Dear friends:
This issue, we continue our exploration of economic governance, i.e. centered around the crucial differentiation between what is scarce and what is abundant, and how peer production, predicated on abundance, fits in the picture. In the next issue, we will move from theory to practice, and present a number of practical governance methodologies which have been offered to manage the commons, such as the 'trust' format. Then, in issue 99, we revisit monetary reform, focusing on general reforms rather than the expansion of local complementary currencies. I have no hesitation to say that in this issue, every single essay is worth reading. To show the interconnection between issues, see already the ToC of the issues 98 and 99, already prepared. Issue 100 is about social software.
I have rewritten the manuscript section on peer governance, taking into account the fine work of Bob Jessop on the issue. Let me know if you want to receive the update by email. This will give you an expanded framework to understand the processes of economic governance that we are presently covering.
My question to readers is the following: what do you see as the relation between the peer governance of restricted groups, and the management of society as a whole?
Michel Bauwens
ISSUE 97, Table of Contents
P/I: PLURALITIES/INTEGRATION
A newsletter about participation
in multiple worlds, multiple visions, but one humanity ; a monitor of P2P
developments
-
Archive at http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
; foundational essay at http://integralvisioning.org/article.php?story=p2ptheory1
Compiler:
Michel Bauwens, michelsub2003@yahoo.com ; P/I is an emanation of the FOUNDATION FOR PEER TO PEER
ALTERNATIVES
ISSUE 97: November 5, 2005: Why this newsletter? Why the title?
The title refers to
the enduring tension between a multitude of worldviews, and their eventual
integration. For a full explanation of the rationale behind the newsletter, see
issues 1 and 2. An alternative name could be "P2P and Empire" because in
practice I mostly focus on a analysis of the crisis of the current system on
the one hand, and the emergence of a more participative worldview, which I call
"peer to peer", on the other.
Preferred themes: the networked society, cognitive capitalism, Empire and its
discontents,emancipatory processes among the `multitudes' and the possible
emergence of a peer to peer civilization, truth-building as a collective and
`dialogical' effort, the challenges posed to traditional religions and humanism
by spiritual P2P experiencing and technological transhumanism.
The P2P meme map (i.e. related, but not
necessarily completely similar terms: peer to peer,
many to many, edge to edge development partnerships, distributed networks,
egalitarian networks, protocollary power, user innovation communities, social
networking, smart mobs, filesharing, grid computing, theWriteable Web (or
Read-Write Web), FLOSS i.e. Free, Libre, Open Source Software, CPBB or
Commons-Based Peer Production, the alterglobalisation movement as a network of
networks, free software and open sources as a 'third mode of production', the
coordination format, non-representationality, the rhizome, parallel and
distributed computing, object oriented programming, object-oriented sociality,
the Information Commons, the GPL Society, the hacker ethic, folksonomies and
tags, the long tail, Napsterization, cooperation studies, collective
intelligence, synergetics, wirearchy, peer governance, common-property regimes
If you like
this project, please suggest any interesting links! We would be very happy
to list you as a contributor. Thanks to John Dermaut, Christophe Lestavel, John
L. Petersen, George Dafermos, Jim Hightower, David Spillane, Larry Penslinger,
Nik Baerten, Maurice Nsabimana, Tattoo Mabonzo, Philippe Van Nedervelde, Pascal
Houba, Jaap van Till, and the Multitudes mailing list for regular suggestions.
Recommended:
JamesBurke of Lifesized, http://lifesized.blogspot.com/;
Kris Roose, at http://www.noosphere.cc/
; Nicole-Anne Boyer, http://www.fuzzysignals.com/
How
to subscribe: Write to compiler Michel Bauwens at michelsub2003@yahoo.com.
QUOTES
- Peter Barnes
on the scarcity of nature
"Let me suggest
an historical perspective here. It makes sense that, during the past 300 years
or so, capital held the divine right. Goods and services were scarce; nature
was abundant. But now the see-saw has tipped. Today the problem in advanced
economies isn't the scarcity of goods and services, or of capital. It's the
scarcity of nature, equity, time and quiet. So it makes historic sense that we
shift the divine right to the commons."
Source: http://onthecommons.org/node/693
- Peter Barnes on
Corporations as "illth creators"
"Growth of
negative externalities is a result of several factors, the most obvious of
which are changes in human population and technology. We are no longer small
bands of hunters, gatherers, farmers and artisans; we are industrialists,
chemists, shoppers and SUV drivers -- and there are 6.5 billion of us. Our
aggregate activities heavily affect our neighbors and our planet. In fact,
we've pushed many vital ecosystems to the point where unpredictable, non-linear
changes are occurring. A less obvious but equally potent cause of illth is the
behavior of modern corporations. Their profit-maximizing algorithm makes them
shift as many costs as possible to workers, taxpayers, nature and future
generations, all of whom are off their balance sheets. As investment manager
Robert Monks has noted, "The corporation is an externalizing machine in
the same way a shark is a killing machine. There isn't any question of
malevolence or of will. The enterprise has within it, as the shark has within
it, those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it is
designed."
Source: http://onthecommons.org/node/693
CONTENTS
-
A completely updated PDF version of the P2P
manuscript is available, specially prepared for the Re-Activism conference, and
225 pages long. Available upon request by email. See also the abstract of the Budapest lecture at http://mokk.bme.hu/centre/conferences/reactivism/submissions/bouwens.
You can also order a "bound volume" for EURO 15.
