrating Participatory Planning within capitalism. To make any alternative economy work, practicality is key. Obviously, the vegan health bar I patronized had expenses to pay in dollars, including wages for its employees. The employees, in turn, undoubtedly had to pay rent and other bills, presumably also in dollars. While I did hear of a progressive landlord who accepted at least part of his rent payment in Hours, that arrangement remained outside of the norm. Likewise, people involved in Participatory Planning within a capitalist economy will need to obtain goods and services from the capitalist economy. A test and illustration of Participatory Planning will involve an exchange of labor consistent with the values of Parecon, but it must also involve an exchange of dollars needed to pay market value for certain economic inputs required for production.

Here’s a simple example. Sally loves homemade banana bread, but doesn’t much care for baking it and instead would prefer to be outdoors mowing lawns. Joe would love someone to to mow his lawn, once in a while, and will happily tutor people in Spanish, in exchange. Jane is working through introductory Spanish and would be eager to apply her superb baking skills if it will help her learn the language. Sounds like a three-way match, doesn’t it?

Sally will pay cash to Jane for the flour, sugar, baking soda, and bananas she uses to bake the bread. Joe will pay cash to Sally for gas, and for the depreciation of Sally’s lawnmower. Jane will pay cash for her Spanish books. But how much each will work, and how much of the goods they will consume in exchange, can decided by Participatory Planning.

Now imagine a similar exchange among thousands of people, organized into beloved councils that take the place of Parecon’s consumer councils—plus some of the same people reorganized into producer councils and iteration facilitation boards. With such a structure, would it be possible to illustrate the basic paradigms of Parecon, specifically facilitated iteration toward a Participatory Plan, balanced job complexes, remuneration for labor according to effort and sacrifice, and decisions made by those affected? Such an experiment may prove more than academic: economic activity can bring tremendous benefit to those involved—especially to those who find themselves without jobs in our crushing capitalist economy. And it can be stimulating, fulfilling, rewarding, and sustaining for everyone involved.

Forging such a new economy must be similar to writing a computer program. You can immediately get an intuition that the project will work, but until you actually write the code, you have no idea what all the steps are. And just writing the code isn’t enough—you have to run the code to iron out all the bugs, before arriving at a solution that functions as you desire. But even before the first beloved council is convened, this project has value simply as a thought experiment. The first beloved councils can work together to refine these ideas and plan in their minds for this great experiment in reality. And to those who think participatory economics is “pie in the sky,” we can say that we now have the capacity to start building something beautiful today.

Of course, there remain many details to work out. Do we pay Sally for use of her lawnmower? Remuneration for ownership of property seems antithetical to the values of participatory economics. Perhaps we should insist that Sally and other participants donate the use of any capital brought to bear, but what if other lawn care specialists in the beloved federation do not own their equipment, and need to rent from the capitalist market? There are many ways this could be resolved and it is mostly a question of values versus practicality.

Not everyone participating in beloved councils will want to participate in alternative economics, but perhaps the movement will grow to sufficient size, anyway. One key feature that allowed the success of the Hours program was its fully legal status since its inception. Producers were liable for taxes on the Hours they earned. A local Ithaca institution, Alternatives Federal Credit Union, gave sizable loans in Hours. It would behoove any federation of beloved councils testing Participatory Planning to have lawyers make sure the t’s were crossed and the i’s were dotted, so that their operation could run in the clear. It is hard for me to imagine how such a program could be successful, otherwise. Of course, to the extent that Participatory Planning was deemed as threatening to elite interests, the legal status of the federation may become difficult to maintain. Perhaps, if the project had the backing of a large religious organization that already explicitly forbade or discouraged civil disobedience, there might be a chance.

Different federations could have different rules concerning what they allow, or what policy they have toward civil disobedience. One particular legal challenge will be to avoid breaking laws that prohibit “employing” undocumented immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere, especially when beloved councils deem turning away anyone in need inconsistent with the Will of Love and the Law of God. Following the unjust laws of our fractured world in this respect will become especially painful when excluding helpful people harms both them and everyone else involved with the project. But perhaps this beloved experiment will bring light to these issues.

