👉The table of contents so far is here.
Chapter 9: Time and space frameworks for planning
9.1. Overview
As with planned economies in general, the planned economy process has two dimensions: time and space. The time dimension is the time span covered by a specific plan. In this regard, the former Soviet Union's economic plans were based on a five-year standard, but a sustainable planned economy is based on a three-year standard.
There is no absolute formula for how many years should be set as the time frame for such planning, but the time frame for a sustainable planned economy is set at three years and mid-term because it is based on the prediction of a variable natural phenomenon, namely the state of the global environment, and mid-term planning is considered more appropriate than long-term planning that lasts more than three years.
Once this time frame for planning is decided, it is in principle followed thereafter and cannot be changed for each plan. If the three-year time frame is to be changed to a longer period, it must be done on an appropriate and rational basis. (On the other hand, changing it to a shorter period of less than three years would be inappropriate, as it would make the time frame for planning too cramped and would in fact lose its significance as a plan.)
Partial changes to the content of each plan during the planning period due to revisions to global environmental forecasts or the occurrence of unexpected disasters are permitted as appropriate, as they are different from changes to the time frame for planning.
On the other hand, the spatial framework for planning is the question of which region the economic plan will be formulated in. It can also be rephrased as the geographical scope of planning. In this respect, while the former Soviet Union-style economic plan had a spatial framework of a single sovereign nation, the sustainable economic plan extends in a multi-layered manner to three spaces: the World Commonwealth, the Zone, and the greater local area within the Zone.
These three spatial frameworks are not completely equal, and the world economic plan in the World Commonwealth serves as an upper limit (= cap) that covers the entire globe, and the Zonal economic plan functions as an allocation (= quota) within that range.
The economic plans of the greater local areas within a Zone are plans related exclusively to consumption, and have significance as the consumption sector of Zonal economic planning. This differs from the "decentralization of planning" that was attempted as a reform measure for the planned economy in the former Soviet Union, and is a functional differentiation that is built into the structure of planning from the very beginning.
👉The papers published on this blog are meant to expand upon my On Communism.
