[p2p-research] Fwd: Launch of Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies, preliminary plans

[Nathan Cravens]

Hi Kevin,

It would seem you did not sleep through 'The History of Political Economy'
class in grade school! If only we had the luxury to sleep through such a
class...


> Unequal exchange was built into the labor market from the beginning.
> That unequal exchange results not from the sale of labor-power as
> such, but from the fact that privilege (state-enforced scarcity of
> land and capital) makes land and capital artificially costly and
> forces labor to sell itself in a buyer's market, paying a premium for
> access to the means of production.  The natural price of labor in a
> free market is not, as Ricardo and Marx argued, its reproduction cost
> (however that argument is qualified by the cultural definition of
> reproduction cost).  The natural price of labor results from its
> disutility:  the fact that only labor, of all the "factors of
> production," must be forced to contribute itself to the production
> process. This is why effort is the source of all exchange value.  As
> Benjamin Tucker argued, in a free market only what has cost
> contributes to cost; and in the end, what but labor has any real cost?
>

Labor, given a productive technology remains static, can be measured more
easily than a material resource. Yet, because someone, somewhere, is
ingenious enough or has access and interest in the production knowledge to
want to tinker with the productive technology in a manner that captures
labor value, it becomes difficult to measure a labor's worth over time. I
also think it is difficult to assess labor's worth because of the
subjective, or better, the varied absolute sentiments of value itself from
person to person within an environment. As an example, we can take clean air
and water for granted when it is abundant (when scarcity is unquestioned),
because value generally is viewed through the lens of reduction or scarcity.
So when air or water is abundant, it is taken for granted, without a metric
that measures its value, because creating a metric for infinity is not only
difficult, but in this case, invalid. Another question comes to mind: "Would
the labor plus the productive technology that captured and continues to
capture it be factored as labor value?" Perhaps this tricky question to
answer is the reason marginal value theory is used in place of labor value
theory, seemingly, to avert the issue of labor value vs technological
capture and (perhaps?) the right to possession this serious developing issue
generates.

To provide a rough estimate of labor value, might we refine this into a
formula: demand vs scarcity. Demand can be measured rather accurately.
Scarcity in labor terms can be reduced to: "At what percentage does a
populace lack in this specific productive knowledge?" Increased demand may
well provide the factor for scarcity of applied knowledge, yet to ignore
scarcity would mean to acquiesce to continued conditions of scarcity. I'm
curious to know what labor theory you would put stock in, Kevin. I am
largely ignorant of the giants that dwelled in this territory.

To reduce the scarcity of knowledge, given this is the basis of all
scarcity, I suggest a concerted effort to extract labor knowledge by placing
it into further means of self assembly by both 1) a machine that performs
all tasks a labor once produce and 2) reduce assembly knowledge into
segments at the comprehension level of a child in a manner that can assemble
the machine mentioned in point one. Both means applied to a product over
time with application can mean: no cost: free resource: a common good:
unless the abundance generator is usurped by excessive use. That may only be
the case when one is dependent on another (person or machine) too heavily or
does not possess the means to produce the artifact used: ignoring how a
productive technology is constructed.

It would be an interesting exercise to say, "Okay, what if energy where
free?" If the aim is to capture the Sun's abundant energy to power devices:
free energy is the result. I'm curious to see how this would affect current
costs, even with the misappropriations, divisions, monopolies, and the egos
that insist on being depended on for productive knowledge.

