Social Planning and Economic Upgrading

By: Stephen Ainsah-Mensah

1. An economy, as usual, goes on developing in a way that is great in many respects. Technology fuels unrestrained advancement, and one must keep glorifying this marvel of development because it proves the ingenuity of us humans. But there is a weakness to this technological wonder. Ultimately, this style of development begins to retreat in a fashion never thought of or dreamt of. What must have gone wrong? Was technology not responding to the human and natural needs that it used to respond to? One may go on to ask these other pressing questions: “would not the unrestrained use of technology for unrestrained production fail, at some point, to match with human consumption?” How can human consumption be unrestrained if money for use by humans is restrained?

2. The failure to go on with the process of unrestrained production comes about from this production-consumption gap stated in 1. The gap widens; human failings become manifest; producers in particular and consumers in general are, thereby, warned to exercise moderation in ways of doing things. And this shows that production planning unmatched by human planning is a major determinant of an economic retreat that can be far more insidious than was previously thought. Human planning unmatched by production planning may lead to a similar embarrassing predicament. The spiraling effect is massive layoffs. If there is a big shortfall in consumption, curtailing production to match the shortfall requires an immense reduction in the workforce. This kind of prudence, though called for, has a moral and social deficit attached to it. Why lay off so many people and bring intolerable stress to them if you could previously have checked this disruption by merely proving your moderation through social planning? Social planning has the tendency of rendering predictable outcomes. The untold stress from layoffs is not all there is to the plight of the victims. Suppose they cannot make ends meet, then the very emotionally unstable ones could resort to rare misdeeds that may generate social-economic disarticulation. So, we must be on the alert to forestall such hazards. Those individuals who pride in the buildup of wealth and believe that is what human creativity is for are mistaken, not in principles but in practice. They just do not realize that, with time, social-economic disarticulation poses challenges, insecurities to the private accumulation of wealth.

3. Eventually, we humans may have to learn to understand that private and public planning of enterprises is what can save us from missteps that we, first of all, created and brought to bear on ourselves. But, then, private enterprises can hardly check themselves from excesses whenever they live through unrestrained profits. If we can grasp this fact, then it may be easy to avoid the unpleasant consequences of economic decline that come with the stubborn refusal to plan production in relation to the realistic ability of people to buy what are produced. Not only that; people ought to buy and consume what is to enhance personal and collective development; the environment too has to be liberated from the dangerous traps of unwanted pollution and other natural devastations. The production - and hence, consumption planning - that is here being espoused tallies with human planning. It suggests that human planning is also what may ordinarily be termed social planning . This is the kind of planning that puts the society in order and warns that human activity and creativity ought to follow a predictable yet sound trend if we are not to encourage chaos to mature and consume the society in a resolute fashion. Unrestrained production cannot simply be resolved on its own accord by the private producers. The other way (round) to redressing the dilemma of unrestrained production is to raise consumption to an unrestrained level, so that consumption matches with unrestrained production. But this will, perhaps, be the height of human folly since products will sprawl everywhere and be an extraordinary nuisance to the environment. What may fully satisfy our human desires, our fitting appetites, is a condition of restrained production that equates with restrained consumption. That is what social planning is for; social planning strives for this goal.

4. It is just not realistic for some people to express disapproval of social planning. Their error in judgement is this: a government plan that follows the direction of getting involved in private enterprises hinders individual creativity and the natural spirit of private enterprises. What naturally follows is the obstruction of private enterprises from bringing about the coveted progress to culture. But here is the response to such opponents. An economy is in decline; a government intervenes to correct errors that keep growing from unplanned production (from private enterprises). What the government does is to help in fixing mounting mess by infusing discipline into ways of doing prevalent businesses that tell on the lives of the majority of the people. Individuals who engage in private enterprises are far more keen on swelling their profits than on devising measures aimed at promoting social-economic coherence. But one can see a sense of frustration, bitterness, from those who think government intervention entails introducing the suppressive and oppressive instruments of government into private enterprises. Herein rests the confusion! Does social planning mean socialism? For lame opponents of social planning, it does.

5. One gets caught in ambiguities if one claims that it is not the government's business to occupy itself with the social planning of the economy for the benefit of private enterprises. The argument is likely to be put forward that those in the best position to grow private enterprises, develop them to amazing heights are the people. Ask yourself who the people are, and you will see yourself unable to define your position without being elusive. Do you mean the people preoccupied with private enterprises or the people who consume the products of private enterprises - or both? Or, do you mean people other than these two? But admit it: consumers have to face a hitch. Most of them might have reached a point where they do not have the capacity to undergo a consumption spree in order to induce unrestrained private enterprises in the fashion that it used to be. To say that private enterprises have to, at this point, be given all the necessary incentives to promote production and consumption ensnares you in a bad argument; it is the kind of argument that shows that you see no problems in going round - in a circle. Besides, The people are not a definable or designated group of people. The term fails to make sense unless it is given a practical connotation whereby what is being done at any moment is connected to who is doing them, how the doers are affected as well as those who have direct or indirect connection with the doers. In short, to use the term, the people, is to render the term practicable, workable, within a specifically defined domain, not to leave the term like that - as a conceptual confusion. The same goes for a claim that a free-enterprise economy is a system run by the unrestrained self-determination of the people. You need to answer the question: “who are the people?” once and for all.

6. Now, ask yourself again: does government have to play an important role in the development and security of private enterprises? Yes! But, again, how? We may be foolish to say government should, indeed, own the enterprises instead of helping to inspire them, giving them the requisite lift, seeing to it that they do not use haphazard techniques to advance and/or enlarge profits. The former approach has long been held to be what socialism is all about; the latter is moderated capitalism or a kind of it or some other economic system not yet tagged with a standard name. The latter is tempered by the hand of government to enable it stay away from an amorphous social-economic arrangement. And is not moderated capitalism or whatever name you may call it what we yearn for as humans in place of economic anarchy that thrives from the doings of unrestrained private enterprises? If moderated capitalism is claimed to be socialism, then we may be playing with words. That does not change the practical efficacy of this kind of system compared to a host of others that may prove to be failures.