Objections

1. "It is impossible".

2. "It makes unrealistic assumptions about human behaviour".

3. "Deciding how different people are affected isn't possible".

...further objections will be considered shortly...

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1. “It is impossible”.

The most basic and widespread objection to a project like this is just a sort of generalized incredulity. It is impossible, pointless, utopian, of no use practically and going nowhere.

These can (and will, below) be looked at as distinct objections, but it is important to recognize that there is a context in which they are giving expression to something more fundamental and deep rooted, and that as such they are just indifferent articulations of the same sentiment: a blank scepticism. To this objector, it is instantly obvious that the project is a nutty, irrelevant waste of time. An amateur attempting to build a nuclear reactor, or a demand that the world give up drinking alcohol, are on the same plane – the details are irrelevant, it is obviously not going to happen.

What response is there to this? To some degree no counter-argument is going to satisfy this objector – any argument chain that overturned the point must ipso facto have something wrong with it. Still, some voicing this objection may listen to a defense. And to some degree, doubt cannot fail to be present in every mind (indeed should be), no matter how ardent or sure they are. So it is worth discussing.

The disbelief mutely communicated in this objection can be discursively expressed: the extent of the change required in order to bring into being the proposed economic system is so colossal, the depth of the alterations in ways of doing things so fundamental, and the will to effect any such changes so minuscule, that it is not in realm of the politically or socially or historically possible.

Of course, it must be admitted that what is, or seems socially possible, varies hugely. In developed countries in the past 100 years, wars, revolutions, and fundamental shifts in the legal status of large groups (black people, women, those allowed to vote) have taken place, as have very basic changes in the lifestyle and living standards of most of their populations, driven by technological progress. Few of these profound shifts, though, had been widely predicted or even countenanced beforehand. The sense of social possibility is a funny thing. Projections into the future draw for the most part upon recent experience, so that in a relatively quiet age, judgment about the degree of stability is likely to be exaggerated. Since we in the West live in such an age, we must admit that our inductive sense may not be a reliable guide concerning the degree of possible variability in the basic social structure.

This response is unlikely to satisfy the objector. Both the observations, on recent history and on the tendencies for cognitive distortion, may be granted as perfectly true. But all that this establishes is an abstract, ungrounded fact of possibility. The same sense of possibility is in play when we contemplate ourselves winning the lottery, or if we imagine that the worst team in a sports league might just win the title this year. We are trading on the fact that these events cannot be conclusively ruled out, and that our minds find it difficult to turn mathematical or empirical assessments of probability into a firm and concrete picture of how the world will be in the future.

Furthermore, in retrospect it becomes clear that the cited events of history exemplifying radical changes of basic parameters, did not occur as the historical equivalent of the impact of meteors - appearing out of the blue and with no wider explanatory preconditions. Under analysis, behind all these major shifts, powerful historical changes are revealed to have been operating, in their slow, invisible and inexorable way.

By contrast – the objection continues - Angel Economics is either contrary, or in fact just completely tangential to the direction of historical development. Moreover, whereas the desired historical precedents are nine tenths the result of unconscious changes, what is being proposed is a programme that would need to be consciously and intentionally implemented by billions of people. This is a fundamental distinction, rendering those comparisons null.

In short, a rational, adult, informed grasp of historical reality is capable of telling us in broad terms what may occur (even if it cannot tell us what will). And so informed, we can see that Angel Economics is about as likely as Albania becoming the dominant world superpower.

But this is not true. Elsewhere on this blog, a detailed analysis devoted to the question of how Angel Economics might be brought about will focus on these questions - of the broad, deep historical forces that may be counted in its favor, of the more contemporary issues and developments that likewise point toward its possibility, of the social and political constituencies that might rally behind it because it gives expression to their interests, and of the established movements that articulate social changes they wish to see, which closely mesh with Angel Economics. We can anticipate this discussion a little. Among the deep trends may be counted the following.

i) The ever-increasing interconnection among businesses over the world, and the inexorable growth in size of huge multinational conglomerates, is swallowing up the space in which true market relations actually exist. While large corporations often establish internal quasi-markets, and in any case operate according to norms very alien to Angel Economics, this nevertheless represents a growth – persisting now for hundreds of years – of humans cooperating collectively in the organization of their affairs.

ii) The long-term rise in the level of general education. While it would have been ludicrous to imagine the bulk of peasant farmers of 100 years ago being able to contribute intelligently to matters concerning the general conduct of economic affairs, today, decades of universal education, the proliferation of media, and the demands of work in the modern world, have instilled in virtually the whole population, the necessary elements for rational debate and intelligent coordination.

iii) Somewhat relatedly, the spread of democracy and equality as at least ideals, has an inexorable quality to it. From the spread of print, through the institution of universal suffrage, to developments brought about by the internet, there is a clear historical trend towards human beings having an equal say in the running of their lives. Every day, a new manifestation of this trend is reported. It can only be a matter of time before these ideals are properly actualized.

iv) There are also a lot of smaller trends, from the rise in the use of a great number of economic indicators beyond measures of GDP, to the mania on the part of large organizations for their clients or customers to participate in their product design and service provision (even if this is largely tokenistic at present) which relate more specifically to features of Angel Economics.

As for more immediate developments, one can mention the increasingly apparent crisis-ridden nature of the capitalist system, global warming and the more general degradation of the environment, and the unyielding persistence of a whole range of social problems, from alcoholism to socially attributable mental illness, to serious poverty and malnourishment within developed countries; these and many other systemic problems all press home the rationality of a case for a change of the economic system. Even within the mainstream, such calls exist quite widely.

As for the constituency whose objective interests align them with Angel Economics, this is the easiest of these cases to make. It is literally almost everybody. They stand to gain, because at the moment almost everybody is closed out from important decisions, and is forced to live a needlessly harsh, boring, stunted life. Were Angel Economics or similar schemes generally known, it is likely that they would command massive support.

Of course, something being in a person's interest is one thing; their recognition of that is quite another. It is the job of social movements to bring about that recognition. And here too, Angel Economics could draw on a very wide and diverse constituency, because it either articulates the ideals of such movements, or draws their goals into a wider framework. Anarchists and socialists would find much of the content of their ideal society within Angel Economics; conservatives who lament such things as the forgetting of heritage, the decline of manners, or the thoroughgoing destruction of long-practiced ways of life by the acid of commercialism, would welcome the effects of many of the structures proposed; environmentalists would likewise see that such a system would be the most potent change that could take place to alter our relation to the natural world; educationalists of many different stripes would surely support the ideals of hugely expanded time for learning, life-long opportunities to study, and a generally raised level of education; the fair trade movement can see in it an expansion of their notion of 'fairness' in economic transactions; scientists, especially those campaigning for greater public understanding, those willing for better, more comprehensive research, or those pushing for radical technological exploration, would all find their ideals amply fulfilled under Angel Economics; artists who resent commercial pressures, are stifled by public illiteracy, and who are generally strangled by the difficulties of earning a living within capitalism would surely welcome it; the transition town movement would see many of their ideas transferred to the realm of the economy as a whole; the cooperative movement likewise; the alternative currency movement likewise. And this is just a taste.

So – to summarize the counterargument in the last few paragraphs – the historical/political weight that could be drawn upon in support of Angel Economics is not at all as flimsy as the objection supposes; nor is the economic structure it outlines, as far removed – and therefore as great a leap - from the present system and its developmental trends, as it may seem at first blush. (Of course, the case remains to be made in full).

