[p2p-research] Kolakowski is dead...

Mon Jul 20 04:46:46 CEST 2009

Ryan,

here's another item on the topic of sufficiency, maybe the classic book on
the topic?

http://p2pfoundation.net/Logic_of_Sufficiency

*Book: Thomas Princen. The Logic of Sufficiency. MIT Press, 2005*

 Review

By David Pollard at http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/07/28.html

"builds on the sustainable economics theory of Herman Daly, sufficiency is
suggested as the underlying organizing and decision-making principle for
economic activities, replacing efficiency. After laying out the theory in
Part One of the book he illustrates its application (and how it came to him)
through a series of real-life case studies taken from very different
economic situations around the world.

The principle of efficiency, which is currently driving our global economy
over a cliff, is compelling because it is simple: even people as
unimaginative, lacking in foresight, and stupid as corporate executives,
politicians, lawyers and speculators can 'get it' and see how to make it
work for them. No matter that it is unsustainable -- that is not their
problem. The principle of efficiency (my paraphrasing) is:

Produce as much as you can of everything as cheaply as possible. Ignore or
refuse all costs that can be 'externalized' (dumped off on others, like
foreigners, breathers of fouled air, and future generations). Let the
'market' (i.e. those who've inherited the money, or who have had the guile
to get it one way or another) decide who gets what's produced, and at what
price.

Can't get much dumber than that, in either sense of the word.

By contrast, the principle of sufficiency (again my paraphrasing) is:

Through collective, networked community-based self-management, allow an
understanding of what would optimize the well-being of all life in the
ecosystem, balancing all interests and appreciating natural constraints, to
decide what is needed.Agree to produce only, but generously, what is needed,
accepting and addressing all costs of production. Collectively, distribute
what is needed to those who need it.

Much more complex, and vastly more difficult to scale. As Princen shows,
this works fine, in the absence of efficiency-cult competitive pressure, for
family farms, locally owned hardware stores, owner-operated fishing boats,
and timber companies with no place to expand. But sufficiency, unlike
efficiency, requires broad, decentralized, consensual, networked
decision-making to assess what is needed, who needs it, and how best to
produce and distribute it. Messy, time consuming and, of course,
inefficient. It works fine at the small, local level where the ecosystem is
already sustainable and where self-management is intuitive. But what happens
when you have a city of 20 million people, with no raw materials of their
own for production, in a climate that is fiercely hostile unless mitigated
by ubiquitous and horrifically expensive artificial environments, and
surrounded by a rural area that is desertified or soil- and
water-impoverished to the point that almost all production materials need to
be brought in from the opposite side of the world?

Princen uses three main examples (the Pacific Lumber Company, Monhegan
Lobstering, and Toronto Island's refusal to accept a fixed link or
automobiles), and a host of smaller examples (Swiss dairy commons, cod
fishing in Northern Norway, beef grazing on Marajo Island in the Amazon) to
show that the principle of sufficiency can work and is working, and that it
is consistent with human nature and collective human interest to strive for
it. Alas, the Pacific Lumber example, after decades of success, has
succumbed to the cult of efficiency, and, thanks to massive right-wing
lobbying by huge moneyed interests, Toronto Island is being forced to accept
it against its will. "Non-ecological rationalists will never be convinced.
We're talking about two fundamentally opposed worldviews. One sees human
potential everywhere, irreversible decline nowhere. The other sees trends
that portend permanent diminution of livability, even of life on
Earth...Even the most committed environmentalists have trouble imagining
approaches that do not emphasize taxes and subsidies, lawsuits and boycotts,
and most prevalent perhaps, 'environmental education'."

The most important part of this book is left unfinished: The Logic of
Sufficiency lays out the beginnings of a set of principles, assumptions and
connecting theory for rationally and collectively self-managing complex
adaptive systems (which almost all natural and social systems substantially
are). It is to be hoped that Princen will work with Snowden and other
thought leaders working in the practical applications of complex adaptive
systems theory to move these principles, assumptions and theory forward into
something truly workable.

