[p2p-research] Capital Club

[Patrick Anderson]

> I think all this talk of profit/ economics etc. is a distraction (certainly
> for the average person on the street - they don't care about nor need to
> understand this stuff)

Are you saying we all already know how to understand economics and how
to treat profit?  Maybe you should look at http://NextBillion.net and
tell me if they understand.

Or consider the price of grains is increasing to the point of already
causing food riots in some parts of the world.  I'm saying consumer
*price*, not owner *costs*.

The economy of every nation is structured after the faulty idea that
price must be kept above cost to insure businesses have a reason to
continue production.  Can you tell me the special case when that is
not true?

>  and that this point above - about how to formally
> agree to share stuff -  is far more interesting and worthy of discussion.
> Your work on this complements Chris Cooks ideas very nicely and I'm
> implementing them :)
>
> (but, I do agree with you Patrick that profit should rightly be considered a
> investment by the consumer because that is exactly what it is -- although in
> the present system it is more like a coerced donation. I often wonder why
> those who campaign for lower taxes don't also campaign for lower profits too
> - to me they are essentially the same thing)

Businesses celebrate their ability to keep price above cost and to
collect that difference called profit - calling it 'earnings' even
though profit has nothing to do with work.  Payment for Work is
called Wages and is calculated as a Cost of production.

You may understand what profit is, but too many don't.  This is not a
matter of popularity, it is a matter of truth.  Popularity and truth
are often inversely related.

>
> At last years Big Green Gathering here in the UK I was telling people about
> plans to get a bunch of people to start pooling the time, resources (e.g.
> Solar panels, wind turbines etc.) and money, to invest in more shared
> resources/ infrastructure.
>
> People were generally positive and keen to get involved but almost
> universally said that the hardest thing about it would be deciding how to
> store, maintain and distribute stuff efficiently and fairly (both existing
> resources people are willing to share, and new resources purchased
> collectively).
>
> Say a group of people pooled some money in order to purchase a mass dvd
> duplication machine. Where would it live? Who would be responsible for it?
> Under what terms would people be able to use it? What happens if it breaks?
> etc. These are questions that are both hard to answer and often not
> transferable to other goods and services (e.g. storage of a large vehicle
> would bring different challenges).
>
> A group that is working on this stuff in a very practical way is the newly
> formed "Activist Tat Collective": http://atcoop.org.uk - inspirational stuff
> :)
>
>
>
> > Cooperative consumer ownership is quite rare today
>
>
> Thankfully not that rare (in fact, co-ops globally employ far more people
> than multinationals) and there is a massively growing amount of
> co-operatives at the moment (especially in Latin America) :)

I said "CONSUMER ownership".

Nearly every coop you are talking about is owned by the people that
happen to have the skills to operate that Capital, NOT by the
consumers in need of those products.

Because of this, the outputs of that production must be SOLD after
they are produced instead of already being in the hands of those that
would use them even before they are produced.

And those worker/owners are the same as Capitalist in attempting to
forever keep the price of those exchanged goods perpetually above cost
in the name of progress.  Sadly inefficient.

When the consumers are the owners, Profit (from new, non-owning users)
and Wages are clearly separated.  But when Workers are the Owners,
there is not a clean separation because those owners will choose to
inflate their own Wages while pretending there is no Profit.

>
> (BTW, I don't personally believe in either consumer nor worker ownership. I
> believe in stakeholder ownership -- e.g. consumers AND workers AND suppliers
> etc - anyone who contributes or is effected).

Beliefs are unimportant.  The only thing that matters is truth.

I agree a person may contribute with either money or work or maybe in
other ways depending on what the current owners of that organization
allow.  But that the worker PAYING the owners.

My (not careful enough) use of the term "Worker" has described a
worker being PAID by the owners.

I have found it very difficult to communicate this, so will try to be
more careful right now:

I have been using the term "Worker" to indicate someone (whether an
owner or not) that is BEING PAID by an owner, but is not a consumer of
that exact production.

Another valid use of the term "Worker" is a consumer who is PAYING his
part of 'rent' or 'tax' to the other collective owners for one of the
costs of production that he owes to that group.

The collecitve owners of a tractor must collect payments from each of
the individual owners for the real, recurring costs of that ownership.
 One of those costs is, for instance, changing the oil and filters.
If one of the individual owners PAYS that cost by performing that
Work, then it is true that you might call him a "Worker", but more
importantly he is a Consumer of the outputs of that Capital.

Would you want someone who is being PAID to work on the tractor
(whether the person is already one of the collective owners or not) to
gain ownership over that tractor?