As an addendum, it is worth pointing out a crucial difference between Angel Economics and some of the economic ideals that have been proposed within the environmental movement to underline this point.

Quite a few authors, representing a large strain of opinion within the green movement, have proposed that the only possible (and for some, the only desirable) solution to the environmental- and associated social catastrophes scarring modern society, is a complete destruction of its basic foundations, and their replacement with simpler, older, more natural roots. A cluster of associated prescriptions follow (not necessarily found together, but often in broadly similar company): small settlements; the abolition of the international division of labor with its associated shipping, air travel, large multinationals, and heavy trade; the abolition of the growth imperative; organic agriculture, permaculture, non-extensive farming; renewable energy; local currencies; natural medicine; vegetarianism; a simplified life; real communities.

Individually, these ideas are sensible. The type of projects in which they tend to issue are often inspiring and life-affirming. And as correctives to the 'industrial' character that capitalism infuses into every pore of life, they are motivated by a laudably humane impulse. But in its more radical, systematic form - primitivism - a vision is articulated which would require the practical abolition of modern society. This can seem enormously attractive, and is undeniably powerful, rich, and rational in the evidence it can marshal. But as a program to be pursued on a general scale it has almost no hope of being realized, because it contradicts so many deeply held human traits and so many powerful social forces.

It is important to see – for the purposes of answering the objection presently under consideration – that Angel Economics is rather different in this respect. It is still a vision of an ideal. But it does not require, as its fundamental precondition, a total transformation in human Being.

In summary, the 'incredulity' objection by no means possesses the kind of obvious, overwhelming weight of rationality that the objector supposes. This is important, because that perspective is profoundly disabling. The function of the response to that objection is not to establish that Angel Economics is 'correct', or an inevitability, but that it it may be worth study, reflection, revision, promotion and implementation. The practical difficulties are large, but they are only like all practical difficulties.

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2. “It makes unrealistic assumptions about people's behaviour”.

At several points in Angel Economics, statements are made about how people 'will' or 'would be likely to' behave. And their behaving in the ways assumed are a critical component of the viability of the system. If they don't act in the ways supposed, it will not work.

There are three key areas involved.

First, it is assumed that people would for the most part take only what they need, and more generally approach their personal consumption 'sensibly', in a situation where all items of personal use are free, and where there is no link between work and income.

Second, it is assumed that people would work, despite the fact that there is no necessity for them to do so since as just mentioned, all items of personal consumption are freely available.

Third, it is assumed that people would take an interest in, and be capable of rationally discussing, matters relating to the economic regulation of areas of society in which they have involvement.

To some, these are ludicrous assumptions to make, or simply naive. Still, there will be plenty of others who find them plausible and inspiring. Who is correct?

Before discussing this, it is important to note that they refer only to what would occur for the most part. The occurrence of a few people grabbing whatever they come across, or being lazy, or attempting to shout down the other participants in a discussion, does not count as a refutation of the assumptions, because the system would still work perfectly well under those circumstances. Only if it is the case that people would in general act contrary to the assumptions, would it be problematic.

It does not take someone of great insight and learning to point out that, as of today, the general population appears to contradict these assumptions at every turn. The scrambled dash to the department-store shelves when the sales begin does not bespeak of a balanced, controlled attitude towards personal consumption, but rather of a mania to get as much as possible for oneself before anyone else. Anyone who works today, would laugh at the thought of their continuing to do so if they didn't have to. And do not phone-ins, Jerry Springer, and the millions upon millions of inane blogs out there, prove that far from being rational, most people are dumb, squawking, prejudiced idiots?

Obviously, though, we are considering how people are capable of behaving in a set of circumstances that is quite different to that of today. People are capable of murdering each other in their millions - as has been proven by the countless wars of human history – but this does not count as a 'proof' that arranging a dinner party, in which people need to be civil and friendly to one-another, is a futile effort. The question is whether the qualities required by Angel Economics are widely distributed enough, and robust enough where they do exist, to sustain an economy based on them

Now, the exchange of strongly-held opinions on this question could continue forever, with little progress. We need to consider what kind of evidence would be capable of giving us an answer to it one way or the other. We might start by turning to the human sciences. Empirical sociological or psychological evidence is, of necessity, focused on observable traits, and logically this means that it can provide certain knowledge only about humans as they exist today. Of course, by observing people in different situations, testing underlying capacities, designing artificial experimental situations, extrapolation, analysis and so on, it becomes possible to say a certain amount about humans 'in general' and therefore to predict how they might behave under different circumstances. But these predictions are very shaky. The human sciences are still in a primitive condition and any argument to the effect that Angel Economics was either definitely possible or definitely impossible, which based itself upon sociological or psychological evidence, would be a mere rhetorical exercise.

Anthropology has been a traditional resort for others facing this difficulty. It studies other cultures, so here we do get rich empirical evidence of human behavior under a variety of social systems. But is it really able to give us an answer to our question? It would be overly flippant to say that Anthropology can tell us nothing, but equally, everyone can relate to feeling that there is a certain inconclusiveness about learning that this or that ancient Polynesian tribe share all their produce, or, alternatively, have strict property rights and a custom of murdering those who infringe them. The relevance of such facts to 21st century people is limited – suggestive, certainly, but not much more than that.

Rather than straining for conclusive empirical evidence, it might be thought far more sensible to relax our standards somewhat, and draw upon examples from history or wider society to form an idea of what seems likely. The problem with this – the natural method for everybody, cobbling together a view of human nature – is that every example has a counterexample, or differing interpretations, so that personal predisposition becomes the deciding factor in whether someone believes in the possibility of an economy founded on certain assumptions about human capacities. Thus for example, Wikipedia or open-source software can be cited as a case in which people freely give their time to work for something for which they receive no direct reward; and also as an example of the rational and constructive potential of people manifesting itself. But a critic is quite justified in pointing out the flaws in these projects, and can make a convincing case that underneath them are human failings that would also scupper an economy that extrapolated from them. And they can of course point to examples of their own.

What is the rational response to this situation, of apparent ineliminable uncertainty? Surely, it is to test out, on an initially small scale, the model and its predictions about how its participants would behave. This is the approach we adopt in other cases where we are unsure, and where there is the potential for things to go wrong; and there doesn't seem any reason to think this case is different. Such an approach allows us to easily fix faults that would only appear when the system is put into practice, limits the dangers of the enterprise, and allows everybody an opportunity to observe and come to a conclusion about its desirability. The heroic disasters of the 20th century recommend this caution, just as much as the dreadful characteristics of the present system press us to be adventurous.

To some degree of course there have already been tests, since Angel Economics intentionally embodies the characteristics of a number of actual projects, past and present. Again, this is typical – to have many try-outs of different elements, followed by refinements, followed by attempts at piecing them together into a more complex, composite whole.

In summary, then, this objection is actually fairly well-motivated, insofar as it is insisting that we do not know with any certainty whether Angel Economics would be workable. If the claim is any stronger than that – that it cannot work – however, it seems simply an assertion based on a personal proclivity, since there is no evidence on which it could be based.

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3. "Deciding how different people are affected isn't possible".

Actual Objection: One of the troubles I've had with your descriptions of Angel Economics in general, which comes up in this post, is the notion of "the degree of your say... is determined by the degree to which you are affected by the outcome." It seems like the degree to which you are affected by the outcome is not an easy thing to measure, and there's no agreed-upon way to put a number on it -- so translating it into a number of votes (which it seems like you're talking about) is a tricky proposition.

