Parecon is a very tough-minded economic vision and model, and it sets a standard for us to look at.

In America, we need to develop communitywide structures of democratic ownership, we need to work out cooperative development, we need to work out participatory management, we need new ecological strategies developed at the local city, state, regional level.

We need to learn to listen to what the people need and want and not try to impose on them a whole schema that they may not. This is historically difficult stuff: how do we balance the project of raising consciousness, advancing a vision of utopia, with the real and honest engagement in real-world experiments?

Worker ownership is only one form of democratizing ownership.

The reality of the world we live in is that people sometimes aren't interested in many circumstances no matter how much young radicals yell at them, that isn't what they want to do right now.

Internationally, there are countries going well beyond the course, with airlines, transportation. There are systems around the world that have explored mining, rail transport, television, communication, Internet service - there very common examples around the world that we can draw examples from.

Finding ways to organize work in which people are not locked into unequal power relationships is very important. Having said that, it's not easily done, and it's complicated.