-
I'm putting the manuscript up for
discussion in a Wiki-format, at the P2P Foundation site, section by
section, at http://p2pfoundation.net/index.php/Manifesto
-
Recently, the P2P essay has been mentioned
in Network Dialectics, at http://networksdialectics.blogspot.com/2005/10/p2p-and-human-evolution.html
; the Critical V blog, at http://critical-v.blogspot.com/2005/09/its-always-frustrating-yet-fascinating.html
; ebuddha's Integral Practice site has some extra kind words, at http://integralpractice.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/20/1241161.html
-
Received by email this recommendation for a
Business 2.0 article on peer production, at http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1112586,00.html;
Forwarded by mykljonzun <mykl@mykljonzun.com>
"The
article above discusses a new economic term called "Peer Production." It also happens to be one of the core
concepts behind ideologi (www.ideologi.com). Hopefully, this will give you all a much
clearer view of what I see for the future of ideologi. There's much more to the idea in this
article than meets the eye. Since
the answer to a long-sought solution revealed itself to me over a year ago,
I've been working through widening circles of knowledge merging interdisciplinary
theories together. This is why the
weblog (www.ideologi.com) may seem to most of you as 'overloaded' with content
that appears to be all over the map.
It is also why I choose to describe the project as an open proposal for
the creation of a "universal exchange of ideas" and not as a
"peer production portal." This isn't just going to be a techno-social
revolution. It's going to be a
reinvention of civilization. If
that sounds far fetched, then take another look at the first sentence of the
article again. So far, I have
primarily concerned myself with error-correcting my own thought process by
corresponding with the original authors whose work were inspirations for
ideologi. I still need to make sure
that this isn't just a pipe dream.
So far, all of their feedback has been very positive. But if you're curious as to where I
think this is going,then just take a look at any of the non-business books I've
listed on the weblog."
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org
We return to Herman Daly, and a modified form of the talk we
featured in the last issue. This one, in html format, is more easily quotable,
and sets out clearly the problematic of scarcity vs. abundance, which is key to
economic governance.
"Sustaining Our Commonwealth of
Nature and Knowledge." Summary of talk by Herman Daly prepared by Jing Cao
of the E.F. Schumacher Society.
"A
commonwealth is a resource created
either by nature, or by aggregatehuman effort. Natural resources would fall
into the first category; knowledge belongs to the second. Sustaining our
commonwealths means using with maintenance. We must realize what the maximum
amount of a resource we can consume while still maintaining our commonwealths.
.....The problem in the current economy is that nature is treated as a non-scarce
resource when it is in fact scarce. Knowledge has the opposite problem, it is
treated as scarce when it is in fact non-scarce.
In
economics, goods are either rival or non-rival, and excludable or non-excludable.
A
rival good is one where if I consume it, that prevents you from consuming it.
Clothing, for example, is rival. Sunlight is non-rival since my consumption of
it doesn't prevent you from enjoying it.
Rivalnessis
a physical property. Excludability is a legal concept. Excludable goods can be
made private property, such as a private residence. Non-excludable goods are
those not privatized.
1.
Rival, excludable goods are the ones the market was made for .....market goods.
2.
Non-rival, non-excludable goods are public goods.
3.
Rival, non-excludable goods give way to the tragedy of the commons.These goods,
fishing rights or clean air, are rival, yet because there is no way of making
these excludable, each party will try to consume them before another party
exhausts the resource, leading to competitive depletion instead of cooperative
conservation, which would be in the best interest of all parties.
4.
Non-rival, excludable goods, such as knowledge, result in the tragedy of
artificial scarcity.
Sustainability
is not a problem with the commonwealth of knowledge because knowledge is a
non-rival resource. For existing knowledge, since there is zero opportunity
cost for its use (my use of a piece of knowledge does not prevent you from
using it) its price should be zero. However, there is an expenditure of rival
resources for the pursuit of new knowledge. Some pieces of knowledge, such as
the discovery of subatomic particles, may come at a high cost. Others, such as
Descartes' fathoming of analytical
geometry while staring at his ceiling from his bed, may come at no cost. The acquisition of a new
piece of knowledge may also be for the delight of discovery.
However
conventional wisdom says that without a profit motive, no new knowledge will be
created. The production of new knowledge requires extrinsic stimulation and to
this end it is made artificially rival through patents and intellectual
property rights. However, since new knowledge is created from old knowledge, if
old knowledge is made artificially expensive, then the production of new
knowledge is hindered. Not all knowledge is equally beneficial to mankind, and
the interests of private profit isn't always the best filter. The profit
incentive has given us liposuction and Viagra, but no cure to AIDS or malaria. We
should drastically cut back on intellectual property rights and rely on public
funds and the human drive to learn for the continued production of new knowledge.
Nature,
on the other hand, is rival, but treated as non-rival. Rival goods sometimes
become non-rival if demand is low, and my consumption does not hinder your
consumption. Water used to be such a resource. Some resources, such as timber,
are rival generationally, since within a generation there is only a limited
supply, but can be non-rival in the long-term if exploited at levels of
sustainable yield, that is if only income and not capital is consumed. It is
necessary to protect these fundamentally rival goods by making them excludable.
The commonwealth of nature needs to be protected by individual or social
property rights, not open access.
The
market solution to this is the cap-and-trade system. Rival resources such as
fishing rights or polluting rights would be capped at an ecologically
sustainable level, and then traded on a market. The cap-and-trade system brings
up the questions of scale, distribution,and allocation. The decision of where
to place the cap on the scale of the use of a resource must be a social and
ecological decision. The market assumes a preexisting scale and has no
mechanism for setting one. The market also deals very little with distribution,
since the market takes ownership as a given.
Comment from Soenke Zehle:
"This
is key: "Some resources, such as timber, are rival generationally, since
within a generation there is only a limited supply, but can be non-rival in the
long-term if exploited at levels of sustainable yield,
that
is if only income and not capital is consumed." This is where all
classical economics fails; the whole idea of achieving allocative optima
through self-regulating markets is at odds with any thought of futurity, econ theory
accommodates this rather awkwardly through fiddling with discount rates for
future use. That's also why, imo, ecological economists like Daly (one-time
World Bank dissident who was actually much more interesting than Stiglitz, for
example) and others like Martinez have turned the problem of inter-generational
allocation of resources into a major area of emphasis"
http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/mies01_en.htm
Most of the world population has lived for most of the
time, in a subsistence economy. If we ever face a crisis of natural scarcity
again, there's a lot we can learn from them, in order to develop a
neo-subsistence based econonomy, as argued by Maria Mies.
