Participatory economics, often abbreviated Parecon, is an economic system based on participatory decision making as the primary economic mechanism for allocation in society. In the system, the say in decision-making is proportional to the impact on a person or group of people. Participatory economics is a form of socialist decentralized planned economy involving the common ownership of the means of production. It is a proposed alternative to contemporary capitalism and centralized planning. This economic model is primarily associated with political theorist Michael Albert and economist Robin Hahnel, who describes participatory economics as an anarchist economic vision. The underlying values that parecon seeks to implement are equity, solidarity, diversity, workers' self-management, efficiency (defined as accomplishing goals without wasting valued assets) and sustainability. The institutions of parecon include workers' and consumers' councils utilising self-managerial methods for decision-making, balanced job complexes, remuneration based on individual effort, and wide decentralized planning. Decision-making principle In parecon, self-management constitutes a replacement for the mainstream conception of economic freedom, which Albert and Hahnel argue by its very vagueness has allowed it to be abused by capitalist ideologues. In their councils, workers deliberate over plans regarding the productive enterprise and employ whichever voting scheme best instantiates the principle that each worker's decision-making power ought to be in proportion to the impact upon them of the particular decision being voted on. Generally, a workers' council is not constrained to adopt a single threshold (i.e. 50%+1) to pass their resolutions, but can tailor their voting procedures to reflect the variation in impact of the enterprise's decisions. Work and distribution Balanced job complexes A main goal of socialism is to create a society without classes, and traditional socialist thinking identifies classes based on ownership of the means of production (in capitalism, those are the capitalist class and the proletarian class). However, Albert and Hahnel identify a third class created by the particular division of labor. Some tasks and jobs are more desirable than others; also some are more empowering. Hahnel and Albert argue that empowering jobs, such as accounting or management, provide access to information and skills to formulate ideas and plans for decision making, while other jobs, such as cleaning, do not provide these. Thus workers with disempowering jobs can at best ratify proposals by empowered workers, and have little reason to participate in collective decision making. Workers with empowering jobs are a third class, "coordinator class" that does not