[p2p-research] [Open Manufacturing] Addressing Post-Scarcity Pitfalls

Tue Jun 9 18:47:42 CEST 2009

Michel:

First, let me agree with every point you make below.

With regard to energy, I'd like to make a few comments based on my own
research:

A significant portion of my free time is given over to thinking about
energy--specifically solar energy trapped in ocean water--ocean thermal
energy.  It's an old topic--a physicist in France actually developed the
concept (and bankrupted himself trying to commercialize it) from about
1885-1915.  Its time has finally come I think.

The trouble with energy is that centralized production with distribution is
cheaper than distributed production.  That is, economies of scale apply
rather harshly to modes of production.  Further, that is unlikely to
change.  Therefore, modes of production that concentrate power at one
location are most most efficient.  Even with wind and solar, central
facilities are significantly more efficient than distributed ones by any
logical measure.

My own work and research on OTEC has lead me to believe the long-term
non-carbon answer needs to be a simple molecular fuel that can transport
energy.  Carbon-based fuels are obviously problematic.  Other complex
sugars, and so forth, require significant inputs to create the fuel.  Simple
molecules must be the answer.

The simplest and most obvious is hydrogen, but it isn't the only possible
answer.  Ammonia is also a possibility and there are others.  Fully 1.5%
(one point five percent) of the world's total power is now expended to make
ammonia--most of it goes to grow our food.  By contrast, the current
production of the sea (in all forms of commercial power) is under 20 MW.  To
put that in perspective, the tiny Cayman Islands with a population of 60,000
uses 104 MW at peak.  A medium to large sized US utility may have 30,000 MW
under management.  The island of Jamaica consumes about 600 MW for 4 million
people.  What's more, the sea is 5/6 of the planet.

My conclusion:  Make power from the sea, or you will die by land-based
carbon.  There is only one system for centralized power development at
sea--OTEC.  Further, wind, tide and current systems are variable with
conditions.
If I had to bet now, the future of power involves making large amounts of
hydrogen in geo and ocean thermal production sites and then distributing
energy to land-based hydro plants as they are building in Finland.  These
are efficient, relatively small, and can drive consistent electrical
production at the scales necessary to have an electrically rich world with
8-9 billion people.  They can also be used to make and transport the
necessary ammonia to fuel such an economy with food.

The question is one of here to there.  I don't know the answer to that, but
I'd bet it involves public/corporate partnerships.  It would be nice to see
open modes of research and understanding used, but that will only occur if
civil society gets involved rapidly and protectively to assure that
developing nations have access to OTEC.  My own view is that the nations
that control OTEC/hydrogen/Ammonia will be the Arabia's of the future.

[Michel, I'd prefer these ideas not be blogged without significant editing]

