[p2p-research] Fwd: Alternative peer alliance form (was Re: Road to Polario: The Coming Russian-American Alliance)

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [p2p-research] Alternative peer alliance form (was Re: Road to
Polario: The Coming Russian-American Alliance)
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


The larger novel shows a series of alternative societies.

That specific story shows determined non-violent opposition to exploitation
of a social network.

Though, personally, I can see there a tension between an inclusive gift
economy and an exclusive peer barter network an outlined there, so it's not
necessarily an ideal as much as something to think about.

--Paul Fernhout


Michel Bauwens wrote:

> Hi Paul,
>
> why is this story important? should I add it to
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Fiction ?
>
>
> Related section of a 1951 sci-fi story:
>  "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell
>
> http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/and_then_there_were_none.html
> """
>  Matt came up with a cloth over one arm. ‘I’m serving no Antigands.’
>  ‘You served me last time,’ Harrison reminded.
>  ‘That may be. I didn’t know you were off that ship. But I know now.’ He
> flicked the cloth across one corner of the table, brushing away imaginary
> crumbs. ‘No Antigands served by me.’
>  ‘Is there any other place where we might get a meal?’
>  ‘Not unless somebody will let you plant an ob on them. They won’t do that
> if they know who you are but there’s a chance they might make the same
> mistake as I did.’ Another flick across the corner.
>  ‘I don’t make them twice.’
>  ‘You’re making one right now.’ announced Gleed, his voice hard and edgy.
> He nudged Harrison. ‘Watch this.’ His hand came out of a side pocket
> holding
> a tiny gun. Pointing it at Matt’s middle, he said, ‘Ordinarily I could get
> into trouble for this, if those on the ship were in the mood to make
> trouble. But they aren’t. They’re more than tired of you two-legged mules.’
> He motioned with the weapon.
>  ‘So start walking and fetch us two full plates.’
>  ‘I won’t,’ said Matt, firming his lips and ignoring the gun. Gleed thumbed
> the safety-catch which moved with an audible click. ‘It’s touchy now. It’d
> go off at a sneeze. Get moving.’
>  ‘I won’t,’ said Matt.
>  With unconcealed disgust, Gleed shoved the weapon back into his pocket. ‘I
> was only kidding you. It isn’t loaded.’
>  ‘Wouldn’t have made the slightest difference if it had been,’ Matt
> assured. ‘I serve no Antigands and that is that.’
>  ‘What if I’d lost control of myself and blown several large holes in you?’
>  ‘How could I have served you then?’ asked Matt. ‘A dead person is of no
> use to anyone. It’s time You Antigands learned a little logic.’ With which
> parting shot he meandered off.
>  ‘He’s got something there,’ offered Harrison, patently depressed. ‘What
> can you do with a corpse? Nothing whatever. A body is in nobody’s power.’
>  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A couple of stiffs lying around might sharpen the
> others. They’d become really eager.’
>  ‘You’re thinking of them in Terran terms,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s a mistake.
> They are not Terrans no matter where they came from originally. They are
> Gands.’
>  ‘Well, just what are Gands supposed to be?’
>  ‘I don’t know. It’s a safe bet they’re some kind of fanatics. Terra
> exported one-track-minders by the millions around the time of the Great
> Explosion. Look at that crazy crowd on Hygeia, for instance.’ ...
> """
>
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
> pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
>
>  Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>>> by Lawrence Taub
>>>
>>> Russia, the US, Canada, and Scandinavia – All Under One Roof, the North
>>>
>> Pole
>>
>>> The year is 2020 and the unthinkable has happened -- the US and Russia,
>>> together with Canada, several USSR successor states, and the Nordic
>>> countries, have announced the formation of Polario, a political and
>>>
>> economic
>>
>>> union along the lines of the European Union.  Economic, security, and
>>>
>> mutual
>>
>>> confrontation issues, as well as the rise of Europa and Confucio (the
>>>
>> East
>>
>>> Asian Union), have finally forced the hands of the two ex-superpowers.
>>>
>>  An
>>
>>> economic-political union together with the other countries around the
>>>
>> North
>>
>>> Pole has seemed the only way to solve their problems “permanently“.
>>>
>> When I was in a high school social studies class, the causes of World War
>> I
>> were explained:
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
>> """
>> World War I (abbreviated as WW-I, WWI, or WW1), also known as the First
>> World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global
>> military
>> conflict that embroiled most of the world's great powers,[1] assembled in
>> two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.[2]
>> Over
>> 70 million military personnel were mobilized in one of the largest wars in
>> history.[3] The main combatants descended into a state of total war,
>> pumping
>> their entire scientific and industrial capabilities into the war effort.
>> Over 15 million people were killed, making it one of the deadliest
>> conflicts
>> in history. The immediate or proximate cause of war was the assassination
>> on
>> 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the
>> Austro-Hungarian throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.
>> Austria-Hungary's resulting demands against the Kingdom of Serbia
>> activated
>> a sequence of alliances. Within weeks the major European powers were at