A significant part of the book is devoted to deconstructing the well-worn
arguments in favour of sticking with the cult of efficiency as the driver
and decision-maker of our economy, and the related principles used to prop
it up when it falters: cooperation (which is as likely to thwart
sustainability as promote it), equity, sovereignty and 'private' property,
maximization of output, productivity*, the 'sovereign consumer',
specialization, mobility. I'll avoid trying to summarize this section of the
book, since I suspect I would be preaching to the choir.

I confess the elements of the theory of sufficiency come across as a bit
incoherent to me, and Princen says specifically that the book offers only
some 'possible directions' towards such a theory. But here is a catalogue of
some of these elements, that presumably have a place in such a theory:

   - the principle of restraint (changing one's own behaviours to adapt to
   changes in constraints -- 'absorbing the problem' rather than trying to
   'solve' it)

   - the resiliency principle (creating buffers, cushions and reserves to
   reduce vulnerability and fragility)

   - the principle of resource primacy (valuing a resource as a part of a
   functioning, self-managing system, not as a consumable for liquidation)

   - decision criteria that resist overharvesting, depletion, waste
   accumulation, incomplete costing, uncontrolled 'positive feedback',
   irreversibility, nonsubstitutability, overconsumption, excess throughput,
   and limited regenerative capacities

   - the principle of respite

   - mechanisms that enable 'negative feedback' to be introduced to counter
   and rebalance unsustainable 'positive feedback'

   - the precautionary principle

   - the polluter pays principle

   - the principle of selectively permeable boundaries

   - the principle of zero tolerable limits on and virtual elimination of
   persistent toxins

   - the reverse onus principle (burden of proof of safety and
   sustainability is moved to the proposed resource developer/user)

   - the principle of self-determined and self-directed work

   - a long-term decision-making orientation

   - self-acknowledgement of humans and human activity as part of (not apart
   from) the ecosystem -- we are part of the environment, it is not 'out there'
   (giving a whole new much broader meaning to self-management than merely
   management by humans)

   - the principle of information preservation (appreciation of the value of
   long-standing, proven human practices, techniques and preferences)

   - appreciation that in complex adaptive systems, predictability is highly
   limited

These elements together are not only practical, but inherently rational --
they create a coherent economic framework that is sustainable and that
works. This 'ecological rationality', in complexity terms, is an emergent
self-organizing property of communal effort cognizant of the biophysical and
social constraints of capacity and impact. In short, it makes sense, and can
be proffered as a superior model to the efficiency model, as more and more
people come to realize that that the efficiency model is unsustainable and
no longer makes sense.

The book includes a great quote from Kay & Schneider's article Embracing
Complexity from the 1994 Alternatives journal:

Systems theory suggests that ecosystems are inherently complex, that there
may be no simple answers, and that our traditional managerial approaches,
which presume a world of simple rules, are wrong-headed and likely to be
dangerous. In order for the scientific method to work, an artificial
situation of consistent reproducibility must be created. This requires
simplification of the situation to the point where it is controllable and
predictable. But the very nature of this act removes the complexity that
leads to emergence of the new phenomena which makes complex systems
interesting. If we are going to deal successfully with our biosphere, we are
going to have to change how we do science and management. We will have to
learn that we can't manage ecosystems, we manage our interactions with them.
Furthermore, the search for simple rules of ecosystem behaviour is futile.

One of the interesting arguments of the book is that the cult of efficiency,
despite its ease of grasping, implementation, scaling and exploitation, is
inherently contrary to and troubling to human nature. A truly untrammeled
efficient market would allow the rich, for example, to harvest vital human
organs from the poor, and to buy and sell children for labour and
recreational purposes, yet such 'sensible' markets are anathema to every
principle of humanity. While we do have tendencies toward self-interest, we
also often show deep-rooted altruism and appreciation of thinking far beyond
our own areas and life-spans. People have an innate sense of activity that
is excessive and irresponsible and an instinctive revulsion to it (Bhopal,
Exxon Valdez). We revile the crooks of Enron, rather than admiring them as
models of self-interested economic opportunism. We don't like clear-cut
forests, strip mines and vast, relentlessly cruel factory farms. We do care
about future generations, about struggling nations that accept our toxic
waste out of desperation. We know that collectives, though they may not
scale well, can work well on a small scale. We are inherently joiners and
believers in doing the right thing, and, even, activists. We are inherently,
and always have and always will be, problem-solvers, not passive consumers
and not material maximizers. We have it in us to create a sustainable
economy, an economy of sufficiency.

