What would happen to someone who did not bother to fill out and submit consumption request forms for next year during the participatory annual planning process? It is not hard for me to imagine there would be people like this in a participatory economy. Being a lazy person myself, on several occasions I have not filed federal and state tax returns for the year, so far without negative repercussions. It turns out that if the government owes me, they are always happy to keep my money until I get around to filing a return asking for it back.
In a participatory economy my neighborhood consumption council could simply use my actual consumption last year as my new consumption request for this year, to be included with the consumption requests of all my neighbors when our neighborhood council submits its consumption request during annual participatory planning. If my income this year warrants this level of consumption, my request could be approved and included in the neighborhood proposal. If my income this year is not sufficient to pay for the bundle I consumed last year, and if I continue to ignore requests to submit proposals, my neighborhood council could simply reduce every item in my consumption last year by the same percentage until the reduced request is covered by my income this year. In this way neighborhood consumption councils, who must submit proposals during the annual planning procedure, can do what they must do even if irresponsible members fail to submit individual proposals.
At the end of our dialogue book, Alternatives to Capitalism, Erik Olin Wright seems to understand how signaling necessary information to producers and making adjustments during the year when consumers change their minds can work in a participatory economy. Erik wrote:
Production…in effect would be done pretty much as… now. Producers would examine the sales and trends of sales in the recent past and make their best estimate of what to produce…on that basis. Indeed, since producers and their federations can continually and efficiently monitor these trends, they are in a position to make updates to plans in an on-going way on the basis of the actual behavior of consumers, rather than mainly organize their planning activities around annual plans animated by uninformative household pre-orders.
This is accurate enough, although I don’t see why Erik dismissed household pre-orders as “uninformative.” They certainly provide worker councils and industry federations more useful information at the start of the year than the much more limited information market systems provide producers about changes in consumer intentions.
In sum: From year-to-year consumers’ incomes change, and consumers’ desires change. Signaling producers about how these changes are likely to affect consumers’ demands for different goods and services is what pre-ordering is for, and why it is quite useful for producers. Necessary details can be filled in from consumer profiles and actual purchases during the year, and adjustments can be negotiated with the aid of instantaneous inventory supply line prompts at the disposal of worker councils and federations. But just because pre-ordering is not done in extreme detail, and just because people change their minds during the year, does not mean the planning process is pointless.
If we want consumers to influence what is produced in the economy, and if we are going to decide what is produced in large part through a planning procedure, then we need consumers to provide their best guesses about what they will want. We don’t need them to agonize over their proposals. We don’t need their proposals to be incredibly detailed. And we certainly can accommodate them when they change their minds.
I think that consumption patterns are fairly consistent from one year to the next. As a start what needs to be flagged by individual households is any major changes. For example if an elderly couple sold their home to a family of four with two pets etc then this is a big change especially if the newcomers are from another state. Only major purchases should be flagged such as if someone wanted to buy a new car or renovate their home. I believe that the demographic profile of a neighborhood would dictate what is needed overall. For example as children age their needs differ. That kind of information is probably all you would need overall to estimate what to produce.