1. On the discovery of the subsistence perspective
"The
issue was: what does housework mean in capitalism? Why isn't this work seen as
work? Why isn't it paid? Why is it non-paid labor? We recognized that in
capitalism this work can't be paid, because if it were, the accumulation model
would collapse. That doesn't mean that there wouldn't be any capitalism
anymore, as some thought, but that it would definitely be much too expensive if
all of the work done in the household were paid for: bearing children, raising
them, reproducing the man - as it was called at the time - taking care of the
old and the infirm. If that were paid labor that had to be paid like regular
paid labor, then it would be impossible to pay for it and that would
fundamentally alter the entire model of capitalism. So we arrived at the
concept - which actually doesn't stem from us, since the subsistence concept is
an old concept - that what we call life production is actually necessary as a
prerequisite for all types of paid labor. At the time, we stated: without subsistence
labor, there would be no paid labor. But without paid labor, there is still
subsistence labor: it is the undying prerequisite for not only every type of
life, but also every type of work - that food, housing, and immediate life
concerns are taken care of. This work is extremely valuable, but it is never
paid for monetarily. That was the point where we saw this connection. And then
we also saw that, in addition, housework is not the only type of work that is
exploited in this way at practically no cost to capitalism. Instead, there is
similar work among small farmers who, everywhere in the world, work for their
own subsistence. They sell things at the market, too, but they aren't wage
laborers. And what is interesting about this, is that they are just as absent
as women are in the gross national product or gross domestic product. They
don't count, as one of the women from New Zealand, Marilyn Waring
described in "If Women Counted" - if women counted, what then? A very
interesting book. And then we discovered, third, that the small farmers' work
also has something to do with housework and both have something to do with the
work in the colonies. Then this concept emerged, as all three of us were in the
Third World for extended periods. I was in India for many years, my two friends were in Latin America, and so we realized: if entire countries
hadn't been exploited as colonies for long periods of time, then there wouldn't
be any capitalism. And if they were treated equally today, all of the work in
the "colonies" - I still call them "colonies" - well, then
there wouldn't be much to accumulate. And that's why we call all of these
relations colonial relations. The man-woman relationship is colonial, the
relationship between the small farmer and industry is also colonial, and
naturally, the colonial relationships between metropolises and colonies are
definitely colonial."
2. Subsistence as an alternative
"Now
you ask me, quite justifiably, how can a life, which is often so wretched,
provide a perspective for a better society? At first it sounds a bit absurd.
But if we look closely at how people survive and everything that they do then
we discover that the old principles I spoke of previously were reactivated:
there is mutual assistance and people are again willing to do everything they
possibly can do by themselves. That is a new and positive perspective, since
with these activities - even if they take place at a very low level - people
rediscover their sovereignty, their own authority to produce their lives, as we
call it. That is no shortcoming, it is something very positive to discover,
that we are entirely capable of collectively producing and organizing our lives
together, with others. Naturally, you also need money. I don't want to deny
that at all, but exclusively working for money is not the best thing - that is
only one side of it. The other is that subsistence production, or subsistence
orientation, satisfies needs in a much more comprehensive way than purchased
products ever could. These purchased goods actually don't contain anything. It
is dead labor that is materialized there. They are used, then they're gone,
then you have to buy new goods and people are never satisfied. That is, namely,
the point. That begins with all of the appliances and technical achievements:
first you have a black and white television, then that isn't enough, then you
have to have a color television, then you need a computer, then a cell phone,
now children have to have cell phones and it goes on and on. But can we say
that we have a happy, satisfied society? I've heard of a movement in the U.S. that is
searching for the good life. That is an old economic concept, already
established by Aristotle as the goal of the economy. The goal of the economy is
the good life. The people in the U.S. say, we work and work, but the
good life never arrives. Where is the good life? That's why we say that that is
the goal of subsistence. Subsistence is not shortcoming and misery, as we are
constantly made to believe. If it is understood correctly that is, and not as
individual subsistence - which is not possible - then you always have to get
together with others to do something, not only to survive, but to live well.
Then it is actually possible to create the good life. You experience that you are
your own authority, that together with others, you're sovereign. That is an
entirely different type of satisfaction than when you have your eight-hour day
behind you and perhaps also earned quite a bit. The good life is meant to
arrive at the age of sixty-five, but even then it doesn't come. I think that is
one of the reasons why people in our society are so unhappy. The alienation of
paid labor can't be neutralized by even such great sums of money. But in the
subsistence perspective, that is entirely possible."
3. Subsistence in action: the Bangladeshi Nayakrishi
Andalon movement
"Friends
of mine in Bangladesh
began to defend themselves against what the major multinational concerns were
doing in the agricultural industry. They found out that the soil is destroyed,
that the water is full of arsenic and the yields are sinking. The promise of
the Green Revolution was that in monoculture everything would be produced in
great amounts. They found out that that wasn't true. Then they realized that
earlier, it wasn't the case at all. And they founded a new farmers' movement
called Nayakrishi Andalon, started by women. The women realized that since the
Green Revolution, the men had started to beat them. They hadn't known such
violence before as they were the guardians of the seeds. The seeds were in
their control, they stored them, told the farmers when it was time to sow, etc.
So they got together and decided they wanted to change things. The entire
initiative was started by women to regain a fulfilling and happy life. That was
their first explicit goal. We want to have a happy life! If you ask the farmers
in this movement, then all of them will tell you that they want a happy life.