Here are my two favourite quotes from the book:

Today, with the imperative to translate the self-evident limits of a single
planet into the limits of everyday life, the organizing principle might be
sufficiency. Such a translation is unlikely, arguably impossible, under the
logic of a consumer economy where specialization, large-scale operation, and
consumer demand prevail. It is possible, though, when work follows the
rhythms of task and nature, when the work is self-directed and generalist,
and when work is more a calling than a job. It is possible under a logic of
enough work and enough consumption.

Go to your local transport planning board meeting (or city council or zoning
meeting) and wait for the issue of parking to arise. After all the proposals
for dealing with 'inadequate' parking are aired, stand up and say something
like this: "Maybe we have too much parking. Or we will have too much parking
if present trends continue. Maybe what we should be doing, rather than
planning for new garages and bigger lots, is deciding how much parking is
too much, and then plan everything else around that: bike lanes, pedestrian
crossings, public transit and whatnot." Then brace yourself for the barrage.

This book is an important advance in thinking about complexity and
sustainability, and I recommend it for anyone planning to create, or even
thinking about creating, models of a better way to live or make a living. We
need to work together to develop a theory of sufficiency and sustainability,
so that, in the face of the deniers and technophiles and efficiency
luddites, we can not only say that our models are intuitively superior, but
also show compellingly that they are more rational. We have a lot of work to
do." (http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/07/28.html)