Ryan Lanham

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 4:33 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Nathan,
>
> If you don't mind, I will reproduce your contribution on our blog,
>
> In the meantime, I do think that the end of scarcity hypothesis is wildly
> optimistic.
>
> Below, 2 crucial contributions to the energy trap, which every abundance
> proponent should answer and address
>
> After presentation of a good summary by John Robb, see in particular the in
> depth treatment of the issue by Jeff Vail, in 4 installments,
>
> Michel
>
>
> <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/from-unnovation-to-innovation/2009/06/09>
>
> The Energy Trap <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-energy-trap/2009/06/14>
> [image: photo of Michel Bauwens] Michel Bauwens
> 14th June 2009
>
>  A core change to our fundamental economic and social model that
> substitutes physically moving products globally to virtually moving
> information about products. Where virtual presence is substituted for actual
> visitation and nothing is made that isn’t bought.
>
> Like any shift in fundamental substrates, this a process of creative
> annihilation (as opposed to the much milder form of Schumpeter’s creative
> destruction we see in free markets).
>
> The following is a very important issue that is usually not understood by
> those who have a naive belief in technological progress: *there is a
> serious problem of timing in the substitution of depleted fossil fuels by
> renewable energy alternatives.*
>
> The problem is well explained by John Robb<http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/05/energy-moores-law-and-substitution.html>
> .
>
> *1. The problem*
>
> *“One of the long term trends that now seems inexorable is that fossil
> fuels (stored solar) will be expensive from here on out (see my earlier
> attempt at this topic with “Crossing the Energy Chasm”). Demand will
> continuously outstrip our increasingly depleted and difficult to obtain
> sources of supply. Prices will rise when demand increases, and when prices
> rise too much, demand will be destroyed (with demand destruction starting
> first at the low end, as we saw with sub-prime borrowers in the US). In
> other words, every time we attempt to grow economically within the current
> model, we will bump into energy that is too expensive to support that
> growth.*
>
> *However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. Since we live in
> an adaptive system (much less adaptive than it could be due to deep
> structural and conceptual problems) alternatives will be found. The common
> assumption is that these alternatives will be in the form of direct
> substitutes, or new forms of inexpensive energy (presumably, fossil
> alternatives or solar power) that can power the existing model of the global
> economy. That’s likely a false assumption. *
>
> *Why? *
>
> *The substitutes for energy that are available, aren’t available in the
> quantity demanded nor at a price point necessary to serve as direct
> substitutes for existing sources at their historical (low) prices. Most
> particularly, solar power (the only source with the theoretically achievable
> scale to serve as a true substitute for fossil fuels) won’t be inexpensive
> enough to serve as a true substitute for decades.*
>
> *2. The issue with solar*
>
> *The reason for this is that the Moore’s law equivalent for solar power
> appears to be a halving underlying costs every 10.5 years (not two, like we
> see in the computing industry). Moore’s law has been powering productivity
> improvements in other industries (like biotech) at rates approaching the
> underlying rate of semiconductor improvement. This due to the high levels of
> information processing in those industries (directly addressable by
> improvement in computational capacity) relative to the level of improvements
> needed to advance the materials used. In contrast, manufacturing more
> efficient solar cells reverses that ratio: less information manipulation in
> the design and much more in terms of fundamental improvements in capacity of
> the materials utilized (new breakthroughs). Therefore, the rate of
> improvement in solar efficiency occurs much slower, even when it uses much
> of the same equipment used by the semi-conductor industry.*
>
> *As a result, on the current doubling rate of improvement, we can’t expect
> to reach grid equivalence at the current prices in any reasonable scenario
> (sooner than 20 years). In contrast, grid equivalence at higher prices, say
> 10 times current prices (of electricity, which is already a premium energy
> source), may be achievable in the 2025 time frame. Sure, we can accelerate
> the share of solar energy production through the use of government subsidies
> and mandates (as we are currently doing), but that only shifts costs and
> doesn’t scale (particularly given the red ink induced pallor of our
> finances). *
>
> *So, what does this mean? *
>
> *We will likely adapt, but not in the way anticipated. The most likely
> adaption will come in the form of a substrate shift. A shift in the
> underlying model of the global economy to one that is much, much more energy
> efficient.*
>
> *It’s a global judo move that flips everything on its back. A core change
> to our fundamental economic and social model that substitutes physically
> moving products globally to virtually moving information about products.
> Where virtual presence is substituted for actual visitation and nothing is
> made that isn’t bought.*
>
> *In conclusion:*
>
> It’s a place where you telecommute to work if you sell goods and services
> globally. Where all production is increasingly and inexorably local, from
> food to energy to consumer products. It’s a place were physical travel is a
> premium event, reserved only for those objects and occurrences that are the
> most valuable. In short, localization into resilient communities (the only
> term I know to describe it) drives orders of magnitude improvement (10x to
> 100x) in the use of energy, time, space, matter, and information over the
> old model of globalization.
>
> This <http://www.energybulletin.net/node/48990> is a must read additional
> but pessimistic read to the above.
>
> *Jeff Vail* has a series of investigative entries on this issue as well:
>
> Renewable energy requires an up-front investment of energy, and this may
> dramatically impact our ability to transition to a renewable-energy economy
> because the transition effort will initially exacerbate the very energy