Beloved Councils in a Fully-Formed Beloved Economy

I believe beloved councils should have a place in a fully-formed beloved economy. The same groups convened today can continue in some capacity, once the other features of Parecon are in place.

What role will these councils have? This question does not yet have a clear answer. Perhaps groups with a focus on ideas and strategy can address this question more thoroughly. For now, let me add my thoughts. I believe beloved councils can act as alternative consumer councils, in some respects. Specifically, in a fully-formed Belecon, individuals will be able to choose to have their individual consumption managed, not by their neighbors’ council, as in Parecon, but rather by a single beloved council—possibly one of several that they belong to. Additionally, beloved councils will also manage the collective consumption of their group. For instance, a beloved council may decide to purchase incense and hymnals to use during their gatherings. Of course, there would have to be coordination between consumer councils and beloved councils, with part of an individuals’ collective consumption rights going to both. For instance, an apartment building may want to renovate its playground, whereas a church may want to renovate its sanctuary.

Where would beloved councils get their consumption rights? The individual consumption rights they manage will of course come from the individuals. Likewise, the groups’ collective consumption rights will come solely from the tithes and donations of their members, or contributions of parent organizations. When creating the participatory plan, members will remain free to withdraw their support for the beloved council, and for the parent federation.

Maximizing Love, Fulfillment, and Forgiveness

We should not be surprised that privilege has such a hold on us. For as long as our ancestors lived as social animals, one of the best way for our genes to secure their continued existence in future generations was to help their hosts find privileged spots in society. Our genes program our egos to seek more wealth, and more control over others. The social environment in which we currently find ourselves is one where most actors in society seek to maximize privilege—and fight each other playing this zero-sum game.

This fight results in a small class of so-called “winners:” people who claim the “prize” of opulent wealth and luxury. Unfortunately, on the flip side of the same coin, we see resources denied or taken from substantially more people, including less wealthy, impoverished and even homeless. Beyond loss of resources, the losers in this game suffer countless indignities. But, in reality, no one really wins. Our lopsided distribution of wealth leaves everyone in society, wealthy or poor, stressed out that they may lose whatever privileges, large or small, they have. This constant struggle to stay afloat, often at each other’s expense, leaves humanity with an empty soul, and rips people into a self-created Hell of separation—separation from God and from each other. Indeed, circumstances, and the need to survive, often force to the Faustian table even the deeply spiritual, despite their disinclination to play this vicious capitalistic game.

That said, in our economy, privilege, wealth, and luxury are blessings, not anathemas. Indeed, surviving and contributing to the stewardship of our civilization both require a certain degree of “winning” in our economy. Under the present circumstances, I choose to play Capitalism, and I encourage like-minded souls to do the same. The game has pushed me to maximize my privileges, while struggling to hold on to what I already have. Today, we have several billion separate agents fighting each other to do the same thing. Can we envision a world where we come together to maximize love, fulfillment, and forgiveness?

The goal of changing society’s objective remains elusive, because our privilege can interact with our ego in the most toxic way imaginable. We remain creatures of instinct, and instincts can grip us. But for all our negative instincts, we have just as many prosocial ones: those for love, service, charity, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, solidarity and reconciliation. Now is the time to let go of our harmful heritage and embrace our positive one.

Why not maximize love, fulfillment, and forgiveness without changing our economy? Should we all agree to be angels, despite the existing incentives to the contrary? To a large extent, many people make this sacrifice already. So, should we push harder to get more people to cooperate? The trouble with this approach is that there will always be defectors, and defectors will invariable leverage their steadily increasing economic position and power to bend society further into a state which they find maximally “functional,” for them, while remaining totally dysfunctional for most everyone else. When the dust settles, the power-hungry defectors will continue to rule the land.