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:27 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> What makes the time dark is the threat of "abundance."  We have abundant
>> pollution.  Abundant population.  The marginal costs of producing those
>> things and the equipotential gain of all of us treating the world badly...is
>> the threat.
>
>
> well, of course, you need abundance in the right things, love, culture, and
> externalities-respecting sufficiency in the other things ... and individual
> luxuries and idiosyncracies when they are not too destructive ...
>
>
>>
>> Abundance must, I argue, tie to relevance.  Relevance is only determined
>> by markets.  Where am I not seeing the key point?
>
>
> Capitalist markets  have been notoriously bad at determining relevance,
> they have been a total failure ... indeed, what are you not seeing ... as
> you yourself indicated a few days ago with your oil price example ... does
> that price reflect relevance .. what about the housing prices before the
> meltdown ...
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> How would we define sufficiency?  I like drinking bourbon--and place high
>> value on the pleasure.  A sufficient amount is zero--I admit.  But my
>> sufficient amount is about 3/4 of liter every two weeks.  What do I do about
>> those sorts of "needs."
>
>
> Here's part of the answer, by Roberto Verzola:
>
> from
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/roberto-verzola-finite-demand-makes-relative-abundance-possible/2009/01/31
>
> Roberto Verzola: Finite demand makes relative abundance possible<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/roberto-verzola-finite-demand-makes-relative-abundance-possible/2009/01/31>
> [image: photo of Michel Bauwens]Michel Bauwens
> 31st January 2009
>
>  A very *important contribution to abundance theory<http://p2pfoundation.net/Abundance_vs._Scarcity>
> * by Roberto Verzola<http://rverzola.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/finite-demand-makes-relative-abundance-possible/>
> :
>
> *“It is almost by definition that economists predominantly focus on
> scarcity, when they define economics as the study of “the most efficient
> ways to allocate scarce resources to meet infinite human wants”. If, indeed,
> people had infinite wants, then not even all the resources of this finite
> world will be enough for a single person.*
>
> *But I contend that consumer demand is not infinite. There exist physical,
> physiological, psychological and cultural limits - both actual and potential
> - to consumption which can keep individual as well as collective needs and
> wants within finite bounds.*
>
> *If demand is finite, then satisfying this demand becomes a real
> possibility, and relative abundance is within reach.*
>
> *The following three concepts will help show that demand can remain within
> finite bounds:*
>
> *Satiation. Economists define satiation as the consumption level which the
> consumer most prefers. *
>
> *The closer he is to this level, writes economist Hal Varian, “the better
> off he is in terms of his own preferences”.This satiation level is also
> called bliss point. Beyond it, the consumer becomes indifferent towards
> getting more of the same good or may even prefer to have less of the good.
> While many economists still cling to the hedonist principle that “more is
> always preferred to less,” some acknowledge, at least in theory, that a
> satiation level exists for some, if not most, goods. Varian, in particular,
> says that most goods have a satiation point and that “you can have too much
> of nearly anything,” which contradicts the “infinite wants” assertion in
> most definitions of economics.*
>
> *Saturation. While satiation may apply more to the psychological attitude
> of a consumer not wanting more, saturation is more about the physiological
> or physical incapacity of a person to consume more. *
>
> *Beyond the saturation point, one’s body will either become incapable or
> involuntarily reject additional servings of food and drinks. One can only
> wear so many clothes, or shoes. One can listen to only so many CDs or watch
> only so many videos. There are only twenty-four hours a day after all.*
>
> *To reach the brain, a sense stimulus takes around 10-20 milliseconds. To
> respond in a conscious way, neuro-scientists have found out, the brain takes
> longer - around 500 milliseconds (half a second).2 This suggests that our
> brain can only enjoy at most two distinct events every second or about
> 170,000 every twenty-four hours. For a world with some six billion people,
> that adds up to maximum of one quad (i.e., quadrillion) consumption events
> per day. That is a huge number, it is true, but finite nevertheless. Most of
> us will probably be too saturated long before that point.*
>
> *However, the concept of saturation as distinct from satiation is missing
> in consumer theory and most economists still cling to the “infinite wants”
> idea.*
>
> *Satisficing. Even before we reach our satiation or saturation levels, we
> may already reach our “satisficed” level, in which the quantity we have of a
> particular good or bundle of goods already suffices to satisfy, and beyond
> which we would only weakly prefer more.*
>
> *The idea that consumers satisfice rather than optimize when fitting their
> wants to their budget was first raised by psychologist Herbert Simon, who
> subsequently won the Economics Nobel Prize in 1978.*
>
> *Any of these “sat” concepts - certainly all of them, together - are
> sufficient to argue that individual and likewise aggregate demand have
> finite bounds.*
>
> *This justifies the following assertion: some consumers have a satisficing
> level for some goods. We will leave to future research the debate whether
> the weak assertion of “some consumers” and “some goods” can, in some
> contexts or periods, be changed to a stronger assertion of “some consumers
> for all goods”, “all consumers for some goods”, or even “all consumers for
> all goods”.*
>
> *The above assertion leads directly to a formal definition of abundance: when
> a person can afford enough quantity of a good to reach his/her satisficed
> level, then the person enjoys a state of abundance for that good. *
>
> *The concept is not new. Gandhi must have been referring to abundance when
> he said, “the Earth has enough for everyone’s need”. This definition also
> allows a good’s state of abundance with respect to one person to be
> quantified. For instance, if a person’s satisficing level is five pairs of
> shoes, but s/he can only afford two pairs, then s/he enjoys a state of
> abundance of 40% (two out of five) with respect to shoes. This makes it
> simple to relate abundance to its inverse, scarcity: the person needs three
> pairs more to reach the five-pair satisficed level. Thus s/he faces a
> scarcity level of 60%.*
>
> *Economics usually assumes that business firms maximize their profits by