>> war;
>> their global empires meant that the conflict soon spread worldwide.
>> """
>>
>> That "activation of a sequence" of alliances was the key bit, where all
>> the
>> alliances were of the form, "if you attack anyone in the alliance,
>> everyone
>> in the alliance will attack you back". So, two tiny countries have a tiny
>> border dispute or tiny trade dispute, and soon the whole world then is
>> fighting each other. From a global systems perspective, this is a very
>> stupid way to organize military alliances. That form of alliance is
>> designed
>> to *amplify* conflict with positive feedback, not damp down conflict with
>> negative feedback.
>>
>> Now, I thought about that, and I am still proud to say I came up with this
>> idea then as an alternative sitting in social studies class (and no doubt
>> someone else has had it, but I have not seen it yet, but I have not
>> thought
>> about it in years or looked for a parallel).
>>
>> Here is the key idea: a peer-to-peer security alliance should be of a
>> different form than a mutual defense pact against outsiders. It should be
>> more like a mutual attack pact against insiders, where if anyone in the
>> alliance attacks another peer in the alliance (or violates an agreed on
>> boundary in some way), then the *entire* rest of the alliance agrees takes
>> action against the peer violating the boundary or doing the aggressive
>> thing. This alliance says nothing about what the alliance will do if
>> threatened from outside. It is purely a set of rules about normative peer
>> behavior inside the alliance.
>>
>> So, imagine we start this peer-to-peer alliance of countries with the
>> Netherlands and Singapore, at opposite ends of the world (although both
>> concerned about trade). In order to form it, both need to agree to some
>> basic code of international conduct, as well as formalize their borders
>> with
>> respect to each other, and resolve any current trade disputes. Then, say,
>> Estonia decides to join. It to must agree with the previous border claims
>> of
>> the Netherlands and Singapore with respect to itself (and other economic
>> regulations as well as rules for amending the alliance charter, and so
>> on).
>> Alternatively, in the process of joining, Estonia needs to get the
>> Netherlands and Singapore to alter aspects of the alliance including
>> borders
>> in a way that all the countries in the alliance can agree on (so,
>> agreement
>> is 100% consensus within the alliance on the changes or the new country
>> can
>> not join).
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making
>>
>> Now, you may ask, what is the point of the Netherlands, Singapore, and
>> Estonia agreeing to not attack each other (like they would even dream of
>> that) and to adhere to some generally recognized international laws they
>> are
>> likely already following? What would be the point in the Netherlands and
>> Singapore agreeing that Estonia could step in to stop a very unlikely
>> military conflict between the two, Estonia likely having few troops and
>> few
>> ships and little chance of accomplishing anything by itself beyond some
>> talk? The value begins to grow as more countries join. So, with more and
>> more countries, there would be increasing value in the agreement to allow
>> the other countries in a growing alliance to step in and stop conflicts
>> which any country initiates against other peer countries in the alliance.
>> As
>> times goes by, Venezuela might join, and then Canada, and then joining
>> this
>> alliance might be the sensible thing to do because it will be a new
>> organization setting standards and promoting good things across the peer
>> network. Eventually, a country will want to join who has a border dispute
>> or
>> economic dispute with another country already in the alliance (say, if
>> Russia wants to join and Japan has already joined, and they dispute
>> ownership of some islands). In order to join this alliance, the countries
>> involved will need to work out their dispute. There may eventually be an
>> enormous incentive to join this organization, so, say the value of joining
>> may be bigger than the value of some few islands that are disputed, and
>> there would be a big incentive to bring in even more countries to assure
>> global mutual security by those in the alliance, so, there is a big
>> incentive by all peers to resolve these conflicts before they lead to war,
>> even if significant concessions needed to be made. Eventually, there might
>> be a situation where there are a few big holdouts, like the USA, if it
>> can't
>> agree with everyone else's border claims or figure out a way to resolve
>> it.
>> But there might be enormous internal political pressure on those last
>> holdouts to joint to support world peace. It would at least be pretty
>> obvious at that point what countries were not willing to get along with
>> their peers.
>>
>> Eventually, this alliance might replace the United Nations. Alternatively,
>> this alliance forming process might actually be done through the United
>> Nations as a series of new treaties with new governing structures. Note,
>> this is *not* the same as world government. This is a set of rules for how
>> peers should behave towards each other. And it is also, ideally, a
>> framework
>> for solving conflicts before they reach the point of economic war or
>> physical war (given economic war and physical war are often interrelated
>> with one causing the other).
>>
>> Note the big difference of this form of alliance than the conventional
>> form, including this new "Polario" idea. There is no reason for a set of
>> two