Who's more affected by the outcome of a decision on whether to close a farm: the person who works on the farm, the person who lives where the farm's waste is dumped, or the person who eats the food grown? The best I could say is, "They're all affected a lot, and all of their voices should count more than, say, the person who lives down the road but likes to go for walks sometimes." But how much more? Twice as much? Five times as much? Among them, should some voices count more than others?

Included in the category of decisions that are political rather than technical, and should therefore be left up to democracy rather than experts/"statistical models," is the question of how to weight the effects of decisions on different people.

So then in that decision (the decision of how to assign votes to different people), the people who are most affected by the results should get to decide -- but the people who are most affected by vote allocation are precisely the people who are most affected by the final vote. It seems to me like it's elephants all the way down.

The only way to get past this that I've seen is to reject the very notion that you can compare values by quantifying them -- which, I think, implies rejecting the idea of voting, since the allocation of votes is based precisely on the numerical valuation of people's interests.

There is something that can replace voting -- deliberation and consensus. It's more difficult, and takes longer, but I worry that the "quick fix" of voting risks replicating some of the evils of capitalism by implying that values can be compared numerically, and there's some pseudo-objective way of comparing those values.

The preface to this response would be to accept that consensus decision-making should probably be the preferred means of deciding matters where possible. Consensus decision-making has developed within the spheres most affected by arbitrary power (feminists, the anarchist left), among those most concerned to oppose it with its opposite – understanding, appreciation of others’ point of view, rational discussion, and so on. It’s also very ancient, and belongs to a way of seeing the world where people are not indifferent monads, and where agreements are not mere legal documents. In the description of the system, consensus is mentioned in the context of a small workplace (of, say, 10 people), but could doubtless be applied elsewhere.

But can it be applied everywhere? Is consensus, in any meaningful sense, going to be possible among, say, 30 million people who are trying to decide whether to build an array of solar panels across a large expanse of land in which they live? That would mean every one of those 30 million people agreeing upon the final course of action, and no action being taken unless and until there was such agreement. This seems impossible. If there is some means by which in fact it is possible, or if the matter has been wrongly framed, I’d like to know; but that’s how I see things.

So the rule would be (that is, the rule that you’d expect people to adopt who lived in social freedom) – use consensus decision-making wherever possible, and other forms most like it where not.

Also, it should be pointed out that deliberation is distinct from consensus decision-making. Deliberation would be an intrinsic part of all decision-making forms in Angel Economics.

A second prefatory point would be to draw attention to the fact that the ‘technology of democracy’ is just another of those domains which is massively under-investigated, just as with inventions which improve the condition of unpleasant work, or applications of the physical sciences not having to do with either war, commerce, or luxuries of the rich. There are lots of political-science studies on voting procedures, and even quite a bit of research on other modes of decision-making. But the virtual absence of real-world experimentation in these forms (except among radical groups, where the surrounding circumstances are often very far from ideal), means that we know very little about how it all works in practice (and, incidentally, shows up all those GoodThinkers’ eulogies to our wonderful democracies for what they really are). So everything said below will inevitably suffer from the formalism and seeming abstruseness that affects all things which aren’t actually practiced.

Finally – it will all inevitably sound enormously complicated when it is being reflected on theoretically. But actual social practice concatenates extremely complicated things into day-to-day habits and occurrences that take seconds, both in the sense that people find shortcuts and simplified procedures, and also in the sense that behaviour itself is, so to speak, a compressor of information. This needs stressing, because the standard objection to deliberative-democratic means of organizing is that it all just takes too long. This is false. It is also a bit rich, when coming from defenders of a system, a considerable fraction of which is occupied simply in the management of money and other related tools, in one form or another (not to mention managing the disasters that its use engenders).

Anyway, so, to answer the objection:

One. There is no question of our carving at the joints, here. That is to say, there isn’t a Right Answer in any strong way, in the mind of God so to speak, in the sense in which there is a right answer to the issue of the pressure of a volume of gas, to a crossword puzzle, or even to the status of someone’s brain-activity. And, with more force, there is certainly not a correct set of numbers or ratios, which purport to specify the relative degrees of how much people are affected. How much people are affected by something, isn’t like this.

But I think the crucial point would be that it doesn’t follow that it’s arbitrary. Some people are more affected than others, pretty plainly. And (this is a further contention) it is objective enough, that though discussion about the matter one can reasonably expect progress towards general agreement about this.

Thus, in the example given, I would simply take up the challenge. I think that the person who works on the farm would be most affected, because presumably the farm occupies a substantial portion of their life. The person who lives where the farm waste is dumped (of course, we won’t be doing this!!) is, let’s assume, pretty substantially negatively affected by the continued existence of the farm (or at least this practice), but the magnitude of this isn’t quite as great – there is a bad smell during some months of the year, and it’s an eyesore, but it actually only impinges on their consciousness from time to time. The person who eats the food grown, we might suppose, has other sources of food, in which case they are (I would say) least affected. To be clear: I’m saying that I think that these people would come up with this ranking.

Two. Because of this, I believe it is sufficient, as a starting-point or philosophical ground, to say that people, pretty much, are as affected by something as they say they are; and, as a secondary corrective, as much as other people say they are. And discussion is the solvent that (to mix metaphors) shakes this all out.

It is relevant to point out here that in Angel Economics (as, in fact, in any developed economic system), if you follow through the links connecting different production-chains, and also bear in mind concepts like opportunity cost, then, at least indirectly, you are affected by everything that happens. But because your time is limited, you involve yourself only in those things which most affect you, relatively, and only to the extent that you can actually be bothered. This throws up the spectres of the Busybody, who is Very Affected By A Lot Of Things (they maintain, with quivering nostrils), or their opposite, the Politicopath, who just doesn’t get involved in anything. In both cases, the combined opinion of other people would assume a larger role, in the former case maybe by censuring this individual somewhat, in the latter, maybe by trying to encourage them, or even substituting for them by giving them some kind of imputed representation. But these are details.

How much somebody is affected by something (and how much they feel themselves to be affected by something) is a slippery little fish, of course. Whims, changes of mind, moods etc, all come into play. But the ‘something’ is not immune from complication either. The scenarios which form the basis of decisions, and give rise to people being affected, are plastic. Thus, in the example given, maybe it is not an either/or matter of the farm closing or staying open. Maybe almost every conceivable permutation is a practical possibility.

This makes the job of deciding how much you might be affected by the different possibilities, more complex. But There Is Always A Solution. One of the great uses to which the new technology of high-resolution computer simulations could be put, is in helping people to get a decent feel for what different hypothetical scenarios would actually look like, so that they are better able to compare them. (There’s nothing inherently wrong with the current dominant use these simulations - for being an Orc on a Quest...but might an outsider not think that people today haven’t quite got their priorities right?). Other techniques could also be used. Statistical modelling could be done to see what people in similar scenarios did, and how different groups felt about it. And so on.

This might all seem like overkill. Of course, people aren’t stupid, and wouldn’t crank up the World Simulator to decide whether Mrs Jones at number 62 can have a tree in her garden. But for something like a huge infrastructure project, the matter is different – even today, such simulations are regularly used in these cases. (Sometimes, those affected are even allowed a say).

Three. This basis of objective agreement probably won’t be perfect. But I suspect the ways in which it diverged from perfection (= full mutual agreement on who is affected and how much) would have some kind of regularity. To each case there would correspond an appropriate procedure.

