[p2p-research] peer governance and democracy, request to Ned

[Patrick Anderson]

Hello Ned, Michel and all researchers,

On Feb 2, 2008 9:35 PM, Ned Rossiter <...> wrote:

> ... there are always going to be those dysfunctional dimensions that
> you refer to vis-a-vis platform owners vs. users.  I don't think
> those tensions can ever be 'solved'.

I'd like to ask a question that may seem too stupid to be worth
answering, but I wonder if the reason it hasn't occured to us is
because it is just too obvious to consider.


First, a claim about ownership:
1. == When users are owners, tension is 'fair'
In some (usually very small) cases, the users and the owners are
actually the same set of people.  If each of those users has as much
vote-control (as measured by the percentage of ownership they hold)
needed to accomplish the goals they desire, then conflicts could only
be structured as: [a subset of owners vs. another subset of owners].

This levels the playing field, and avoids the uneven case we are
usually fighting: [a subset of non-owning users vs. a subset of
owners].


Second, a claim about scale:
2. == Profit should be treated as an investment from the user who pays it
Users pay price above cost (even if just through excessive exposure to
unwanted advertising and lack of freedom) when they don't have
ownership, so profit should be treated as a plea for growth, and may
be 'balanced' by treating it as an investment from the specific user
that pays it.  By doing this, ownership flows continuously to those
who are willing to pay for it - thereby holding the first claim (#1)
"in place" in a sort of self-correcting dynamic.


Third, a question about implementation:
3. == While Copyleft jujitsu requires Copyright, Propertyleft will
require Property rights
Could we write a contract similar in spirit to the GNU GPL that
describes #2 in legal language, and then apply that contract to some
of our OWN property - maybe as a kind of corporate "Terms of
Operation" so that Freedom is guaranteed for all users by causing each
and every user to incrementally become partial owners (and
simultaneously be growing the organization) whenever they pay price
above cost?


> As I note in my response to Daren's review, another challenge for
> network governance is scale.

If some of us were to start a small business or organization and
become owners ourselves, we could choose to steer the power we might
be otherwise tempted to hold against new users so the system would
scale as control is contiuously distributed.

Allowing every user *real* ownership over the investments they pay for
(as measured by the amount they pay above real costs of production)
would enable owning subgroups to 'fork' whenever they thought they
were large enough to survive on their own, and would also insure the
whole organization couldn't suddenly be aquired by a big-fish, since
each user would have real and divisible ownership (note: ownership
would NOT be equal, because some users are very active and willing to
pay (invest) alot, while others may be willing to spend very little
time, energy or money).


> The very existence of owners/sysops indicates the non-participatory
> (or at least closed circle) dimension of networks.

Maybe property ownership isn't the problem per-se; maybe the problem
is more about WHO the owners are.  Notice, that while Richard Stallman
dislikes how Copyright is usually used, he didn't abandon it.
Instead, he used it in a subversive manner to insure every user would
have control of the 'virtual' means of production.  Maybe we could do
something similar with property to insure every user gains control
over the 'physical' means of production.

> There is
> frequently very little communication/participation between admins and
> users.  And most are fine with this relation. Who wants to clear our
> spam every day on a mailing list for example, or attend to the
> numerous admin requests to process postings from non-subscribers
> (which this list still has a strangely high amount of)?


We would still need to hire skilled personell whenever we couldn't do
it ourselves, but at least we would have the reins, and could fire
them if they ever tried to act against us.

> The other obvious thing to note is that the culture of governance
> varies considerably across widely adopted applications. Geert Lovink
> documents this well in his analysis of mailing list cultures. This
> points to the fact that a universal model of network governance will
> never exist.

Yes, there will always be individual and group idiosyncracies, but
those conflicts will be more 'fair' when each user is gaining real
ownership.


Hoping for thoughtful critique,
Patrick Anderson
President, Personal Sovereignty Foundation
http://EcoComics.org