> producing until their marginal cost (the cost of the next additional unit)
> equals their marginal revenue (unit price of the good). If, in addition to
> this behavioral assumption, we also assume diminishing returns or decreasing
> returns to scale, this will eventually result in increasing marginal costs.
> Thus business firms will, in theory, reach their satiation level when they
> reach their maximum profits.*
>
> *This also means, however, that profitable firms employing technologies
> with constant or increasing returns to scale will face constant or
> decreasing marginal costs. They will therefore have no profit maximum and
> likewise no satiation level. These firms will conform to the theoretical
> hedonist image for whom “more is always preferred to less”, and whose desire
> to purchase is limited only by their budget and nothing more. They will also
> try to keep increasing their scale of operations, as they go after higher
> and higher profits - making them an engine of globalization. Here is a
> possible answer, by the way, to what some economists consider a mystery,
> that “neoclassical theory has no full explanation of why firms grow at all,
> nor why it is that the typical pattern of the growth rates of firms seems to
> lead inexorably towards persistently increasing aggregate business
> concentration.”*
>
> 6 notes and references available here<http://rverzola.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/finite-demand-makes-relative-abundance-possible/>
> .
>
>
>>
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:21 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> In this case, abundance is simply the technical term appropriate for  the
>>> marginal production costs of the digital environment, and the equipotential
>>> overflow of the freely aggregating contributors ... the hypothesis is that
>>> in a distributed network, there is always 'somebody' out there with the
>>> required skill for the particular task ... However counter-intuititive that
>>> may seen, it usually works.
>>>
>>> Of course in terms of material things, 'suffiiency' is the better term,
>>> this is why we talk about 'sufficient money' to replace scarcity-based
>>> money, and not ' abundance money'
>>>
>>> I think you are on to something with your 'boundaries' argument too ...
>>> it is because the boundaries between the inside and outside are so loose,
>>> that the equipotential contribution can be found ... in case of wikipedia,
>>> because of the notability, this mechanism has been broken, hence the
>>> stagnation of the english wikipedia ..
>>>
>>> I concur with your phooey .. and again would add my abundance related
>>> argument: when you think there;s only one way for change, and that you know
>>> this way, it becomes important and mandatory to fight for this 'right
>>> understanding'; opposed to that is the pattern matching of the p2p approach,
>>> which can always find interesting patterns to interconnect, even in dark
>>> times
>>>
>>> Michel
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, I think I agree though the term "abundance" puts me off because it
>>>> sounds inherently silly.  We have abundant outmoded code.  It isn't a boon.
>>>> What is a boon is high-access to relevant tools. Relevance is part of the
>>>> P2P discussion...soon resilience will be, too.
>>>>
>>>> Abundance isn't a good.  Widely available items that are wanted and
>>>> needed is the boon. Maybe that is implied in abundance, but the word itself
>>>> strikes me as...self-defeating.
>>>>
>>>> I wonder if the decline of organizational centrality is simply leading
>>>> to low-threshold (and I like this concept...you are on to something)
>>>> participation simply by absence of the boundaries imposed by the vanguard of
>>>> the peers (aka Wikipedia editors!)
>>>>
>>>> What puts me off about communism most isn't the idea of the commune, I
>>>> rather can accept that intellectually, what alienates me from the left is
>>>> the hypocrisy of the so-called vanguards who expect everyone else to sit in
>>>> the back of the bus while they fly first class because of their
>>>> "leadership."  Phooey on that.
>>>>
>>>> Ryan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One of the key aspets of p2p governance I think, is to engineer
>>>>> 'abundance' i.e. free choices, where-ever possible, thereby enabling
>>>>> productive participation without necessating intenstive deliberations by any
>>>>> groups ... this deliberation itself also becomes mostly technical, itself
>>>>> also open mostly to the contributory process ... But never totally, as
>>>>> linux/debian/apache have all different arbitrage mechanisms ... I'm not sure
>>>>> if this was a learning experience from the often failing, because too high
>>>>> treshold, participation processes required in sixties/seventies style
>>>>> efforts ... It seems that p2p groups want to avoid this high treshold
>>>>> discussions opting for the efficiency that is determined by their
>>>>> object-oriented sociality i..e whatever productive cause that made them
>>>>> rally in the first place
>>>>>
>>>>> Michel
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <
>>>>>> michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> yes, pluralism both in the economy and governance is necessary to
>>>>>>> avoid any kind of totalitarianism, including a p2p one ... Imagine the world
>>>>>>> rule by wikipedia admins ..<g>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Michel
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Funny.  That WOULD be a catastrophe...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It wasn't but a couple (or a few) years ago that Wikipedia as
>>>>>> governance model was extremely popular in graduate school discussions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The future of organizations is low participation, low linkage, high
>>>>>> capacity for customization.  P2P helped write that agenda.  Wikipedia was a
>>>>>> step toward the low impact governance we're tending toward.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ryan
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>>>
>>>>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
>>>>> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
>>>>> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>>>>>
>>>>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>>>>
>>>>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>>>>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>
>>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
>>> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
>>> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>>>
>>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>>
>>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>

-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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