Belecon provides a way to change the social incentives to encourage us to follow our prosocial instincts. Or rather, with Belecon, there remains essentially no way to gain by exploiting others, leaving our positive inclinations to blossom. In Belecon, one’s economic position and power remains unchanged, relative to others, regardless of any instincts followed, bad or good. But one’s economic position can be increased absolutely, if at the same time, everyone else’s position increases symmetrically. Thus prosocial and self-serving instincts lead to the same behavior—maximizing love, fulfillment, and forgiveness for everyone.

In the short run, Belecon provides a way for people to come together to explore ways of implementing and pursuing an emerging shared vision. I hope people participate, and I hope that all who do find their participation rewarding and fulfilling. Moreover, I expect that participants will show respect for one another—avoiding judging each other for the sacrifices they do or do not make, regardless of wealth, position, or lack thereof. Ultimately, a decision to sacrifice is one between the individuals, their families, and their faiths, arrived at by deep thought, meditation, prayer, and divine guidance. A Beloved Council might wholeheartedly encourage such introspection. A Beloved Council can provide support, empathy, compassion and brainstorming for those who wish to awaken and act with courage to pursue common, prosocial goals. Indeed, when members of a group puts their heads together on a difficult problem, creativity multiplies. That said, sacrifice should never be coerced and group involvement should only come at the participant’s invitation.

I think that social change presents an opportunity for a “return on investment,” a process that should be more joyful than sacrificial. I believe that if the path forward required many to make huge sacrifices with little to no return, it would not lead very far. On the contrary, I believe many people, even the most privileged, will find participation rewarding, and not necessarily requiring sacrifice. Still, circumstances may move some to sacrifice, and such gestures can have tremendous beauty. That said, sometimes, one’s answer to the question “should I sacrifice?” can be “yes, but not yet.” The timing of sacrifices can become crucial to their effectiveness and common sense and divine guidance can both make all the difference here.

Many faith traditions teach us that God wants us to thrive and God wants us to be happy. The Christian tradition teaches us that Jesus sacrificed for us so that we would not have to. That said, no tradition considers fellowship a sacrifice. We must come together, joyously, to make something beautiful happen. As we synergize, we will atone for the sins of the past and start to live as the divinely created beings we are—living as God has always intended us to live.

Hope

I envision a global human society which functions for the benefit of all. People in this society work together for the common good, despite differing beliefs. Indeed, all of our current major faiths and philosophies remain alive and well in this world. Thus members of this imagined society include Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’is, Hindus, Humanists, Pagans, Agnostics, Atheists, Jains, and Unitarians-Universalists, among many others. Some in this society have identities that have not yet been defined. I imagine that cultures and belief systems have evolved symbiotic relationships with each other. The days of religious wars have forever passed. Indeed, the days of warfare of any kind have long since disappeared, but have not been forgotten. Culture, politics, economics, and religion continue to change as human society advances but society has discovered and embraced paradigms that allow change in the most helpful directions.

People in this society may not agree on the collective purpose of their lives. For some, their purpose may be to imitate God, to live by God’s Will, or to create God’s Kingdom; for others their purpose may simply be to allow the most fulfilling life possible for everyone alive. But despite disagreeing on the ends, everyone agrees on the means: peace, justice, freedom, compassion, unity, equity, reconciliation. I imagine that people want the best for everyone, including themselves and all others. No group recognizes an out group. Despite the fact that people belong to different sexes and sexual orientations, practice different religions, have different ancestry, and have different abilities, people see themselves and others, first, as human beings. All people recognize the human race as the primary group to which they belong. The insight that we are one people, despite our superficial differences, has become a central tenet of every major faith and philosophy. Thus belief systems have evolved, ever so slightly, to confer symbiosis with all other belief systems. Most people do not recognize that their belief systems have changed substantially. Nearly everyone considers these symbiotic interpretations of their faith to be what God and God’s Messengers intended all along.

