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

Sun Feb 3 15:46:59 CET 2008

Patrick, it is good to see you here.

I actually have basically the same response for you that I gave previously
to Ned.

I think your ideas can work on a *voluntary* basis, and I think people will
need a way to acquire a literacy of the dynamics they are participating in.

For instance, in http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/PriceAboveCost you
make a very important point about the reality of "rival goods":

"A consumer pays
PriceAboveCost<http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/PriceAboveCost>whenever
there is real or artificial rivalry.

Rivalry is 'real' when a product is scarce even after all effort has been
toward increasing abundance.

Rivalry is 'artificial' when a product is scarce because of actions by
owners to decrease abundance.

Artificial rivalry can be held in place when consumers do not know how to
organize and own the
PhysicalSources<http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/PhysicalSources>of
production themselves. A
UserOwned <http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/UserOwned> organization
does not employ artificial rivalry unless they are acting against
*new*users that are not yet owners - and in that case they are not a
true
UserOwned <http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/UserOwned> company."

Without literacy, people will tend to rely on social apparatus like states
to theoretically "fairly enforce" something like a best effort towards
increasing abundance in a product or resource.

So, literacy, or lots of verifiable transparency is needed.

This is actually the goal of a project I am working on now, with Marcin
Jakubowski. The idea here varies from UserOwner a bit, and can be found
here:

http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Ecotechnology_Buying_Club

Basically, consumers can fund small amounts up front, to engineers who make
a social contract with them to produce a proposed technology product at cost
of parts and labor. The technology designs are released under an open
license, they are not patented. And, the entire enterprise can be recreated
because there is a reporting process that tries to make transparent what is
done with the funding to develop products. Trying to show a best effort on
many dimensions that the product was not intentionally made scarce.

The biggest obstacle right now to what we are proposing, and to what you are
proposing, is a basic "literacy" among most people you would present the
idea to, about how it can works as an alternative to what they are currently
doing.

Probably for User Owner, the second biggest obstacle is government
regulation. But, careful research, and activist implementations could
quickly challenge legalities, and establish what falls under the law.

On Feb 3, 2008 1:56 AM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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>

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