> scarcity that is its impetus.
>
> Read his contributions here: intro<http://www.jeffvail.net/2009/05/renewables-hump-introduction.html>,
> 2<http://www.jeffvail.net/2009/05/renewables-hump-digging-out-of-hole.html>,
> 3 <http://www.jeffvail.net/2009/06/renewables-hump-3-target.html>, 4<http://www.jeffvail.net/2009/06/renewables-hump-4-eroei-issues.html>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Nathan Cravens <knuggy at gmail.com>
>> Date: 2009/6/9
>> Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Addressing Post-Scarcity Pitfalls
>> To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com
>>
>>
>> Labor overall has lost scarce value, unable to earn enough to purchase
>> enough scarce goods  to continue increases in scarcity generation as
>> expressed by state centralized currency. Yet, because without viable network
>> facilitators to help write adequate instructions to produce, locate, and
>> retrieve freely available resources, scarcity conditions will persist until
>> these areas are better addressed by members of communities that care to
>> develop them.
>>
>> So a question, a major pitfall that's occupied that attention-span, and
>> one I believe has a compelling answer while writing this message is: "How
>> are abundant goods traded to attain scarce goods?" One answer is pretty
>> obvious: "abundant goods cannot be traded for scarce
>> goods--HOWEVER!--abundant goods produced in a region can be transferred in
>> exchange (or not) for another region's abundantly produced goods. Without
>> these links both items would otherwise remain scarce goods. This solution
>> creates "a distributed network of abundance" that make otherwise scarce
>> conditions in each, abundant." (!!!!) This answer extends the economic
>> theory of 'comparative advantage' for a post-scarcity context, where its
>> more efficient for one region to produce one type of good than another,
>> while the other region produces a different good to make the exchange
>> between these two areas of more common value than if both goods were
>> produced in the same area.
>>
>> What anyone in the world has yet to explain very well is how scarcity
>> fails or why the scarce economy (known to most as "the economy") has
>> collapsed. Richard Wolff's attractively simple 'Capitalism Hits the Fan'
>> thesis is probably the closest I've read to explaining the failure of the
>> economic system itself. I've determined there is no single point that
>> determines the problem, but rather a variety of factors that contributed to
>> that present downturn. I look forward to getting with those of you that like
>> to address these matters by placing each notable link failure into a package
>> called the "Tragedy of the Scarcity Commons." Hi Joseph! ;)
>>
>> I'm making an as yet uncommonly held assumption here: that value was
>> developing in a non-monetizable commons for sometime, whether marked by
>> lower wages in foreign countries to produce or open source methods that
>> however funded required less money on average. A few accelerations during
>> the 1970s in the U.S. (and other countries with the same model?) are most
>> visually identified in the history of financial debt. I suspect the
>> acceleration of debt is also followed by the rate of outsourcing to
>> peripheral saturated labor markets? This debt growth will continue and
>> remain enforced for as long as scarcity based exchanges are unable to
>> maintain scarce conditions more or less equally among participants. The most
>> glaring forthcoming issue with maintaining a 'scarce-exchange' model is when
>> observing the increases in aging populations in Industrial countries rapidly
>> unable to participate in the already saturated labor markets. Japan is the
>> hottest target.
>>
>> From what I understand, the majority of members on this list believe the
>> growth of scarcity generally is over. When this is accepted, a new general
>> problem arises: the issue of resource management when conditions are not
>> both mostly scarce or mostly abundant, beginning in areas that matter most.
>> The answer to the "semi-scarce problem" as expressed of having abundantly
>> produced goods in one area but not others is solved by transferring abundant
>> goods to other parts of the world in exchange (or not) for other abundantly
>> produced goods.
>>
>> We need to rapidly manage affairs within the local or global community
>> level or risk fatally violent measures taken by the state and its scarcity
>> driven supporters. We all take a risk if we do not persist in establishing
>> our open cafes, hackerspaces, or a place for community space generally to
>> create or strengthen local and global community ties essential to our well
>> being. If the state and its corporate sponsors are able to affectively
>> influence the harm of others for 'scarce-dependent' gain, violence will
>> persist without an observably practiced alternative.
>>
>> Its the members of communities that form and develop hackerspaces and
>> other community efforts and the work groups that continue to develop
>> programs like Google Wave (more than "lion's share of the code," please!)
>> and Wolfram Alpha (I insist an open source!) as vital tools to form an
>> aggregated communications media to come that filters out and embodies the
>> best of our applied intelligence where it really matters. We all must more
>> than hope and insist by making while the existing scarcity model crumbles by
>> placing an abundant link (based on your interest area) before the scarce
>> link fails. If an abundance link is not bridged before the scarcity link
>> fails, difficulty increases to produce that needed abundant link.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Nathan Cravens
>> Effortless Economy
>>
>> OPEN SOURCE >> AGGREGATE >> INTEREST >> DISCUSSION >> DESIGN OUTLINE >>
>> DESIGN >> FABRICATE PROTOTYPE >> OPTIMIZE
>>
>> Open Systems Design for Peer Producing Anything
>> http://www.appropedia.org/Open_Systems_Design_for_Peer_Producing_Anything
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Employment profile:
>> http://www.espach.salford.ac.uk/politics/staff/moore.php
>>
>> Capital and Class special issue 2009 on Peer to Peer Production:
>>
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/parallel-visions-of-peer-production/2009/03/13
>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/category/cognitive-capitalism
>>
>> Manchester Film Cooperative: http://www.manchesterfilm.coop/
>>
>
>
>
> --
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>
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