[rcstank]

Isn't decentralized planning essentially the current economy? If I have a skill to provide a service, I can start my own business in my town to make a living. I don't have to accept currency as payment. I can more or less accept payment via other goods such as food for my family. In smaller towns this is still not unheard of. My father in law is a mechanic and many people pay him with goods rather than currency (he still accepts cash, however).

If a competitor opened up next to him, they'd both then compete, thus trigger your decentralized planning since they both have to innovate or come up with methods to gain customers.

[fabianhjr]

> decentralized planning essentially the current economy

No it isn't, decentralized economic planning involves communal ownership not private (shareholder) ownership which allows communal management and prioritizing the needs of people and not the wants of those with most money/capital.

The current political-economy in most countries is Liberalism. ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Economic_liberalism )

> If I have a skill to provide a service, I can start my own business in my town to make a living.

If you have a skill then under decentralized economic planning you would provide it as needed and not start a business (own or otherwise)

> I can more or less accept payment via other goods such as food for my family. In smaller towns this is still not unheard of.

That would be barter, it is more common to accept non-currency IOUs when doing communal work / services rather than directly into goods/services.

> If a competitor opened up next to him, they'd both then compete, thus trigger your decentralized planning since they both have to innovate or come up with methods to gain customers.

In a decentralized planned economy if someone else wanted to work as a mechanic then they would cooperate rather than compete.

[rcstank]

What if Sharon is selling baskets for $10, and I found a revolutionary way to sell them for $9, I wouldn't be able to since I'd be required to share my trade secret with Sharon. What incentive would I have to innovate?

In a perfect world, where there are no corrupt or selfish people, I suppose it could work, since we'd all be working towards a greater good. But that utopia doesn't exist, and possibly never will without stripping the rights of individuals.

[fabianhjr]

> What if Sharon is selling baskets for $10, and I found a revolutionary way to sell them for $9

The comment you were originally replying to was regarding non-currency economies, so first of all I would assume "require less labour" or "more efficient use of materials".

> I wouldn't be able to since I'd be required to share my trade secret with Sharon.

If you want Patent protection you currently need to share the mechanics of how you achieved that. If you use it as a "trade secret" and someone independently figures a similar or identical way then you are out of luck.

> What incentive would I have to innovate?

Requiring less labour on your community and yourself, if both you and Sharon are more efficient then you both have more free time for other stuff, even leisure or study. Currently if you are an employee in a private company if you make something more efficient good luck because you are getting to do more work for the same pay. (and the company might decide not to hire more people or fire people depending on how much labour you saved them)

In the current political-economy where most people are employees they are desincentivized from working efficiently by the threat of losing their employment.

> In Bullshit Jobs, American anthropologist David Graeber posits that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to "bullshit jobs": "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bullshit_Jobs