[p2p-research] Evolution is Iterative: The Centralized-Peer Cycle

[marc fawzi]

Hi all,

I don't mean to divert from Kevin's thread on the same subject (see: Kevin's
discussion with Stirling,) but I would like to blog this piece below (taken
from my response to kevin's response) and I'm looking for feedback
specifically for the analogy and interpretation I'm using here... if you see
any flaws or if you wish to argue against it, so I don't waste time blogging
a lousy idea.

*
Evolution is Iterative: The Centralized-Peer* *Cycle*

Why do we have one huge sun instead of a thousand tiny stars in our solar
system?

Or why is there a lower limit on the size of stars in the first place?

Energy production in the universe seems to be concentrated in massive stars.

If you think of the large centralized production facility as the sun and the
customers of that facility as the planets then you start to see that it
follows an established natural pattern, which must be driven by a very basic
and universal issue(s.)

But it does not mean that we cannot have peer production. It just means that
there is a lower limit on the size of the production facility in order for
it to sustain an ecosystem (think: solar system) around it.

For example, in the current version of the P2P Energy Economy model, it's
hard to see how individual energy producers would have any substantial
surplus if they had tiny solar generators and it's even harder to see how
there could be a flow of energy from peers with surplus to peers with
deficit if everyone had a surplus. This is the basic and universal issue (or
two issues,) IMO. For each given type of product (e.g. energy, milk, cars,
etc) we can't have everyone be a producer because the "flow of energy" is
the "economy of life" and without a deficit on one side and a surplus on the
other there is no flow (or movement) of energy (and no flow of energy equal
no life, literally.)

So in order to have both the maximum surplus of the thing being produced and
the maximum flow of that thing from the surplus side to the deficit side,
the production tends towards centralization (within each geographic or
virtual market)

However, peer producers can become the stars (or suns) to their own solar
system (or customers) by becoming big enough relative to the size of their
market. The reason peer producers would eventually have to get more and more
massive, thus replicating the very pattern of centralization peer production
is supposed to dissolve, is because if
one peer producer grows in size they will be able to reach higher
efficiencies (there is an optimal point of course) and take customers away
from the other peer producers so then every peer producer will be motivated
to grow in size to stay in business and that's how we go back to square one.

Having said that, it's important to bring down the existing order and start
afresh from the bottom up. The reason being that given enough time a complex
system that repeats itself (i.e. iterates, as in evolution being an
iterative process) will eventually get it right, i.e. gets better with each
repetition.

~~~

Thanks,

Marc
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