Z Quote

For the economy I want workers and consumers to have control over their own economic lives. I want everyone
to have fair conditions that fully utilize their talents and potentials. I want incomes that accord with the efforts
people expend in their labors. I want what is produced, by whom, under what conditions, and with who
consuming the result--all determined in accord with enhancing human well-being and development and all decided
by the people involved and affected. I want an end to hierarchies of power and wealth and to class division with
most actors subordinated to an elite few. To accomplish all these ends I favor the institutions of participatory
economics -- worker and consumer councils, remuneration for effort and sacrifice, balanced job complexes, and
participatory planning. If someone should demonstrate that those institutions somehow fail to accomplish
necessary economic functions or have social or personal by-products that outweigh their benefits -- I would
simply return to the drawing board. Exploitation, alienation, poverty, disempowerment, fragmenting and
debilitating labor, production for the profit of a few -- much less harsh homelessness, starvation, and degradation
-- are not like gravity. They arise from institutional relations established by human beings. New institutions, also
established by human beings, can generate other vastly superior outcomes. Defining and working to attain those
new institutions ought to be our economic agenda.