Socialist Planning Process
Socialist believes that cultural, property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community aka state. These controls are either directly exercised through collectives such as local councils, or indirectly, exercised on behalf of the people by the state.
This presumption “ideal” form of society/country, whether derived from planning theory, religion believe or a collective, local visioning process will be created by employing statewide growth-management laws employ a top-down, centralized view of planning with minor variations. An analogy would be the “Procedural Approach” of computer programming.
Take an example, Malaysia is now in its 9th Malaysia Plan, 5 years each, which ‘plans’ anything from Education to Healthcare and a federal budget is allocated accordingly. Directions are given from the federal government to state level, requiring local governments to adopt plans consistent with statewide goals.
Despite the variation in emphasis and leadership style, after 45 years of implementation in the short history since achieved the nation’s independence, this top-down approach now represents ‘the tradition’ and is the most conventional method adopted by the nation’s planners in government, political & religion organizations, large corporate and institutions.
Shifting the balance of power to the authorities, political leaders, government servants and corporate leaders alike believe that these centralized planning are “the remedy” to what they saw as the inherent flaws of capitalism, such as monopolies, business cycles, unemployment, vast inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and most important of all, the exploitation of the rakyat (people). In this region, Singapore is famous for its strict government control while a good example in Malaysia is the National Economic Policy (NEP), which has long been used and sacredly defended as ‘the tool’ to re-distribute wealth and curb poverty.
The rigid top-down model of socialist planning process, compounded by human nature, would unintentionally reduces innovation and substantially increases the costs of development because of the protracted time it takes to implement them.
Market-Oriented Planning Process
The market-oriented planning process started by asking one basic question: How can public policy ensure the formation of a society/country that the people want? This starting point is fundamentally different from the one used in conventional (socialist) planning as it recognizes that the people, both current and future, will determine whether community is desirable.
The market-oriented planning placed the people at the center of any discussion of the role of public policy. The long-term goal in a market-oriented planning is to ensure a wide range of choices, and quality of life is defined by the people themselves. The planning process should accommodate this goal; instead of determining the outcome. This philosophy is quite the same with the “Object Oriented” approach in computer programming.
While conventional procedural planning may be a tool for achieving this goal, the measure of success is whether the people are satisfied with their choices hence limits the political and discretionary nature of the development-approval process by focusing on tangible harms and impacts of development.
It also avoids the mismatch arise from inconsistencies and uncertainties inherent in the evolution of communities as needs, preferences, and wants change over time; and minimizing the effects of poorly designed and implemented growth-management policies when goals are not well defined.
In a market-oriented planning, elected officials and planners do not try to determine the “best solution”—that is a decision left to the people to organizes and create a society that fit their needs. Contrary to the theory underlying conventional planning, in this increasing fast paced world, the “best solution” to a social problem continually changes, as do the needs of a community. The often bureaucratic procedural planning process, however, rarely moves quickly or efficiently enough to accommodate these changes.
In a market-oriented planning, planners and citizens use the efficiencies of the market to let the public administration or corporate planning change and evolve with the community.
An Process In Its Evolution
Like the It world which have developed from the traditional Procedural Programming to the phenomenon adoption of Object Oriented Programming, I would see that the same evolution taking place in the planning paradigm from the centralized Socialist Planning Process to the Market-Oriented Planning Process.
Driven by the same increasing changing pace, the planning community would not be able to face up the ever increasing challenges that brought along by the continuous changes with an old approach that would be efficient and effective enough in today’s eyes.
To be able to overcome the challenges of this new era, rather than relying on abstract visions of what a community should “look like,” vague concepts of “good” planning, or idealized notions of the Socialist Planning Process, strategic planner that turn to the Market-Oriented Planning Process could not only stop at the politically correct ‘people’s choice’ policy but have strive to achieve in a strategic plan that is simplicity, modularity, modifiability, extensibility, maintainability and re-usability.
In The Minds of Young Malaysians 