Just ask a farmer here in Germany
if his work makes him happy... The first thing the women said was that there
would be no multi-national corporations allowed in. They declared the villages
as non-toxic villages. No multi is going to come in here with all of the
poisons that they spray. I forgot to say that many of the women, because they
were so unhappy, committed suicide by drinking the pesticides that were
standing around and poisoning themselves. Now today, the same principles are
back in practice again, actually, old principles, but also new ones allowing
agriculture to be fruitful and productive without putting in all of the inputs
from industrial countries. There are a lot of things that they rediscovered,
such as diversity. They aren't practicing monoculture, they use their own
compost, they help each other, and they don't purchase seeds anymore. In almost
all villages they have seed houses, and these are again under the control of
the women who store and preserve the seeds. They are sovereign again; they have
what the Via Campesina, an oppositional, worldwide small farmers' organization,
calls nutritional sovereignty. I think that all subsistence begins with
nutritional sovereignty. That is an example and that's now a huge movement in Bangladesh."
See
also the neo-subsistence perspective of the Open Source Ecology initiative, http://www.sourceopen.org/wiki/?pagename=OpenSourceEcology.About
http://tiki.societal.org/tiki-index.php?page=Abondance
André-Jacques Holbecq distinguishes two great ecomic periods: one marked by
scarcity, until 1960, one market by the abundance of economic goods, after that
period. This shift forces to rethink all our assumptions and to change our
paradigm, which is why he proposes the alternative of the ecosocietal movement.
http://onthecommons.org/node/694
Peter Barnes on the need to develop a economics which
takes into account `negative externalities' and bases itself on the protection
of common resources which have to be handed out to the next generations.
There's
a reason for double-entry accounting: it gives a good picture of reality. If
your accountant recorded only sales revenue and not expenses, he'd give a very
distorted picture of your situation, and you'd fire him for being
half-brained.Strange as it seems, mainstream economists are like that
half-brained accountant. They count America's sales (a.k.a. GDP), but
not our expenses (the negative externalities of those sales). They keep track
of private income and wealth, but not common wealth or illth. As a result, they
miss at least half the story. It's time for a new breed of economists to keep a
fuller set of books and tell a larger economic story. These economists would
look at the health of the commons (the balance sheet) and the trade between the
commons and the market (the income statements). They'd address such questions
as: if the market does this or that, what are the effects on the commons? Who
pays for illth, damagers or damagees? How might that be reversed? How can
scarce common resources -- ecosystems, time, peace of mind -- be conserved, and
their `rents' captured and recycled? Ultimately, their job would be to make the
economic case for the primacy, if not the divinity, of the commons
Mainstream
economists have little interest in this work. They'll no doubt complain that
commons-side economists can't be as quantitatively precise as they are. This is
true, but so what? Right now, mainstream economists value the commons at zero.
This is quantitatively precise, but quite wrong. Any imprecise numbers derived
by commons-side economists would be a big step forward.
Commons-side
economics can also serve as an antidote to supply-side economics, which has
dominated public policy since the 1980s. The premise of supply-side economics
is that, by reducing taxes on the suppliers of capital, production will be
stimulated, GDP will rise and income will trickle down to non-owners of
capital. Some supply-siders also argue that the growth stimulated by
supply-side tax cuts will add to, rather than detract from, government revenue.
George Bush the elder once called this "voodoo economics." A more
up-to-date appellation would be "faith-based economics." Nevertheless,
the doctrine prevails. Supply-siders' basic assumption is: what's good for the
owners of capital is good for everyone. They presume private capital is scarce
and/or indolent and must therefore be lured into action with ever-greater
privileges and rewards. They further assume that most, if not all, wealth comes
from profit-maximizing, and therefore any spending by government, or any money
paid to commoners for anything other than their labor, is not only money
misspent, but a drag on the bounty-giving of profit-seekers.
Commons-side
economists, by contrast, would see the commons not just as a needed boundary on
the market, but as a supply-side of a different sort. Their premise would be:
what's good for everyone, including future generations, is good for the owners
of capital. They'd understand the wealth that lies in the commons and describe
the many ways that investing in the commons enriches more humans more
efficiently than does relying on corporations."
2. When should a resource be managed as a commons,
when as private property
URL = http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=704463
"In
this article, Professor Frischmann combines a number of current debates across
many disciplinary lines, all of which examine from different perspectives
whether certain resources should be managed through a regime of private
property or through a regime of open access. Frischmann develops and applies a
theory that demonstrates there are strong economic arguments for managing and
sustaining openly accessible infrastructure. The approach he takes differs from
conventional analyses in that he focuses extensively on demand-side
considerations and fully explores how infrastructure resources generate value
for consumers and society. As a result, the theory brings into focus the social
value of common infrastructure, and strongly suggests that the benefits of open
access (costs of restricted access) are significantly greater than reflected in
current debates. Frischmann's infrastructure theory ultimately ties together
different strands of legal and economic thought pertaining to natural resources
such as lakes, traditional infrastructure such as road systems, what antitrust
theorists describe as essential facilities, basic scientific research, and the
Internet. His theory has significant potential to reframe a number of important
debates within intellectual property, cyberlaw, telecommunications, and many
other areas."
See
also this essay by Yochai Benkler, "Freedom in the Commons: towards a political
economy of information', at http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1245/
http://republicart.net/disc/aeas/fotopoulos01_en.htm
The economic democracy proposals of Takis Fotopoulos
of the Inclusive Democracy movement.
"So
the question is how we can have a system that on the one hand secures the
satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens, and on the other hand secures
freedom of choice. For this, the proposal of the inclusive democracy project is
to combine the planning element, which would be especially useful as regards
the meeting of basic needs, with the market element - not in the sense of a
real market like the present one, but in the sense of an artificial market that
I'm going to explain in a moment. As you can see in this simple diagram,... at
the bottom of the pyramid you can see "citizens decide". And there
you can see that it is citizens who decide production, decide consumption,
decide work. In other words, all the important decisions are being taken by
citizens. This is not accidental because you should not forget that this is a
model of an economy which is stateless, in other words, it does not presuppose
a state; it's moneyless, in the sense that it does not presuppose money the way
we know it today; and it is marketless, in the sense that there is no real
market but an artificial market. Thus. it is basically citizens who decide.