In some cases you might need judges (elephant-stoppers), who would draw (reasonable) lines in the sand, and say what is on either side of those lines. Countenancing this possibility will cause some people to feel disappointment, because it seems like the introduction of Authority, and that feels contrary to the spirit of the system. I appreciate this perspective. One can institute procedures to ensure that, for example, the place of such judges is always under democratic control, or that they barred from the possibility of accumulating power (maybe they are selected by lot, after the style of ancient Athens with its councillors. Or maybe the judge is actually a group of people from an outside district). These safeguards won’t be perfect, but neither are they nothing.

In other cases, maybe mediators would be used. The whole thing – people trying to agree how much they are affected – is a species of ‘human relating’, and it is known that there are techniques which aid in this. Mediation today is a growing means of the resolution of disputes as an alternative to a court case, and is a professional activity.

In still other cases, maybe one would refer to examples from other similar scenarios. Just as in the matter of envisaging alternative possibilities, contact with other cases would educate people, and allow them better to understand each other. In other cases, it might actually be possible to refer to scientific evidence. That is, there may be some cases where in fact someone is just plain wrong that they are going to be hugely affected. Their insistence that how they feel is apodictic, and cannot be gainsaid, is overruled. This is violent, and a last resort; but you can see it happening.

Four. This basis of objective agreement among people about how much they are affected by something is distinct from the technical procedure that allows this to be enacted/translated into a decision. One such procedure might be, as the objector says, the assignment of numerical values to different groups, based on how greatly they are affected, which weights their vote. I won’t pretend I don’t wince here. A central contention of Angel Economics is that today commodities are compared based on numerical values which purportedly represent their ‘value’, as a quantity; but that in fact there is nothing common to these things which is capable of being compared in this manner, and that therefore the economy essentially operates on an irrational foundation. (And further, that this is the root of some rather profound problems). And yet here, in a central institution of Angel Economics, the same metaphysical absurdity is being recommended! Such things as feelings, opinions, wishes, are being turned into numbers. But what is “I don’t think that’s appropriate” divided by “I feel excited by that” to the power “This seems a typical instantiation of conservatism”?!

I don’t know that there is a fully satisfactory defence, here. Various things can be said, but maybe it is just waffle. Until somebody comes up with a calculus of opinion – that is, a means of adequately representing such things as opinions and beliefs in formal terms, such that large numbers of them can then be manipulated to see how they interact, and translated into one large composite opinion that is the objective result of their combination – we are just going to have to make do with the pathetic human contrivances that we can think up. The Gods will laugh at the comedy of us using our absurd little Procedures with such solemnity; but maybe we can do enough to get along?

One thing which can be done is to run a vote with a given set of weightings, and see the result this gives, and then consult whether people felt the whole thing was fair, in light of the results. It looks like there is a circularity here, but the point of this would be to discover how weighting generally works. From this, rules could be worked out. Or indeed, you could run the vote several times, with progressive adjustments of the weightings in light of people’s expressed concerns. Iterating the procedure a number of times in this way could actually be a means of ameliorating the effect of putting opinions into numbers, because it is the result, rather than the numbers themselves, that are being the determinant factor here.

Another procedure would be to get rid of weightings entirely, and rather divide the participants into, say, two categories. In the ‘primary’ category (those most affected), they debate the matter and vote on it. Those in the ‘secondary’ or ‘peripheral’ category then have the power to amend, make other suggestions, block with a sufficient majority, and so on.

With this, the divisions of participants are coarser, and you retain a problem about who belongs in which category, but you are at least not committing the mistake of thinking that, in order to accurately reflect a structure at the social level (gradations in how much people are affected), your decision-procedure must look the same in structural terms (gradations of voting weight). There is probably something rather naive about this.

Whatever we end up with, it is imperfect, or to be more exact, arbitrary. Certainly, it is not completely satisfying to be in this situation. But actually, Angel Economics is full of such compromises. It would be ideal not to have a division of labour, in light of the many problems it causes. But it is also impossible. So, a compromise is followed. It would be better not to have experts, since they can abuse their knowledge position, they can be wrong, and so on. But again, this is unrealistic. And so you have systems that integrate democratic decisions with expertise. And so on.

These four points give us a decision. They will not be applicable to all cases. I think there would be some matters where this general approach breaks down, because people disagree too fundamentally. Three points:

First, I think that these would be a relatively small set. A sufficiently large majority would be like the farm example, that you can base the general outline of the economic model on this, and deal with the other set as special cases.

Second, with these special cases, you simply follow a different procedure. Maybe consensus, maybe something else. In my eyes, this is a detail, a hubcap to polish after we’ve sorted out that our vehicle has a functioning engine.

Third, as a last resort, there is the move to parallel economies. The structure Angel Economics describes the interactions among people who agree sufficiently, over the whole range of economic activity, that they conduct their affairs mutually, and without coercion. Where people radically disagree about some matter which has an unavoidably large effect on the running of the economy, they may simply choose to split off – that is, they do not engage in the practice of participatory planning with each other. This is a last resort, but a theoretically consistent one, and is surely better than the only alternative: violence.

Non-monetary coordination

At the heart of any economic model is its system of distribution or allocation: How is it decided and organized what resources go where? More than anything else, this is what makes different models distinctive.

Speaking very broadly, under capitalism there is no overall control. Instead, the allocation of resources is determined by the fluctuation of prices. In theory, this results in resources being directed to those products and services for which there is most demand (high demand for a good raises its price; this increases the potential profits to be gained from investing in its production; such investment continues, and through competition the price drops, until supply matches demand) although the reality is rather different. Under most communist systems that existed, by contrast, a plan was drawn up for the whole economy by a small number of people, using information gathered by an official bureaucratic agency. Production and consumption then proceeded in accordance with this plan.

The system of economic distribution/allocation in existence within a society is very important. It is not an exaggeration to say that this will determine its parameters – the overall level of production, social justice, the plight of the disadvantaged, waste, economic vibrancy, and on and on – more than any other single factor.

Angel Economics has a number of different elements to its system of distribution: i) the use of natural units of account; ii) information agencies collecting and supplying economic data; iii) experienced handlers of arrays of the economic data pertaining to specific fields making judgments about the best use of resources in given circumstances; iv) democratic forums taking economic decisions.

This entry describes in more detail how these elements fit together in Angel Economics' system of economic coordination.

* * *

It will help, in visualizing how the system works, to give a brief birds-eye description of what it might look like in a geographical sense.

So, we might imagine a small region having strewn about it, just as today, a great number and variety of different workplaces, producing all manner of different things – factories producing plastic bottles, brick-making plants, manufacturers of windmill blades, institutes researching livestock use, egg farms, wood sawing mills, and on and on.

(The specifics as to what would be produced under Angel Economics and how it might differ from today can be left aside in this discussion of economic structure).

There will also, of course, be a lot of people resident within the region. Again, probably in patterns similar to today – some collected together in towns, some relatively isolated in the countryside.

(Angel Economics would be likely to have a significant effect on settlement patterns but here too, the details are relatively unimportant for the present discussion).

Also spread throughout the region will be a great number and variety of democratic forums. (These are institutions rather than physical structures, of course. But to aid visualization, it will help to think of them geographically). Every workplace has one. Every neighborhood and locality has one. The region as a whole has one. And there are also likely to be forums between the level of the workplace/neighborhood and that of the region, which focus upon specific sectors (like farming or publishing, for example) or groups of people (the elderly, groups with a common interest).

The region will also have its information agency (quite possibly with smaller branches dotted around in particular locations, or more specific branches relating to particular sectors). Whatever its specific location, all the information it produces is available to everybody.