Ponderousness aside, this brings up a discussion between Marcin Jakubowski
and I that largely relates to this conversation. Let's introduce what I call
"efficiency through recursion."  The test subject for this model is: Open
Source Ecology: Global Village Construction Set: Compressed Earth Block
Press: melting and casting from scrap metal vs purchasing caste parts. This
process can be called a form of "productive recursion," an open source form
of production from the bottom-up, produced more efficiently to generate more
value than top down proprietary methods. The "efficiency through recursion"
theory assumes a 5:1 ratio of value generated to labor used in the
theoretical case presented. This may mean more labor time to produce an
artifact than purchasing assembled materials elsewhere, yet the financial
cost (waste) saved means less toil or wage labor in the long run to generate
the same item: therefore: a recursive acceleration in production efficiency.
In theory, this will mean more leisure time as a result when proven in
practice: for one that chooses to construct the item oneself at a community
generated Fab Lab or when purchasing the same item from an agent that
applied similar methods of production. This means the time to manufacture a
product through community supported manufacturing or personal fabrication,
whichever is most efficient, will receive highly significant productive
increases, and when proven by results, will become adopted. This theory can
be proven many times over when communities can easily acquire the knowledge
and materials to assemble the meta-tools or Open Source Fab Lab to generate
productive tools that reduce toil and increase leisure. Inspired by our
e-mail conversation and my stay at Factor e Farm, Marcin developed a working
formula to test the theory of "efficiency through recursion" here:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Recursion

As these methods of recursive production acceleration are determined viable
and applied, economic growth in the financial (waste) sense will then
dwindle rather than accelerate. Agents that compete with one another to
reduce cost to zero play a game I call "zero-point competition." Because the
work of community supported manufacturing and personal fabrication
accelerate this form of competition, I am in support of it. Debts, as it
were, will become paid. If we are to remain alive on this planet "living
well," I believe the present "mixed" economic model (monopoly government vs
monopoly free market) must power down rather than move forward.

Clearly, Kevin, we would both agree we must abandon presently accepted
economic models altogether over time, however increasingly questioned, as
inefficiencies of the proprietary means of production and its subsequent
regulational methods are opened, translated, and rooted out. It can be put
this way: The best form of management does not require a manager. Therefore,
the most stable economies do not require external force known as government
as presently understood due to the self regulating nature of localized and
personal economies.

I assume built-in responsibility and accountability will be generated from
personal ties generated by local and personal economies. This is nourished
from empowered methods of labor, less abstract and alienated, to give deeper
reason for one's activity and that of members of a personally committed
community. If this assumption is correct generally, it reinforces self
regulation as economies become localized through local production, thus:
external governments power down as previous economic growth models power
down. The new form of economic growth will be in a new form of centralized
production: personal fabrication. All the roads I observe seem to be
threshing toward this destination. The result: effortless economy.

The theory of "efficiency through recursion" will be far more significant
once it is proven by the developments at Factor e Farm, or other community
supported manufacturing methods, or once fossil fuels become too costly and
force local and personal production into action. It will likely be a variety
of influences that bring production inward where it began. I'm sure, Kevin,
you've already noted the trends that demonstrate the in-source (P2P)
movement of production.

>From my perspective, the alienation of the Industrial out-source method is
of some benefit to a degree. The insecurity that comes of a deskilled person
demands and has generated machines to do what one cannot. The great issue
with alienation (other than violence) however is a lack of knowledge to
understand how these tools are used to appropriate leisurely livelihoods.
This may be why doomsday scenarios are so avidly distributed in Industrial
societies: 1) to keep people dependent to generate higher rates of exchange
value for a self, and 2) the classical model in general is taken for granted
as the only model available with its disastrous consequences at least
intuitively felt enough to generate the feelings of anxiety, dread, and
finally: DOOM. That is, if "certain death," a lifeless notion, can be felt
as a most extreme form of a lived emotion.

I'm certain this issue will be alleviated when communication technologies
like the web are used to present productive knowledge in a manner most can
easily understand. The technology is already available today to accelerate
this knowledge transfer. I briefly outline a method for transferring this
technical knowledge here:
http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Replication

The argument for localized production would be deeply enriched by your
knowledge of political economy as applied to the working theory of
"efficiency through recursion." If you are interested, I would like to your
comment on this posted to that wiki or by e-mail.

Joseph, I hope you are jotting this down and making some sense out of this.
Robert Theobald, a futurist I admire, called community supported
manufacturing: Consentives. He however thought at the time of writing the
word, leisure generated by a Basic Income would propel collaboration: that
giving would generate further giving. Yet, as can be noted, those making a
concerted effort at this are propelled by toil in pursuit of leisure.
Fortunantely, we have enough leisure time to generate greater forms of
leisure. A world consumed in toil would not know better; many still do not.
Now to show them...


In Solidarity,
Nathan Cravens
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