What if you PAID someone to fix your plumbing, should they gain
partial ownership of your house?  Should a mechanic gain ownership of
your car?  Should your dentist gain ownership of your mouth?

> Indeed, when I was in Caracas for the World Social Forum (I was part of an
> international team flown out there to help organise and run a free software
> festival see http://caracas.trollparty.org ) I gave a talk about The Open
> Co-op http://open.coop and was inspired by the response; here in the UK (and
> probably even more so in North America) even well educated and well meaning
> people tend to assume that co-operative stuff just won't work or isn't
> efficient. In Venezuela I found a much more refreshing response; to them
> cooperation is simply obvious common sense that clearly works and is clearly
> better (I think this is in part due to their indigenous culture that is very
> much based on solidarity and mutually).

Worker owned cooperatives are essentially the same arrangement as any
small business.  They don't outperform Capitalism because they don't
have enough efficiency of scale and miss out on most of the
governmental handouts that Kevin Carson mentions.

A  true consumer owned cooperative, where every new consumer
incrementally gains Capital ownership according to the amount they pay
above cost is EXTREMELY rare - almost non-existent.  A consumer coop
can easily outperform small businesses (including worker
cooperatives), and even has a good chance against mega-corp Capitalism
because it is not required to keep price above cost (which may be
charged to new, non-owning consumers) since the current owners expect
to be paid only in product, never in proft.  Low profits just mean low
growth, and would occur when all consumers already have sufficient
ownership.

Furthermore, price actually EQUALS cost for all consumers that have
gained sufficient ownership since they own the outputs of production
for their percentage of Capital the own even before that production is
complete.

>
> The same day I gave my talk about The Open Co-op, I met a Venezuelan friend
> of a friend whose job was basically DOING what we were dreaming about.
>
> In Venezuela they have TWO economic Ministries; the standard one that is not
> much different from what we have in the UK or US but also MINEP the Ministry
> of Popular Economy. This is who my friend of a friend worked for. They run/
> organise courses in socialism and cooperativism. After completing the 10
> week course pupils are then asked to choose a trade they would like to get
> into. Pupils are then put on apprenticeship and after that are encouraged to
> set-up a co-op. Its great! :)
>
>
> > Another example is shared ownership of a vacation house.  The
> > for-profit "Time Share" industry has grown around that desire, but I'm
> > referring to the less common case when a private group of people buy a
> > house that they share amongst themselves in whatever way they see fit.
>
>
> The most common version of this is of course Housing Co-operatives.
>
> I live in London's longest running Housing Co-op (http://www.sanford.coop )
> and benefit from ridiculously cheap (compared to the rest of London) rent
> (less than £50 a week including all bills, council tax and broadband)
> because there is no landlord taking away profit - collectively we are our
> own landlord and effectively pay ourselves rent.

I am happy that something approaching consumer ownership exists.

I want to give another comparison of the two meanings of "Worker" for
this example, and ask if you can see the difference.

If a resident is PAYING the collective owners for some of his rent
through Work (say painting the building), then we might call him a
Worker.  But it is because he is a Consumer (because of his occupancy)
that he should have ownership, not because he incidentally made his
rent payments in that manner.

But when a person (maybe even a resident) is PAID by the collective
owners to paint the building, do you think he should receive ownership
and therefore vote weight over that building?  If yes, then why?  If
no, then I agree.

>
> Moreover, our ridiculously cheap rent is actually more than our costs.
> There, when I moved in a couple of years ago we had amassed a surplus of
> over £500,000!
>
> This has recently been spent on the Carbon 60 project (an effort to reduce
> our Carbon emissions by 60%) and we've become the first whole street in the
> UK to ecorefurbish (we've not got cavity wall and loft insulation plus solar
> water and woodchip boilers for hot water and heating)

That's nice I suppose, but it makes me think of my lack of control in
city government.  What if a resident didn't want their portion of that
money to go to the "Carbon 60 project"?  Do they have *DIVISIBLE*
control?  Since money is trivially divisible, shouldn't each of the
residents be allowed to decide where the money goes?  Maybe it is best
the minority not be able to fork in that way?

>
> I've got lots more relevant thoughts and experiences to share, but I'm not
> too good at writing; it takes me far too long to write coherently, because
> my mind just doesn't work in a linear way and texts are linear.

Thanks for the effort.

Your mention of 'linear' makes me think of "Economics and Language" by
http://ArielRubinstein.tau.ac.il/el.html I noticed a week or so ago
where one of the questions he asks is "Why do we tend to arrange
things on a line and not in a circle?"

Patrick