So
let's move first to the consumption side of the economy. There, you can see
that citizens decide as consumers how to allocate their income, which comes in
the form of vouchers. That is, citizens in exchange for the work they offer to
society, are rewarded with vouchers. Now, we may distinguish here between basic
and non-basic vouchers. Let's start first with the basic vouchers on the right.
We can estimate the number of man-hours that people have to offer to society,
to the community, so that their basic needs are satisfied. The planners, in
other words, on the basis of estimates about what are basic needs - and what
are basic needs is decided democratically, not objectively, because if you
introduce the element of objectivity, then you may easily end up with all sorts
of arbitrary decisions, so, democratically, citizens decide which needs are
basic and also what should be the level of satisfaction so that the basic
needs, say food or clothing or whatever, are satisfied - and, also on the basis
of estimates about the size of the population and the entitlement of each
citizen to particular basic needs on the one hand, and on the other hand, on
the basis of technological averages, can find out what is the total number of
basic hours (and, correspondingly, the basic vouchers) that should be offered
in a community, of say thirty or fifty thousand people, so that its basic needs
are satisfied. The non-basic vouchers are issued to citizens who would like to
work over and above the minimum requirement that is needed for the satisfaction
of basic needs. Let's say that planners have estimated that everybody has to
work three hours a day so that all basic needs are met. If somebody wants to
work more than three hours, either in the same line of activity or in a
different one, then he is rewarded for this with non-basic vouchers, which he
can use to buy commodities - i.e. goods and services that are of non-basic
nature.
The
question that arises with respect to non-basic vouchers is how we can determine
the rates of exchange, in other words, the "prices" at which work is
exchanged with non-basic vouchers. For basic vouchers that is no problem
because everybody has to work a minimum number of hours to meet his or her basic
needs. But with non-basic vouchers there is a question of what is the rate of
remuneration. Now, here, we can take into account - and that's why I talked
before about an artificial market - the demand and supply conditions of the
past. In other words, if, say, a mobile is characterized as a non-basic good by
the assemblies and if, say, over the past six months, in this community, there
has been an offer of, say, 100 000 non-basic vouchers in the purchase of
mobiles, and with these 100 000 vouchers people could buy 1 000 mobiles because
that was the total production of mobiles, then, if we divide the number of
vouchers used in the purchase of mobiles by the number of mobiles produced, we
get 100. So the price of a mobile is 100 non-basic vouchers. And, similarly. we
can find out the price of any other non-basic good, in other words, by taking
into account what production took place over a period of time and, also, what
the demand for this particular type of good and service was. This way,
therefore, we start with actual demand and actual supply conditions rather than
- and this is a major drawback of most planning systems - by asking people in
advance what they wish to buy and then calculating accordingly, through the
planning mechanism, what is to be produced. The disadvantage of all these types
of planning is that people have to decide six months or a year in advance what
exactly they are going to buy, which, of course, is something that seriously
restricts freedom of choice.
So,
let's move now to the production side of the economy. As you can see, citizens
decide the production targets in demotic assemblies on the one hand, and
workplace assemblies on the other. Now, demotic assemblies are perhaps the most
important body of decision-making in the inclusive democracy. It is the
assembly of the demos, the assembly of the citizen body in a particular area.
The demotic assembly takes decisions on all aspects of economic and political
and social life. As regards economics in particular, it takes decisions on the
basis of the plan which is designed at the confederal level, which we are going
to see in a moment. Thus, the demotic assembly, on the basis of the confederal
plan instructions, as we have seen before, estimates what the basic needs of
the people would be and how many hours each has to work. Then, on the basis of
these instructions, the demotic assemblies give instructions to the various
workplace assemblies of what the work tasks are - that is, what they have to
produce in order to meet the basic needs of the people. However, both demotic
and workplace assemblies refer to the local level. But there are also problems
of regional, or national, or even continental significance. That's why we also
need what we may call regional assemblies, as we can see in the diagram, which
decide on problems that cannot be decided at the local level. This is because,
in principle, all main decisions are taken at the local level but there are
also problems which cannot be solved at the local level - take transport, take
energy, take communication. You cannot solve this sort of problems at the local
level, so there should be a regional assembly - consisting of delegates from
demotic assemblies - which however only co-ordinates; it does not take
decisions. That's important, the regional assembly is only an administrative
council, it's not a policy-making body - remember, we have delegates, not
representatives. So, from demotic assemblies, a number of delegates are elected
to the regional assembly, in order to implement the decisions of demotic
assemblies.
Finally,
we have confederal assemblies, which are the highest economic organ of the
inclusive democracy. And this means that an inclusive democracy cannot work
only at the local level. Unless local democracies are confederated in a kind of
confederal inclusive democracy, it is meaningless to talk about any reasonable
allocation of resources. In fact, I could say that the three conditions of
economic democracy are: first, what I mentioned before, demotic ownership of
the means of production; second, self-reliance, that is, each local community,
each demos, should be self-reliant, not in the sense of autarchy - autarchy is
impossible today - but in the sense of relying on its own resources in order to
meet as many needs as possible; and the third important principle that is
implied by this economic democracy model is confederal allocation of resources,
i.e. the allocation of resources takes place at the confederal level.
In
a free society the question is who is going to do the unpleasant jobs and how
we can meet demand and supply when, say, more people would like to do jobs that
are very pleasant, versus the other type of jobs. Now, one solution that has
been suggested is the idea of job complexes, which means that people can do a
variety of work tasks. In other words, we can expand the meaning of the job, or
type of job, to include as many work tasks as possible. For example, if you
work in an office, you can do typing but at the same time you can be involved
in other types of more interesting work in the office and in decision-taking as
well, and so on. So, in this sense, the job complex idea does sort out the
problem of how we choose jobs in certain kinds of activities. But this is not a
panacea, that is, there are types of activities that we can think of where the
idea of job complexes may not work, especially if you need a very high degree
of training and skill in order to do a particular job. I cannot think of a job
complex for a surgeon, say, or for a pilot. I cannot imagine the surgeon doing
the cleaning as well, or helping the nurse give injections because that would
be a waste of his time and of society's time, which is even more important. So,
there should be some other way of expressing the desires of people as regards
the type of work they choose.
