("PARECON" is an economic system that closely resembles Socialism)

One of the ideas behind PARECON is that people will consume less, due to a lack of marketing, which means that they will have to work less. I do not see this as being particular to PARECON. That when you consume less, less work is required of you is true under our current economic system, as “curly haired” Chris pointed out a month ago. PARECON’S effect of making commercials obsolete will do nothing more than make TV more bearable. The kind of economic system that we need is one that encourages efficiency. It is not up to the individual whether or not their economy is efficient, as opposed to how much we consume.

Efficiency is one of the most important factors in an economy. It is, one way or another, beneficial to the market. For example, if a publishing house becomes more efficient, say by lowering their costs, they will, of course, begin making more money than before. There are a few different things that could follow as a result. They could of course then afford to lower the cost of their publications, which would in turn save their customers money, and even make available their publications to those who before could not have afforded them. Another possible outcome would be that they would expand their business, which would of course make more jobs, and the more jobs we have the more the workload will be spread (surey there has to be a limit to how much goods we humans can want), which would, theoretically, mean that we have less work to do. The only thing they could do that wouldn’t benefit the economy would be to hoard the money, but no one would do that for it’s not even beneficial for one’s self. Basically the point is this; efficiency grows the market.

Now maybe I missed an important element, but as far as I can remember, PARECON in no way encourages efficiency. If this is true, even if all the jazz about giving everyone equal opportunity is legit, PARECON still doesn’t encourage growth of any kind. So basically we would be poor but equal, just like those in Communist Countries.

Note: The whole idea of efficiency growing the economy is not mine. It's been around for some time and is believed by many people. I was just merely applying the idea to PARECON.

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