Finally, we should mention the people with experience of the economic situation relating to particular goods, sectors, and locations. Again, they will have no particular location, traveling simply to where they are needed, although it may help to think of them as attached geographically to their particular 'economic object'.

To complete this sketch, its worth making a remark about how this hypothetical region is likely to stand in relation to other regions and the wider world, from an economic perspective.

Regions can either be relatively self-contained, producing most of what they need from within their borders, or they can be merely part of a world-wide system of production, in which what is produced at any particular location is unimportant. Most economies lie somewhere between these extremes, with the history of the past centuries of capitalism involving, ever more, a move towards the latter: today, while there is still a surprising amount of economic activity confined within small geographic regions, as a rule, firms tend to draw their inputs from the world over, and consumers likewise.

There are a number of reasons why a certain degree of worldwide interconnection is a good idea. Mineral resources, for example, are not equally distributed around the globe, nor is productive farming land; the concentration of a large workforce, and technical specialization, within a few large workplaces around the world, can improve efficiency; hubs that collect together many people pursuing similar activities (like Silicon Valley in California, or the CERN complex in Switzerland) can be very dynamic.

But on the other hand, there are also reasons why an amount of local autonomy is important, and why a global organization of production is problematic. If a region produces a lot of what it needs, it becomes less vulnerable to any disturbances that may affect the distant regions producing the goods it would otherwise be dependent upon – it provides 'ecological stability'; shipping goods over long distances uses a lot of fuel, and a great deal of logistical infrastructure, making it both inefficient and a big source of carbon emissions; dropping humans into vast organizations which have little connection to their location, or to the communities surrounding them, ignores our natural need to be able to relate to our institutional homes, and become involved in the environment in which we live.

So, we should imagine our hypothetical region to incorporate elements of both these tendencies (the specific form depending upon what its inhabitants democratically decide). Many workplaces will have a great number of links to other workplaces and individuals outside the region; but equally, we might imagine that in much of its food production, energy generation and low-level manufacturing it is relatively autonomous.

*

Having gotten a picture of how things might look on a map, lets turn to the structural elements of the economy, beginning with the system of natural units.

Consider a saucepan. It is a fairly simple product, yet of course it still incorporates a great number of different resources and labor processes. Its main body will be made of a metal, such as aluminium, steel, iron or copper, which may in turn be coated with another material such as a porcelain enamel, or teflon. It will have a handle made of plastic or wood which must be attached to the body with some kind of screw or pin. The main body of metal must be molded, cast, cut or pressed, and of course this metal must have gone through a great number of prior processes, from mining to refining to forming, in order to be usable in this way. The coating, the handle-material, the screws, and any other elements, likewise must have been previously manufactured before being available to use, as must their constituent ingredients, and so on. Each of the labor processes involved in these stages, and the tools they employ (as well as the resources and labor processes and tools involved in their production) also need to be taken into account. As does the transportation of all these factors, and the design and conception work involved at each stage.

One can use a narrower or a wider definition of “input”. A very narrow one might include only the pre-formed body, handle and screws, and the labor involved in putting them together. A very wide one might extend out beyond those mentioned above, to include the tarmac that made possible the smooth running of the lorry that transported the waste copper mining materials to a dump, or the language developments that made possible the conception of the idea of a 'saucepan'. But let's suppose that “input” has a certain agreed-upon scope, that is useful for practical purposes, and that as such, the constituent inputs of the saucepan are the sheet metal for the body, the unformed plastic (of a certain type and grade) necessary for molding the handle, and the screws; also the labor and tools involved in casting, cutting and finishing both the body and the handle, those involved in putting it together, the design work involved in the conception of the saucepan, and all the logistical and management tasks involved in transporting goods from one place to another, overseeing the project, and so on.

This forms the basis of the array corresponding to the saucepan, that specifies, in natural units proper to each input, its economic profile. Thus, the saucepan may use 0.5 square meters of aluminium sheeting; 235g-dry of pvc of such-and-such a grade; and 5 steel screws of such-and-such a size. Also, the molding, cutting, polishing and finishing labor involved in forming the body and the tools used in those processes, and so on. We must also take into account the premises in which this work occurs, the energy used in all operations, and any other necessary factors, accounted for in their appropriate units

This array informs us how much a saucepan costs, in real terms. Of course, we must understand “cost” in a different, wider, more realistic sense than today. The cost is 'what it costs' to make a saucepan, in terms of each of the constituent elements. There isn't a 'total', in the form of a single number, that can stand for this cost; it is irreducibly heterogeneous.

Every product has such an array corresponding to it. Almost always, the array belonging to an item will be capable of being decomposed into a great number of further arrays, specifying in the same way the cost of the constituent inputs to each individual item of the first list. Thus for example, the entry '0.5 square meters of aluminium sheeting' could be taken. Its array might specify the mining, refining, casting and transport costs involved in the the production of a piece of sheeting of that size.

In a similar manner, arrays can be 'compiled into' those corresponding to more composite objects. Thus, a 'standard restaurant kitchen' (insofar as this can be considered an 'object' or product) might include in its array an entry reading “7 saucepans of such-and-such size and quality”, among a list of many other items. The cost of a saucepan is not expanded upon in this array, just as the cost of aluminium sheeting is not expanded upon in the array corresponding to the saucepan. They are taken as 'facts'.

Having established what an “array” is, in this context, and what is meant by “natural units”, we need to look at how they are used.

Lets suppose that a workplace is considering the production of a line of saucepans (ignoring for the moment how it arrives at this decision). It comes up with a range of different prospective designs, to each of which there obviously corresponds a different array, depending upon the type of materials it uses, the complexity of the design, the specific suppliers to be involved, and so on. In other words, each prospective design has a specific cost.

At this point, an economic decision needs to be made. We want to choose the best option. What does “best” mean, in this context? That involving the least total labor and resources? That involving the least of one particular resource? That involving the highest quality labor and resources? That involving the closest labor and resources in geographical terms? That involving labor which is least unpleasant? That involving the least-polluting resources?

There isn't a right answer to this question. All of these considerations are important, and it is a matter of policy and judgment how they are each going to be weighed up and factored in; whether a particular issue is deemed all-important or whether a compromise between competing demands is going to be settled at. One of the virtues of Angelic Economics is that it recognizes that economic decisions are judgments and provides a means for them to be properly expressed.

(Under a price-based system, the issue does not arise. All else being equal, one would simply choose the option with the lowest number, i.e. the lowest price. But this apparent simplicity is an illusion. If the decision were made simply by flipping a coin, nobody would remark at how elegant and uncomplicated a system it was. They would rather say that this is not a suitable way to address important questions. The case is not as stark with the use of prices but it is of the same kind: the system of measurement has no way of representing appropriately the facts it is supposed to measure).

Now, each of the possible considerations listed above makes reference, implicitly or explicitly, to matters that are not expressed in the array. For example, suppose that use of the least unpleasant labor was a particularly important consideration. There is no information about the labor conditions involved in the production of any of the constituent items in the arrays. Or suppose that avoiding the use of a particular resource was deemed necessary, perhaps because it is non-renewable and scarce, and therefore better employed in more important items than saucepans. Again, there is no information about the scarcity of the resources present in the arrays, nor about the other demands on them.