As
regards the non-basic type of work, there is a way that is proposed by the
inclusive democracy system, which could sort out this problem. But as regards
the basic type of work, I think the only solution to a serious mismatch between
demand and supply is either rotation, (that is, people do various types of
activities on rotation, so that you're going to do hard work like building or
mining and then rotate), or that you reward people doing jobs for which there
is not much demand with non-basic vouchers on top of the basic vouchers they
have to receive anyway. As regards non-basic goods, if we move up to the
diagram, then we can see that we have on the left the index of desirability and
on the right the 'prices' of non-basic goods and services. These are the two
basic elements that determine the rate of remuneration of non-basic work. The
index of desirability is a complex index showing the desires of people as
regards various types of work. First, a look at the index of desirability: We
can design it as an inverse function of desirability, in the sense that the
more desirable a job, a type of work is, the less the remuneration is, so that,
in this way, we can have on the one hand satisfaction of the desires of people
and on the other hand satisfaction of the needs of society, in the sense that
for non-desirable work there should be higher remuneration - say, a builder or
a miner should receive a higher remuneration than perhaps a university teacher
if the university teacher's job is more in demand (because he gets more
satisfaction from his work) than that of a miner or a builder. Furthermore, and
that's important, we have an adjustment mechanism here at work, because if,
say, in a particular type of activity there is not much offer for non-basic
work, if, say, there are not many people who would like to do extra work in the
production of mobiles, this would be reflected in the price of mobiles; the
price of mobiles would go up as production of mobiles falls. But, as the price
of mobiles goes up, the rate of remuneration would be going up as well, and
this could attract more workers in the production of mobiles. So, that's in a
nutshell how this model of economic democracy works. But as I said from the
beginning, this is just a proposal to show that it is feasible to have a
different kind of society meeting the basic needs of all citizens and at the
same time meeting the demand for freedom of choice. And it is, of course, up to
the general assemblies of the future to decide what exactly the form of their
society should be."
More on Inclusive
Democracy and its related proposals here at http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/
http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/Sahlins.pdf
Marshall Sahlins, celebrated anthropologist, was one
of the first to challenge the industrial-era myth of progress, showing in his
essay on The Original Affluent Society, that tribal economies were in fact
operating in a context of abundance.
"When
Herskovits (13) was writing his Economic Anthropology (1958), it was common
anthropological practice to take the Bushmen or the native Australians as
"a classic illustration; of a people whose economic resources are of the
scantiest", so precariously situated that "only the most intense
application makes survival possible". Today the "classic"
understanding can be fairly reversed- on evidence largely from these two
groups. A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than
we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent,
leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per
capita per year than in any other condition of society. The most obvious, immediate conclusion is that the people do not
work hard. The average length of time per person per day put into the
appropriation and preparation of food was four or five hours. Moreover, they do
not work continuously. The subsistence quest was highly intermittent. It would
stop for the time being when the people had procured enough for the time being.
Which left them plenty of time to spare. Clearly in subsistence as in other
sectors of production, we have to do with an economy of specific, limited
objectives. By hunting and gathering these objectives are apt to be irregularly
accomplished, so the work pattern becomes correspondingly erratic."
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/rainbow.html
Native American traditions paid heed to the need to
integrate various competing perspectives, and developed a decision-making
protocol to insure it: the medicine wheel council. From the popular Ehama
trainings in the U.S.
"This was ceremony time. For the next eight hours, the
group would join in a ceremony, a medicine wheel council, a communal
decision-making tool that would teach them how to replace contentious debate
with constructive conversation. The tribal version of Robert's Rules of Order
was in effect: the members of the circle would pass a talking stick to indicate
who had the floor -- no interrupting allowed. That person would begin by
identifying himself or herself by name and end by saying, "I have
spoken." The group would then respond, "Ho!" -- the tribal
equivalent of "You have been heard."In the ceremony they would learn
about the Four Shields and the Four Attentions, and then they would sit as
chiefs at the eight points of the compass to hold a council. Each of the chiefs
would have one unique perspective to offer the group; the wisdom of the council
would emerge as the perspectives came together, one at a time, in a circular
ceremony. "It is a way to bring balance into a group," WindEagle
explained. "A way to put things in perspective without
adversarialism." That search for balance and perspective is embedded in
the design of the ceremony and woven into the patterns that decorate the
ceremonial lodge. Just as ancient tribes needed a tool to help them reach
decisions that reflected the group's collective knowledge, so today's business
"tribes" can benefit from a tool that breaks down organizational
barriers, explores assumptions in a nonconfrontational style, and changes the
mind-set, focus, and pace of the conversations that lead to decisions.
As the participants learned, these ancient teachings or
Earth Wisdom, offered by RainbowHawk and WindEagle, who run the Ehama Institute
in Los Gatos, California, can feel out of place in the
fast-paced, technologically sophisticated, modern business world. And it's
unlikely that hundreds of companies will be turning their conference rooms into
ceremonial lodges anytime soon. But what the council ceremony offers is a set
of insights and techniques that change how and why decisions get made. Eight
hours later, when the council was over, Helena Light Hadley left with a new insight
into decision making. "The tribal approach makes a lot of sense," she
says. "When a decision is put in the context of `the greater good,' you
stop acting so territorial. You see the needs of the entire system, not just
the little piece you're hanging on to."
