[p2p-research] thinking about leapfrogging

[Kevin Carson]

On 10/5/08, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

>  Now, I was indeed prisoner for a long time very high in the technology
>  tree (but I did jump down as soon as I could :-) ) but when I said in
>  my article that things like your CEB are 19th century technology I
>  obviously didn't mean that your work is less valuable or less useful
>  compared to what I did in my former life. Your work is both more
>  valuable and useful, not to mention more urgent than what I did,
>  actually :-)

>  Do local-p2p-all-the-way *technical* alternatives to nationwide power
>  grids and telecom networks or huge semiconductor fabs exist? Don't you
>  lose a lot on real quality of life giving those things up just because
>  they're not p2p?

Classifying technology by century is meaningless, IMO.  And you seem
to be equating quality of life to the nature of inputs consumed rather
than functional outputs.

A great many of our physical needs are not 19th century, but
paleolithic.  The basic requirements of shelter and food can be met
most efficiently by adapting "19th century technology," through new
configurations and techniques.  A compressed earth block may be 19th
century, but combined with the latest knowledge on passive solar
heating and cooling design it (or other use of cheap, local,
vernacular materials) may well be the optimum for maximum energy
efficiency--and comfort--in heating and cooling.

Much of what Schumacher called "intermediate technology" involves
applying new technical knowledge to traditional materials (e.g.,
applying modern knowledge of bacteriology, soils, etc., to the
intensive raised bed techniques developed centuries ago; or applying
modern aerodynamic principles to the design of traditional sailing
vessels), making possible an order of magnitude increase in
effectiveness without any major increase in cost, complexity, or
centralization and capital outlays for production.

A lot of it depends on what you mean by the "grid."  Large scale power
consumption, which may be necessary in some cases, is not equivalent
to a grid.  Even the largest industrial projects, arguably, can be
most efficiently powered by generators scaled to the actual needs of
the facility itself, at the point of consumption.  If anything,
large-scale industrial projects are one of the best cases against the
grid, because it's arguably easier to get economies of scale in
generation at a single point of consumption.  Why generate power at a
distant site and transmit it over a grid, when the site of consumption
is sufficient to support its own power plant at maximum efficient
scale?  The most efficient approach is to tailor power output to
consumption needs at the point of consumption, and minimize the
overhead costs (including inefficiency from power loss) of
transmission and storage.  This is Amory Lovins' argument.  All the
"grid," as such, does is increase the amount of power lost in
transmission and increase needless complexity (and hence fragility and
vulnerability to disruption) of the system.

Large-scale, artificially cheap grid power also created perverse
incentives to use electricity even when it's the least efficient
alternative.  For example, Lovins et al repeatedly argue that the most
efficient method of heating space and water is through the direct
production of heat at the endpoint (through combustion of fuel or
passive solar), rather than converting heat from combustion into
electricity at a power plant, transmitting it over a grid, and then
converting it back into heat again at the point of consumption.

The most efficient approach is to generate electrical power at the
point of consumption in the cases where it's actually needed for
large-scale industrial production, to rely on small-scale production
(including at the neighborhood level) as much as possible for
small-scale household and industrial consumption in areas where
electricity is actually most efficient (mainly for powering machinery
and electronics), and shift to passive solar and direct combustion of
fuel where those are suitable.  Electricity is actually suitable in a
small fraction of cases where it's currently used, and even then is
produced at a level of centralization which is extremely inefficient.

I don't think anyone here has argued that large-scale production, as
such (whatever that may mean in concrete terms) will be made
completely obsolete.  Most of us have simply argued that small-scale
production will become an alternative which expands at the expense of
a dwindling realm of centralized and large-scale production, rather
than being something simply piggybacked on the existing centralized
corporate model.  IOW, the large-scale manufacturing economy will be
radically downsized, and serve primarily to support decentralized
small-scale manufacturing.  And as I have argued, in most cases the
present scale of such large manufacturing is many times larger than
what would be ideal from a pure efficiency standpoint, because scale
has been subsidized far past the point of counterproductivity.

The largest-scale, heaviest industry of all (heavy engine blocks and
jet aircraft) would likely not be profitable at all absent subsidies
and protections, and would simply disappear with no effect on real
quality of life.

In a few cases where large scale is currently necessary for quality of
life (e.g., microprocessors), a market area large enough to support a
single billion dollar foundry could still function based on a
light-rail distribution system with a fraction of the capacity of our
actual centralized transportation system.  And where such large
capital outlays are genuinely necessary, they will be exceptionalist
islands in a system defined primarily by small scale and
decentralization.  But I don't think anyone denies, in principle, that
they will exist to a certain extent.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Anarchist Organization Theory Project
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html