This type of information is brought into the picture by the next element of Angel Economics' system of organization, the information agencies. In the most general terms, these bodies collect, process, and make available economic data. Everything from the levels of cod available in the north east Atlantic, to the relative proportions of the global industrial uses of zinc, to the expressed preferences of various age groups and sexes for different colors of hot water bottle, to the rate of use of wood chippings in south-west England as compared to projected availability in the same region, to the conditions of work in copper-wire manufactures - any and all useful economic information is collected, and accessible.

If we now turn back to our range of potential saucepans and their matching arrays, we can see that the blank spaces we previously encountered outside of them have been filled in. Suppose, for example, that we wish our saucepan to be made from resources that can be obtained from as near to our workplace as possible. Drawing upon data provided by the information agency we would be able to construct maps displaying the geographical fingerprint of each potential design, and make our decision with reference to them. Or, surveying the different proposals in the light of the now-available wider economic information, it might become apparent that a couple of them involve the use of a metal which is rather scarce, and also needed in a vital medical application wherein it has no substitutes. In general, the means necessary to make an informed economic judgment are now available.

This is not quite the end of the process. To see why, lets briefly put ourselves in the shoes of the decision-maker, and suppose that, on the list of issues to be resolved, the particular question they are presently addressing is the type of metal to be used for the body of the saucepan. Taken together, the candidate designs involve steel, aluminium, tin, and copper, with a few of them available in a number of different grades. For each of these metals, a great number of considerations – and data to answer them – needs to be addressed: Are there available supplies in sufficient quantity nearby, or would they have to be shipped from a long way away, therefore incurring a certain level of pollution and energy waste? What is the level of demand for each metal from other industries, and in the light of that, is this a worthy application? What sort of metal is most demanded by users of saucepans of this type? Have workers within the mining industries for any of these metals expressed a desire that its use be minimised, due to the unpleasant nature of the labor? (Note that these are all economic considerations, which are separate from and in addition to design considerations about which metal to use).

What these questions make apparent (especially if we bear in mind that the issue of the appropriate metal for the saucepan is merely one of a great number, and that it is among the relatively more simple) is that this is a decision which would best be made by someone who knows the field, i.e. has knowledge and experience of the economic situation regarding metals. This, then, brings us to the third element of Angel Economics' system of allocation, namely experienced handlers of arrays pertaining to particular domains, who are capable of making judgments about them.

In this particular case, and in general, the judgments of a wide range of people will be called upon. A metals expert for the body of the pan. A plastics expert for the handle. Maybe a saucepan expert for the project as a whole. They do not have to be different people, but in the case of complicated items involving thousands of different components, it is inevitable that they will in fact be. How they interact to form a combined decision is an important question, but there is no real need to to to imagine a procedure concretely – it would simply involve some form of discussion. The important, structural element is just the involvement of the expert per se.

(If the necessity for such expertise does not come through fully in the example, where it is at least plausible that a lay person might be able to come to a reasonable decision after studying the data, consider a case in which the question at hand is which of a thousand different synthetic chemical compounds to use in the formulation of a washing-up liquid. A lay-person could come to a decision, but it would be terribly inefficient. Moreover, another point to bear in mind is that there is no reason to think that more than a small proportion of the data produced by the information agency will be quantitative. Qualitative information (such as reports of workers' experiences, reports about what people like about certain materials used in certain products) generally requires a much fuller and rounder grasp of its object to properly interpret).

The last part of the process is the democratic forum through which the final decision is made. Let's suppose that, after due consultation with experts on each of the various resources involved in the designs, a candidate is chosen which nicely balances each of the various considerations. If it were now to be put into production, quite a number of constituencies would be affected, other than those directly making it: the workers supplying the resources necessary for the chosen design (and those involved in supplying the resources for their work, and so on); people peripherally connected with those workers and their industries (for example, those living next to an iron foundry which is being proposed to be contracted); people potentially using the saucepans; other interest groups (such as, for example, those who might be concerned about resource depletion). All of these people need to have a say on the proposal (possibly through a vote, possibly via some other kind of input, depending on the case) if economic activity is accurately going to be said to be under democratic control, and if the free, voluntary nature of participation is going to be maintained. The way such a forum might operate practically is described below. The important formal point is that because all those affected are involved in the decision of whether to produce something, the value of it is fully represented.

*

This short discussion gives some content to the four elements of the allocation process stated at the beginning. Before continuing to elaborate the picture, it is worth making a couple of remarks about a likely objection at this stage: Isn't it all rather cumbersome? Is the price system not much simpler?

There are two parts to a response. The first is to point out that in its actual operation, the process would be far more streamlined than it appears above, just as the operation of money is simple in daily transactions, but complicated in its theoretical description. So, for example, the team developing the saucepan would probably know full well, from common knowledge, which metal would be most appropriate for its body. Nor would they be likely to actively pursue a whole host of different designs, since again, many would be ruled out by factors that were obvious to the participants, without their having to consult the arrays corresponding to each of them. Experts would probably release guidelines outlining the circumstances in which the use of certain materials was appropriate – so again, this would become a 'common sense' matter. And the democratic forums would probably only be time-consuming processes in the more important cases.

But the more significant response to this criticism is to draw attention to the fact that processes resembling those described take place today anyway. It is a myth that price fluctuations alone regulate the flow of resources within capitalism in an automatic, self-regulating fashion. Every day, within the procurement departments of companies (to focus on only one example) people are making economic decisions in no way related to the price of the goods they buy. In other words, the actual process of economic coordination under capitalism is far more complicated than is suggested in its supposed theoretical summary.

Furthermore, it is not an advantage, but rather a severe defect that such decisions are only expressible economically through price, and its quantitative movements. It makes precise, intentional coordination virtually impossible, because you cannot translate complex considerations into quantities. Under Angel Economics by contrast, such considerations remain expressible and effective in their natural form, i.e. as considerations taken into account by rational people.

(These points come across today most prominently in debates over the environment. A money-based economy cannot 'see' the environment because it does not have a price. It is of course possible, artificially, to put a price upon its elements. But this invariably simply leads to more distortions and irrationalities.

In reality, those parts of the world that are not represented through the price-system are defended and protected by a great mass of government regulations, intergovernmental agencies like the UN, and through the voluntary work of hundreds of thousands of NGO's and pressure groups. Yet they are always battling against the pressures of the market. Under Angel Economics, the considerations they highlight would simply be internalized within economic processes).

*

Having considered the four elements in the context of a single workplace making a single economic decision, lets now zoom out and consider things from a larger perspective, namely that of the region, which we briefly described earlier.

How do those within the region allocate resources among its various different economic parts? And how do all the workplaces and individuals comprising the region's economy coordinate their activities with each other? To get more of a grip on the question, let us remind ourselves of the background to it. Under Angel Economics, people freely and voluntarily devote themselves to working in whatever jobs they are inclined to, for whatever length of time. They also freely take whatever they need in terms of articles for personal use. This basic situation clearly throws up a number of questions centered around the issue of coordination. How is it ensured that all necessary functions are filled: for example, might one end up with all the parts for complex machinery except rubber washers, because nobody wants to work in the rubber factory? How are the output and input of different workplaces matched up – what if many people like working at the saw mill, which consequently churns out mountains of cut wood, only a small amount of which is used by other workplaces? How is it that people do not take too much of certain things like cakes, leading to shortage, and too little of others, like toilet brushes, leading to oversupply?