The teachings of Earth Wisdom aren't hip. They won't be
the basis for the next business best-seller or rival reengineering for
consultants' billable hours. They are worth understanding precisely because
they endure: this tool for making group decisions dates back to the Americas'
earliest inhabitants -- with links to the Mayans and Incas. The actual ceremony
that RainbowHawk and WindEagle practice stems from an oral tradition. According
to this tradition, representatives of the Iroquis, Delaware,
Cherokee, Choctow, Osage, the plains people and other tribes came together in
1879 in Oklahoma
in a large council; by then, these tribes had realized that their indigenous
culture would soon be overrun by the dominant white culture. To preserve their
tribal wisdom, they passed on 37 belts to selected medicine women -- the last
of these belts that they had -- that conveyed their sacred teachings through
glyphs. The belts were passed from keeper to keeper, trained medicine women and
men, from generation to generation. Among those to whom this tradition passed
was Hyemeyohsts Storm, a Cheyenne,
who in 1973 published Seven Arrows, which recounts many of these
teachings. It was through Storm that RainbowHawk and WindEagle became keepers
of this tradition. Underlying the council ceremony is an elaborate mandala-like
design, tying together the cardinal and noncardinal directions of the compass,
universal forces, and a process of group consultation and consensus-building.
In its most fully articulated version, the design not only constructs a
medicine wheel for council discussions but also builds an overall social
vision. For the purposes of their teaching to businesspeople, RainbowHawk and
WindEagle simplify the design into three essential elements: the Four Shields
of Balance, the Four Attentions, and the Eight Chiefs, each of whom has a
specific perspective to represent in the council ceremony. The Four Shields,
which correspond to the four cardinal points of the compass, are the image of
human wholeness and balance. In the east is the Shield of the Magical Child,
which represents the spirit of creativity, playfulness, imagination,
illumination, and enlightenment. The east's responsibility is to maintain the
tribe's freedom to move and to play with the design of life; all discussion
originates in the east. In the south is the Shield of the Little Child, the
place of trust and innocence, where awe and wonder, emotional flexibility,
curiosity, and adventurousness-the attributes of a young child are paramount.
In the west is the Shield of the Nurturer, responsible for recognizing what is
needed to heal, nurture, teach, balance, and care for the tribe's people. In
the north is the Shield of the Warrior/Warrioress, with the attributes of
courage, resourcefulness, and strategy. It is the place of knowledge and
wisdom, clarity and action. The Four Attentions, set at the noncardinal points
of the compass, provide the counterbalance to the Four Shields. Here again,
each point is associated with a set of attributes. In the southeast is Be
Present, a reminder to pay attention to the tastes, smells, sounds, and touches
of the moment. In the southwest is Guards Out. Here the question is, "Are
we awake, guarding our focus, staying true to our target or goal?" In the
northwest is Look for the Teaching. This direction asks, "Are we attentive
to the meaning of each event or happening? What should we be learning from this
situation?" And in the northeast is Let the Little Child Play, a reminder
to stay open to vital information, to be playful with the forces at work in any
situation, to use challenge as a way to learn.
In the council ceremony, two chiefs -- one male and one
female -- sit at each of the eight cardinal and noncardinal points of the
compass. In what is perhaps the most important feature of the ceremony, each
pair of chiefs must adopt the perspective or attributes that correspond to
their position on the compass. Just as the Four Shields and the Four Attentions
each describe a sensibility, so the chiefs represent particular ways of looking
at experience or evaluating a situation. In the east are the Heyoehkah Chiefs,
who are responsible for speaking to the tribe's freedom and creativity. In the
southeast are the Peace Chiefs, who focus on the current situation facing the
tribe, with "present conditions and appreciation" as the most
important verbal cues. In the south are the War Chiefs, who address emotion, in
particular "power" and "danger" as represented in the issue
before the tribe. The Medicine Singer Chiefs in the southwest speak to purpose
and direction. They must answer the question, "Is this proposal on target
for the tribe?" In the west are the Women Chiefs. "Maintenance"
and "balance" are the key words in their deliberation; they must
concern themselves with healing and nurturing, protecting and caring for the
tribe. The Council Chiefs in the northwest speak to timing and
interrelatedness. In offering their council, they consider the question,
"Is this the right time?" In particular, they focus on the flow and
turn of events in the life of the tribe. In the north are the Hunter/Worker
Chiefs. Their focus is strategy and implementation, their key words
"clarity" and "action." Finally in the northeast are the
Law Dog Chiefs. They speak to "integrity" and "vitality,"
and must determine whether the council has spoken sufficiently to reach a
decision, or whether the ceremony is incomplete and the wheel must go around
again. The council ceremony always begins in the east and proceeds clockwise
around the circle of the medicine wheel, with each chief speaking to the issue
before the tribe and representing his or her designated perspective. The
talking stick passes from chief to chief; each chief rises to speak and
identifies himself or herself, identifies the perspective from which he or she
speaks, and then offers wisdom on the issue, usually talking for less than 10
minutes. In the center of the medicine wheel are the Zero Chiefs, whose job is
to ensure that the process is honored and that the discussion moves as it
should.
Because of the design of the medicine wheel, the quality
of the discussion is dramatically different from a traditional Western meeting.
Each chief adds to the council from his or her perspective, but none of the
chiefs debates with or directly contradicts any other. The ceremony is a
council, not an argument; understanding does not come out of conflict but
accumulates and then emerges.