>> big blocks which might end up attacking each other. There is the potential
>> for this one alliance to spread globally and define the norms under which
>> peers (countries) interact with each other under the terms of the
>> alliance.
>> I'm not sure what would happen if two such alliances started to form, but
>> ideally, they would negotiate at least a common denominator for borders
>> and
>> trade rules and then merge. But even if two alliances could not agree,
>> they
>> would still not pose any threat to each other, because there is nothing in
>> the alliance about how to interact with those outside the alliance. So,
>> two
>> alliances could even overlap. There could even be different alliances for
>> diferent things (borders versus trade regulations, for example). I'm not
>> sure, as I think about it, what all the implications would be of lots of
>> overlapping peer-to-peer alliances of this form?
>>
>> Would this work politically? It entails countries essentially agreeing to
>> be attacked militarily or economically by peers if they violate certain
>> norms they previously agreed to, or at least, peers agreeing to be
>> attackers
>> or enforcers, to step in and stop disputes and enforce boundaries. It is a
>> sort of global anti-bullying pact among peers.
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying
>>
>> So, would this be seen by nations considering joining as essentially
>> giving
>> up some of their sovereignty? Well, I don't know. But it is an alternative
>> way to look at the notions of peer alliances. And it is a way to build a
>> stronger community that has consensus about some international norms for
>> peer behavior at a national level as well as some teeth to the enforcement
>> of those norms as a community.
>>
>> No doubt someone would want to simulate this before trying it to see if it
>> has any obvious failure modes unique to it, like in Model United Nations
>> exercises.
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_United_Nations
>>
>> I'm not even sure there would have to be a violent military aspect to the
>> agreement. It might be good enough for peers to just say that if a peer
>> transgresses a certain norm or boundary, they would slow or stop their
>> trade
>> with that peer (or reduce their internet bandwidth to that country),
>> essentially as a form of "shunning" (which is non-violent, but still
>> disruptive).
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning
>> There would then need to be some way to compensate individual businesses
>> for economic losses. And the bigger alliance agreement would then perhaps
>> take precedence over contracts between individual businesses across
>> borders.
>>
>> Anyway, I'm not sure what the best enforcement strategy for agreed on peer
>> norms would be in such an alliance. No doubt people would explore that.
>>
>> Related section of a 1951 sci-fi story:
>>  "And Then There Were None" by Eric Frank Russell
>>
>>
>> http://www.appropriate-economics.org/materials/and_then_there_were_none.html
>> """
>>  Matt came up with a cloth over one arm. ‘I’m serving no Antigands.’
>>  ‘You served me last time,’ Harrison reminded.
>>  ‘That may be. I didn’t know you were off that ship. But I know now.’ He
>> flicked the cloth across one corner of the table, brushing away imaginary
>> crumbs. ‘No Antigands served by me.’
>>  ‘Is there any other place where we might get a meal?’
>>  ‘Not unless somebody will let you plant an ob on them. They won’t do that
>> if they know who you are but there’s a chance they might make the same
>> mistake as I did.’ Another flick across the corner.
>>  ‘I don’t make them twice.’
>>  ‘You’re making one right now.’ announced Gleed, his voice hard and edgy.
>> He nudged Harrison. ‘Watch this.’ His hand came out of a side pocket
>> holding
>> a tiny gun. Pointing it at Matt’s middle, he said, ‘Ordinarily I could get
>> into trouble for this, if those on the ship were in the mood to make
>> trouble. But they aren’t. They’re more than tired of you two-legged
>> mules.’
>> He motioned with the weapon.
>>  ‘So start walking and fetch us two full plates.’
>>  ‘I won’t,’ said Matt, firming his lips and ignoring the gun. Gleed
>> thumbed the safety-catch which moved with an audible click. ‘It’s touchy
>> now. It’d go off at a sneeze. Get moving.’
>>  ‘I won’t,’ said Matt.
>>  With unconcealed disgust, Gleed shoved the weapon back into his pocket.
>> ‘I was only kidding you. It isn’t loaded.’
>>  ‘Wouldn’t have made the slightest difference if it had been,’ Matt
>> assured. ‘I serve no Antigands and that is that.’
>>  ‘What if I’d lost control of myself and blown several large holes in
>> you?’
>>  ‘How could I have served you then?’ asked Matt. ‘A dead person is of no
>> use to anyone. It’s time You Antigands learned a little logic.’ With which
>> parting shot he meandered off.
>>  ‘He’s got something there,’ offered Harrison, patently depressed. ‘What
>> can you do with a corpse? Nothing whatever. A body is in nobody’s power.’
>>  ‘Oh, I don’t know. A couple of stiffs lying around might sharpen the
>> others. They’d become really eager.’
>>  ‘You’re thinking of them in Terran terms,’ Harrison said. ‘It’s a
>> mistake. They are not Terrans no matter where they came from originally.
>> They are Gands.’
>>  ‘Well, just what are Gands supposed to be?’
>>  ‘I don’t know. It’s a safe bet they’re some kind of fanatics. Terra
>> exported one-track-minders by the millions around the time of the Great
>> Explosion. Look at that crazy crowd on Hygeia, for instance.’ ...
>> """
>>
>> --Paul Fernhout
>> http://www.pdfernhout.net/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>>
>
>
>


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