[p2p-research] Life after capitalism

[Christian Siefkes]

Hi Michel, all,

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> I will republish it on the 14th,

thanks!

> do you see the contradiction in your last paragraph: you support market-
> based open  manufacturing, yet oppose any effort to improve the
> conditions in which this would occur?

Open manufacturing has the effect of reducing our dependency on markets,
just like free software. Proprietary hardware I can only buy from the
manufacturer, there are no other options. But open source hardware I can buy
from the original manufacturer, or I can ask an independent on-demand
manufacturer to produce it, or can built it myself, alone or with friends or
other interested parties -- the latter becomes realistic especially as
decentralized free production places such as Fab Labs become available. As
for inputs, as long as they aren't shared as commons (which would be
preferable), there are still various options to get them: buy them, have
someone donate them to you, steal them, recycle them from waste, find them
(e.g. in the garbage), whatever...

Clearly, open manufacturing alone does not make us completely independent
from the market, but it's a start.

> Unless you use open manufacturing in a way that it does not exist? But
> since you also seem to oppose moneyless resource sharing?

What makes you think so? I certainly don't.

> Are you
> opposed to the open source hardware bank of the Arduino community? Do
> you prefer they would use capitalist banks instead?

That doesn't look like a bank, but rather like a way to get distributed
venture capital. If it works for the people and projects involved, why not?
Why should I be against it?

Of course, any money-based approach still has the problem that people who
don't have the money can't get the products. That's inevitable, but as long
as there are other options (e.g. produce the stuff yourself for [almost]
free in a Fab Lab, or at least find some independent manufacturer who might
make it cheaper), it's not so bad.

As long as the desire/necessity to make money doesn't hurt the freedom of
other potential manufacturers and users (e.g. by the open hardware project
deliberately withholding information that is necessary for others to produce
copies of the same quality), it's fine with me.

> If not, what do you do in the meantime? Accept market-based
> manufacturing as it now exists? Improve the conditions for such entities?

If something is a good think (and OM certainly is), it's always helpful to
improve the conditions for it. So, provided that something really helps,
I'm all for it.

Best regards
        Christian

-- 
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian at siefkes.net ---------
|   Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/   |   Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
|   Better Bayesian Analysis:           |   Peer Production Everywhere:
|   http://bart-project.com/            |   http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be
afraid of their people.
        -- V, in "V for Vendetta"

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 260 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090815/15092be0/attachment.bin>