Economic Planning: A Tuvhalian Method

People's Tuvhalia is devoted to, and legitimized by, a socialist economic form. No other spacefaring nation has gone so far in a quest to abolish market relations. No other spacefaring nation would dare. Even before the founding of Tuvhalia, Istanistan was a socialist country, built on communal production and mutual consent. Now, however, a higher economic stage has been reached. The ruling Tuvhalian People's Congress, and the neo-Tuvhalian political and philosophical movement which it represents, is profoundly opposed to any form of alienated power and any abstract, immutable authority. The concept of a market, arranging economic affairs through some sort of abstracted natural law, is not just absurd but an offense. The nature of sentient life, and particularly of those who speak the language of the Voyager Prince and bleed his blood, is to exert its will. Socialism, for Tuvhalia, is a question of the people's neverending struggle to transform the world. The state, as the expression of the people's democratic will, must lead this - otherwise, market relations will practically re-assert themselves. However, bureaucracy is also seen as a great enemy - the depredations of the Ethics Council spoke to the evils of authority abstracted too far from popular control. The solution to the economic debate is typically neo-Tuvhalian - the purpose of the state is not to make every economic decision, but to create an environment in which free action will fulfill the people's will.

The mechanism is straightforward. The General Council's representatives meet on a five-year basis to establish a general plan. They carry from their constituents their capabilities and needs for production and consumption. This is supplemented by complete economic information from all sectors of Istanistan, which is filtered through the VYLKYR computerized planning system. All economic activities will be automatically logged in the system. Every single piece of information on production and consumption will be gathered and pooled. The General Council then sets targets for where the economy should be in five years - how much more production, how much more incomes, how much more or less trade with which foreigners. With these targets in mind, VYLKYR then establishes a set of prices for goods, along with changes over time to lead the economy onwards, dynamic ranges of fluctuation to account for short-term pressures, and tolerances for later change to account for new priorities, discretionary action, disaster, and the practical complications of ordinary economic life.

What is a price? Ultra-leftists and cultural reactionaries argue that prices are inherently evil markers of disrespect for sentient life, reducing social relations to numbers. Liberals and foreign barbarians see prices as a constantly-negotiated aggregation of a hundred billion freely chosen contracts. But for the party centre now ruling Tuvhalia, prices are simple – they are no more and no less than expressions of social value. A price dictates how much society sees a given product as worthwhile. The higher the price, the more worthwhile the product. Higher prices mean that a product is more likely to be produced. They express scarcity and incentivize increased productions. Lower prices express plenty and disincentivize production.

The prices in question are demarcated in the Exchange Credit. This is not, according to Tuvhalia's idealists, a currency. It is a unit of account between communes, which exchange goods with exchange credit values set by the General Council. Individuals do not hold Exchange Credits. Foreign governments cannot acquire Exchange Credits. Exchange Credits are not a commodity. They (theoretically) do not inflate or deflate. They do not trade with foreign currencies. And the Exchange Credit is clearly pegged to a definite value - the average labour output per hour of the average comrade-citizen of Tuvhalia, as calculated by the VYLKYR system. This is abstract to the point of meaninglessness. But it is, before anything else, a marker of faith and principle.

There are, of course, more levers than the price system alone. The state directly runs a range of "strategic industries". The central state, unions, regional authorities, communal federations, and various other bodies spend on projects of national or strategic interest. The People's Bank still holds and allocates foreign currency - albeit at exchange rates set by the General Council in the five-year plan. All social and economic interactions are free and unrestrained. But they exist within the unshakeable context of the pricing system established as an expression of the people's will. And every individual choice, every free association, every moment, is in accord with democratic will.