Not all council ceremonies lead to consensus. If the
ceremony has been completed and the council has not reached an agreement, one
of two things can happen. The group can suspend the ceremony while it collects
its energy for another attempt. Or if there is an emergency and a decision must
be reached, the council can give someone the authority to decide, with the
understanding that not everyone is in accord. As WindEagle says: "If
there's agreement, that's good. If there's disagreement, at least we've heard
it in depth and we can establish what it is. This process is not about
positions, it's about people. It's about perspectives and wisdom. It creates
relationship, connection, and respect. When you speak and you're different from
me, I value your opinion. If we can live that way, we'll be wiser in the
actions we take." What distinguishes the council ceremony as a
decision-making technique is the nature and quality of the discussion. The
actual protocols are about as different from most corporate decision-making
practices as possible. "When the council comes together, it's a cumulative
process, rather than a debating process," says RainbowHawk. "Being a
chief in the council setting means stepping forward for the whole. Each person
adds to it and as each adds, the container of wisdom gets fuller."
http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/New_Traditional_Economy_-_Rosser_and_Rosser.pdf
Granted that we can learn from tribal gift economies
that were based on reciprocity. But can we also learn from feudal economics? My
perspective on this changed through a talk with Apichai Puntasen, a Thai social
reformer and scholar who lectures about `Buddhist Economics'. Traditional
religiously inspired economics, and I believe this would apply not only to
Buddhist, but also to Islamic and why not Christian-inspired approaches, are in
fact centered around the immaterial `spiritual' growth of the person, outlawing
interest-based approaches based on greed. In any case, the above link is an
essay showing that such tradition-inspired economics are far from dead, in
fact, they are growing and forming a `new traditional economy'.
"This
paper argues that a new economic system is emerging in the world economy, that
of the new traditional economy. Such an economic system simultaneously
seeks to have economic decision making embedded within a traditional
socio-cultural framework, most frequently one associated with a traditional
religion, while at the same time seeking to use modern technology and to be
integrated into the modern world economy to some degree. The efforts to achieve such a system are
reviewed in various parts of the
world, with greater analysis of the
Islamic and neo-Confucian economic systems.
Although the new traditional economy may not exist as
a fully developed system in the full Polanyian sense, it exists as a
perspective in the form of an ideal model which has become an ideological
movement of significance around the world in many societies. Where it has come the closest to
actually existing has been in societies where its adoption has been carried out
gradually and only partly consciously, with the resulting synthesis thus most
fully respecting and reflecting the genuine traditions of the society in
question. It is this successful
synthesis of the modern and the traditional which lies at the heart of the new
traditional economy perspective and its appeal for many economies seeking a
path in a transforming world economy."
EMPIRE
-
The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle
Class, AT www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=402
PBS Now interview between Bill Moyers and Elizabeth
Warren on her book, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and
Fathers are Going Broke. Online transcript of the interview is available at
www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript306_full.html
Streaming video archive of the interview is available at www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index_020604.html#video
-
Has world poverty really fallen during the
1990s?, at http://www.networkideas.org/featart/jun2005/fa10_World_Poverty.htm
P2P
-
iMesh goes legit, at http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,69457,00.html?,
http://imesh.com/
The old-school
peer-to-peer network iMesh has left the murky world of illegal file swapping
behind with the launch of a new service that enables users to share up to 2
million tracks from the four major record labels.
The New York-based
company is charging its 5 million users an a la carte fee of 99 cents to
purchase a track, or $6.95 per month to gain unlimited access to the catalog. Now
the company has built Microsoft Digital Rights Management technology into its
software, allowing users to see a complete list of tracks available on the
Gnutella network. However, they can only download tracks that they are willing
to pay for, or that are not copyright protected. "We are the first true P2P company to legalize our service," said
Talmon Marco, president and co-founder of iMesh. "Unlike iTunes or
Rhapsody or Napster, we will also provide access to another 15 million
so-called 'gray market' soundtracks free of charge."
Mashboxx, a competitor,
is poised to launch as well, at http://www.mashboxx.com/
-
A cognitive of tagging shows why it is so
popular, at http://www.rashmisinha.com/archives/05_09/tagging-cognitive.html
-
A review of the Flickr photo-sharing site
and its interesting features, at http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051103_605845.htm?
-
The French newspaper Liberation has devoted
an excellent dossier on internet governance: an interview with the chairman of
ICANN, at http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=331294
, who downplays the role of the U.S.
; and with the EU Commissioner in charge, who says the remaining dominance of
the U.S.
is inacceptable at http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=331293
MORE
PODCASTING/WEBCASTING DEVELOPMENTS
-
Boxoffice365
URL = http://www.boxoffice365.com
"A UK
firm has launched a video download service that allows customers to purchase
and download films to their computer, just as they are able to do with music
from online music stores such as Napster or Apple's iTunes.
Boxoffice365.com, from the British Internet Broadcasting Company (BIBC),
currently offers video of live music and stand-up comedy, but is currently in
negotiations with Optimum Releasing, an independent UK film distributor, over
the possibility of offering films for download. There are other outlets who
currently offer movie downloads, but, due to the film industry's deathly fear
of piracy, the only films generally on offer are B-movies few people have ever
heard of."
-
NPR's Open Source Radio project
URL = http://www.radioopensource.org/
"Every time we agree on a new idea that we think can sustain a
full hour of talking, we post it to the blog. Usually this is just a paragraph
-- a piece of truth and two unanswered questions -- to help us as we frantically
call and Google around to find the people who talk well and have something to
say. At this point, you are also producing the show with us. Register on the site,
find a topic you know something out and start leaving comments. Comment on each
others' comments. Tell us we're booking the wrong guests and don't know what
we're talking about. As producers, we are all generalists -- though some of us
carry an unfortunate amateur obsession with the European Union -- but you, you
are a nation of specialists. You know more than we could ever possibly Google
up out of the ether. You know more
people than we do. If we are talking about banking, you perhaps have an aunt
who had an unfortunate experience with an ATM. Perhaps you are the
great-great-grandchild of JP Morgan."
-
Talkr, text-to-speech podcasting software
URL = http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/07/talkr_intros_fr.html
"Talkr is
inviting bloggers to convert their text-only English-language blogs into
podcasts using Talkr's free podcasting tool. The initial setup takes about 10
minutes, and the podcasts require no ongoing effort. Talkr takes text-only
blogs and converts them into audio files," explains Chris Brooks, CEO of
Talkr.com. "We then p
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