Beyond tolerance, participation lies at the heart of my vision. As culture, politics, economics, and religion evolve in the most helpful directions, this process of evolution involves influence from every person on an equal basis with everyone else. No class or special interest group can exert undue power over the rest of society. People participate in making the decisions that affect their lives, whether cultural, political, economic or spiritual. In this world, democracy has taken on a new meaning: it means a substantial collaboration in governing society among all of the world’s population. I envision the entire human community managing its resources together in a wise, compassionate, equitable, and sustainable manner, with due participation from all its members. I imagine this beloved community striving together to understand our place in the universe, to discern the Will of God, to fulfill our destiny, to celebrate the miracle of life, and with utmost compassion, to attempt to diminish human suffering and provide the most fulfilling life possible for all human beings.

People in this hypothetical future society look back on their history, to our world, with horror, compassion, and resolve to never again let violence, greed, and hatred determine the course of human events. But they have difficulty fathoming how human society existed the way it does today. How, they imagine, could a rich class live in abundance while society forces so many others to suffer poverty? They hear, and perhaps understand, intellectually, that a flawed society can socialize a “normal” human being to think only of him or herself, to act violently, and to consider themselves as inherently different from others, but these outcomes seem completely foreign. Only the rare sociopath understands the emotional motivation behind these antisocial behaviors and beliefs. No one else has the experience to relate.

In this imagined society, human nature remains the same as in our society. Thus people still get angry and occasionally act with violence. Jealous lovers exchange hurtful words and people make bitter enemies. Back stabbing and backbiting still exist. Crime continues to haunt the members of this society, though much less so than it does the members of ours. But these unpleasantries remain rare and isolated. Organized violence no longer exists. Individuals sometimes cause minor harm to others, and occasionally more harm than minor. But groups do not cause harm because society allocates no resources to this end. No one can get rich by exploiting others or the planet. Indeed, no one can even make a living doing damage. The experience of having to choose between one’s soul and one’s livelihood seems completely alien to people in this society.

Despite the fact that few in this society can comprehend how we could have it so bad, more members of this society are able to relate to the basic human instinct that lies at the heart of our suffering today: our desire for privilege. Some feel that all things being equal it would be nicer to work fewer hours a year, have more pleasant work duties, consume more, and be able to tell others what to do. But for most, the thought of exploiting or harming others to achieve these ends seems to them like the thought of owning slaves seems to us today: patently wrong. And society leaves those who have such antisocial inclinations no avenue to express them, just as no one, in most circles, can own slaves, today.

The people within this society, our descendants, approach a common destiny. They discern the connections that bind them together. They treat their community as a single living organism that must be nurtured and protected in its entirety. They share common interests, as we do today, but unlike many of us, they actually know it and feel it. These insights do not come automatically. They come from careful socialization and from institutions that put everyone in the same boat.

Our descendants understand that privilege invariably interacts with human nature to destroy society. Their history, our history, teaches them that privilege arouses an intense desire to protect and expand the special status it confers, leading to a social instability. The more privilege a select group has, that others lack, the more need they feel for this perceived benefit and, making matters worse, the more power they have to pursue this spuriously felt need. Privilege, by turning common interests into special interests destroys social cohesiveness, decimates solidarity, and masks spiritual instincts for justice. Soon the entire society functions to please the sick compulsions of its elite class. This dysfunctional arrangement leads to exploitation, abuse, neglect, organized violence, unsustainable use of resources, and destruction of the capacity of our planet to support human society. Common sense teaches our descendants that if privilege were to return to their society, it would lead to immense suffering, and ultimately, if unchecked, to the extinction of the entire human race.

Our descendants work together with great zeal to protect their community from their base human instincts. They engineer diverse spiritual traditions, cultural mores, and economic and political institutions to foster equity, compassion, solidarity and reconciliation. They live by the mantra “we must never forget”. Just as, today, families of our Holocaust victims strive to remember the Holocaust, their whole human family strives, with the same vigor, to remember all the injustices and suffering of all human history. Meditating on the past reveals the miracle of our survival—the miracle of their life. We beat the odds for them and avoided the catastrophe that seemed almost inevitable. They vow to always remember and honor us, and to never let us down.

Notes