Lets take the question of inter-workplace coordination first. As should have become apparent through the course of the initial discussion, the relation between different workplaces is in many respects not unlike that of today. When it requires inputs for something it is producing, a workplace will engage in a 'contract' with another to supply it. So, if we take a snapshot of our region, at any one time what we will see is a complex web of interlinking contracts connecting the different workplaces scattered around the region. Now these arrangements are engaged in freely, and one can expect that in many cases there will be a choice of potential candidates. But although there is this free basis to inter-workplace contracts, like today, a great number of them will be long-term relationships, and involve a great deal of regular intercommunication. So much of the 'web' is both permanent (or very slow to change) and built from 'thick' connections.

With respect to individuals acquiring goods for their own use, (i.e. what is called “consumption” today) again, while it too has a free basis – people take whatever they need, when they need it – still, considered as a whole, a large portion of it will exhibit great regularity from year to year. And when changes occur in the patterns of what people want, they will to a significant degree display predictable trends.

Finally, with regard to the third element - what work people choose to do - one can rely on a pattern of natural distribution to ensure that there is reasonable coverage of the necessary functions (some people are more inclined to do teaching work, others to do engineering work, and so on).

This is the background against which questions about higher level coordination should be discussed – there is a high degree of self-organization within Angel Economics. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that what might be called the “public atmosphere” of the system, and the institutions which underlie this, permit this self-organization to be fairly finely tuned. Thus for example, everyone has access to all the data produced by information agencies (and indeed converting this data to a form in which it becomes comprehensible by laypeople will be a common, valued job). So the long- and short term trends, needs, deficiencies and over-supplies of the economy, in every area – work-skills, articles of personal use, inter-workplace supply, infrastructure – will be “generally known”, and people will therefore take them into account when they act. Similarly, and more specifically, workplaces use this data, and utilize all the statistical and analytical techniques common today, so that they can organize their production with foresight. And the democratic forums mentioned in the previous section, involving all affected parties, and through which individual workplaces decide what to produce, obviously allow significant coordination among workplaces and between them and individuals.

Nevertheless, there remains the need for our region to self-consciously reflect on its activities, and collectively direct them. It does this through democratic forums informed by experts drawing upon data provided by information agencies. These forums will occur at many different levels – in neighborhoods, in local villages, in industry sectors, among interest-groups – in each case differing in their exact structure as their size, content and objects of attention vary. But we can examine the forum responsible for the region as a whole, which will let us see how they work in some detail.

Let us suppose that our region contains a few million inhabitants, is a couple of thousand sq. kilometers in extent, has several thousand workplaces and hundreds more institutions of other kinds (clubs, orchestras, book groups, industry roundtables, and so on). Its workplaces, of every type, are connected with the wider world through a plethora of contracts, while still managing to supply the region with a fair amount of what it needs, autonomously. This is its economy, in thumbnail form.

The regional forum, because it involves such a large number of participants, will have to exist as an electronic forum, to be practicable. Its focus is, self-explanatorily, those matters that are best addressed at a regional level. This will probably include many things beyond economic matters – perhaps a regional health policy, regional events, regional laws and so on. And in each case (economic and non-economic) some of these will fall into the category of issues which are so important as to require participation by everybody, while others (probably most) will only elicit the participation of those who are particularly interested in them. Finally, it is likely that the forum will be open or 'in session' all year round, but take its major coordination decisions at intervals – say, yearly.

Lets now look at a part of one of these decisions, to see how the forum functions, and therefore how economic coordination occurs under Angel Economics.

Lets suppose, then, that there are an insufficient number of people teaching within the schools of the region. The size of classes has been slowly creeping up for a long time, and a over the last couple of years a number of other factors have combined to increase this sharply – some recent evidence about the benefits of schooling to younger groups than was previously thought suitable, has increased the number of children; a dispute about the advisability of teaching Nietzsche to under-14's has led to a section of teachers resigning from their duties; a flood in one locality has meant its schools have had to close for refurbishment.

The issue has been brought to the attention of the forum and become an item on its agenda, through a number of channels. Teachers groups, parents circles, school umbrella organizations, and concerned individuals have all brought it to prominence, through the means available to them within the procedures of the forum.

As such, it now has a 'scheduled' status – in the terminology used by the forum. This means that the question of what to do about the issue has been opened up for debate. The information agency is commissioned to supply relevant data to the forum, and write a report in plain language that time-pressed laypeople can understand, outlining the major difficulties and policy options. Groups that are particularly closely involved – such as those, above, who initiated the debate – submit their own analyses and proposals. Individuals chip in with their own observations, experiences and suggestions, and these are recorded. People with particular expertise or experience contribute their own proposals. Models are created of different scenarios, knock-on effects of different options are examined, articles about the questions are written and debated.

At the end of this process, a special group is tasked with drawing up several policy alternatives that, between them, include and exhaust all the various suggestions made during the debate. These are then presented to the forum, and a vote is taken on them.

(This basic process could, of course, be modified in an enormous number of ways to make it fairer, quicker, more in-depth, more rigorous, more easy-going, more accessible, more wide-ranging, narrower etc etc. Different issues would no doubt be treated in different ways).

Lets suppose that the adopted policy is as follows. To address the short-term problem, several builders outside of the locality in which the flooded schools reside are contacted and asked to help in their repair. A compromise is drawn up addressing the 'Nietzsche faction's concerns, so that in each school it is decided that an alternative program of study will be made available. And on local “jobs needing doing” boards, teaching is given a higher priority. To address the longer-term trends, a greater number of teachers are required, and along with them school buildings, books, and many other connected resources. These changes, however, would have an impact well beyond the realm of schools, since devoting resources to the production of these goods would require diverting them from other things. It is not, therefore, an issue on which this particular sub-forum can make an authoritative decision, but what it can do is to draw up an outline policy that specifies exactly what the increased resource requirements are, plans how they would be put in place, and also identifies some candidate other areas from which resources might be taken. This outline is then tabled to be part of the yearly 'regional budget', where all large regional economic matters can be treated in their interrelation.

*

This, then, is the basic form in which the more self-conscious element of economic coordination occurs under Angel Economics. The same type of process would occur in all the lower-level, higher-level and sector-specific forums, and with respect to all the different economic issues that might arise (as well as non-economic issues, of course). As alluded to, there is some degree of hierarchy involved in some of the forum-structures, since some issues depend on others.

The status of the decisions that issue from these forums is worth a brief comment. Are they 'orders' or 'decrees' which will subsequently be 'enforced' by some power or other? To some degree, obviously, the measures that they outline need to be followed by the institutions they are directed towards, otherwise there is no point in the forums existing. It is inevitable that some people are going to disagree with the decisions they arrive at, given that these are the product of a vote. And whatever re-consideration procedures, appeals rounds, or consensus-reaching efforts are pursued, it is not plausible to think that there will not be some who are unhappy with the final plan.

However, there is no necessity for everyone within a given geographic region to be part of a common system, on all matters. The ground-principle of Angel Economics is free and voluntary participation, and so if some of those affected severely disagree with it, the outcome of such a forum decision might be 'decoupling' on a particular issue. One might expect that more often than not, those who loose a vote will nevertheless agree to implement it because they value the system that results – i.e. none other than Angel Economics - when other people also do so when they do not agree with the outcome of a decision. But this is not absolutely necessary. What 'Angel Economics' is describing is that system that results from successive decisions by people to interlink their affairs; but in any given geographic region, there may in fact be many parallel, relatively autonomous systems.

Note also that it is quite possible that there are some who wish to have nothing to do with any system. A world in which Angel Economics existed could perfectly well coexist with them – it just doesn't describe them.

The point that these various remarks make implicitly is that Angel Economics is not intended as something to be imposed upon people. The various structures outlined are rather the ones that one might expect people to adopt, whose economic relations with each other were free and voluntary.

*

It has been mentioned that such geographically-based forums as described above are far from being the only kind in Angel Economics' system of economic coordination. We don't need to describe every kind, since the basic principles will be similar in all. But for clarity, we should perhaps briefly look at a second.

Our region, it so happens, is an important source of platinum. It is home to several large mines, and there are only three or four sites around the world where there is such easy access to large deposits of the mineral. Platinum is scarce.

As such, it is important that its distribution is under supervision. Some kind of 'trust' is necessary which ensures that the limited supplies are used in the best way possible and not frittered away to anyone who demands it. How would this work?

We can suppose that the quantity of available platinum – already-mined and resting deposits - is known, in a rough way, by the trust. In light of this, a number is put on the total amount to be used each year and on each of the different proposed uses of it. This can take account not only of the usefulness of the applications which employ platinum, but also, for example, how easy it is for substitutes to be used in each of them. When an application is made to the trust by a workplace for a quantity of platinum, it is assessed, and its relative priority compared to other potential uses is determined.

The standards as to what counts as a worthy use of this scarce resource can be set in the usual way. Namely, a forum is held in which contributions are offered by all those interested, affected, or concerned, especially specialists and those who would be potential users of it. A policy is then formulated on the back of discussions and voting. It is an issue which would affect people all over the world, so in this case the constituency for the forum is not limited to, or best described in terms of, a particular geographical region. Insofar as there are differences in the degree of participation by different people, they would rather be determined by the degree to which they are involved in the use of platinum-involving applications.

This example illustrates the non-geographical basis of many of the coordination structures of Angel Economics. It also brings to light the heterogeneity of the meaning (and therefore, the actual workings) of the term “value” within this system. In the first case we looked at (where the resources for a saucepan were being chosen) the meaning of “cost” meant principally what it cost to produce each of the various candidate resources, in labor- and resource terms (it meant other things as well, but this was where the emphasis lay). Here, the full expansion of “value” under Angel Economics becomes apparent, since it is the value-to-humans of its different applications which stands out as the dominant meaning where platinum is concerned, as that which above all gets considered and measured in economic accounting.

*

The mechanisms by which Angel Economics organizes the distribution of resources should now be reasonably clear. The intention is not to specify the system in detail – after all, we are contemplating a hypothetical system which, if it began to be translated into reality would no doubt very soon depart from the model in ways that that could not be envisaged, simply because reality is more varied than thought ever allows for. But the basic outline could be implemented. Above all, the value of this exercise is to demonstrate that such an alternative economic system, embodying some noble values, is perfectly possible. There is no theoretical impossibility, nor any practical one.

Further entries will look more closely at aspects of the system of distribution (as well as, of course, at other aspects of Angel Economics) and at its theoretical and philosophic underpinnings. (Arguments relating to the 'calculation debate'; the economy looked at as an information-theoretic entity; philosophical questions in the domain of value-theory; all of these are very pertinent). None of this blog is intended as the final word, however. The enterprise of imagining an alternative economy would surely be best pursued by many people. Hopefully this can be part of an extended debate.

Short sketch

Angel Economics is an economic system. It is a model of a complete economic structure, the various parts of which fit together. It is intended as an alternative to the predominating system today.

It has six basic characteristics, which serve to define the fundamental institutions that make it a distinct type of system. These are as follows.

1. Open. Everything within AE is open. This breaks down as:

i) The institution of private property, which closes off most things to most people, does not exist. All property is 'open' to everyone, or in other words, there is no such thing as private property.

ii) The closure of most knowledge to most people does not exist. Instead there is universal deep education so that all knowledge domains, skills, and the activities of the world are open to everyone.

iii) There is no money (see more below), so everything is open in the sense that everyone is free to acquire what they need.

iv) All institutions are open to everyone – from the professions, to government, to workplaces.

2. Participatory. There is general participation by everyone in the institutions that comprise the economy, and that organize it.

Everyone participates in the management of their workplaces, their local area, their regional government, and any other workplaces or institutions in which they happen to take an interest, or by which they are affected. There are no barriers to this participation. Its basis is the free, voluntary inclination of individuals.

3. Democratic. All the institutions within the economy are run by direct democracy. The procedures by which this is implemented differ according to the particular institution. In the case of small workplaces, it might mean an equal share of management, and consensual agreement. In medium-sized neighborhoods, it may involve regular meetings of residents voting on important issues. In the case of regional economic policies, it would mean electronic forums in which everyone is free to contribute to discussions, and then has a vote on the implementation of distilled policies. In short, every decision which has to be taken has a democratic basis, and the institutional framework to realize it.

The principle underlying democratic participation for many matters is that people have a say in proportion to how heavily they are affected. Therefore, for example, not just those working in an institution, but all those who use it or supply it with goods, or who are in any way affected by its activities, also have a say in how it is run, but their say is weighted in accordance with how affected they are. Democratic participation for individuals therefore extends well beyond merely where they work and live, should they desire this.

The principle underlying democratic participation for other matters is obligatory participation. These are those matters which significantly affect everyone's life, whether they are aware of it or not. This includes such areas as basic laws, the allocation of significant resources to different economic areas, and general policies on things like education – in other words, political matters.

4. Non-monetary. AE does not use money. Instead, things are measured for economic purposes in the appropriate natural units (such as tonnes of coal, meters of carpet, watts of power and so on). Different types of labor are likewise measured in their natural units (minutes of consultation time of a specialist, hours of building work of such-and-such an intensity and skill, and so on. Many types of labor, such as poetry writing or graphic designing, will of course not have a simple unit of measurement).

Economic data on levels of demand and supply (measured in these natural units), for all the resources within the economy, at all levels (local, regional, world) and in all sectors, is collected by information agencies. All economic actors – workplaces, individuals, regional budget forums – make use of this data, which is universally and freely available.

The 'price' of a good is specified in an array or list of all the constituent resources and labor processes that go into making it. These arrays provide the information needed for people to make economic decisions; in particular, comparisons of various different economic options. Handling of these arrays will usually be an expert job, just as in reality it is today. Judgments on the best use of resources in any particular situation, by such experts utilizing these arrays, are the basic foundation of Angelic Economics.

All allocation of resources is decided upon in the democratic structures of every institution, on the basis of these expert judgments.

5. Free. All objects, opportunities and experiences are free. And people are also entirely free to work where, at whatever level, and for whatever amount of time they wish, with no effect on what they are entitled to claim.

The only exception to this concerns the area of boring and unpleasant tasks, which are divided up among all people equally - as the fairest way of allocating this work, which would not otherwise be done voluntarily.

6. Multiform. AE does not have any of the pressures to uniformity that characterize the current economic system.

In their absence, and because of the voluntary nature of people's participation in economic activity, a multitude of different forms of organization, institutions, and people would flourish.

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As well as these six fundamental characteristics, three further, more derivative features of Angelic Economics are particularly notable.

1. Technological Sophistication. AE would be a great deal more scientifically and technologically advanced than today's economy. The basic reason for this is the huge increase in the number of people pursuing scientific research.

2. Two-hour work day. AE would produce the same level of output as today's economy with the equivalent of two hours a day of labor per person. The increase in productivity from a number of sources, and the lack of waste, lie behind this.

3. Civilized. AE removes all the economic pressures that give rise today to a general degradation in culture, and would instead see the growth of a humane society. It also promotes those inclinations in humanity which are most exploratory and self-transcending. AE would provide the basis for a heightening of human beings.