[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Ryan Lanham]

Christian:

I mean you or your work no disrespect, but literally thousands of highly
trained development economists and related professionals (World Bank, UN,
IMF, etc.) and in NGOs, universities, etc. work on this every day and have
done so for years.  Their collective wisdom is perhaps best embodied in the
following: Reduce corruption.  Encourage small business.  Advance
microcredit.  Create social safety nets for the weak, old and extremely
poor, if possible.  Block exploitation by multi-nationals.  Create clean,
safe resources such as schools, sewage systems, and transportation
networks.  Those strategies work and have been shown to do so.  Most were
seriously contested and took long tests and refinements to be advanced.

Does that mean someone can't innovate or come to radical new solutions?  No
it does not.  But it does mean that legitimate inquiry has relatively few
dissenters right now--the fights are pretty straightforward--does central
aid work? for instance.

In my own experiences, these people are relatively open-minded and are
committed to doing what is best for their stakeholders.  I think those who
believe they have solutions have a duty to convince people who study and
work with these problems every day that they have a serious solution.

In fairness, speak to any energy expert or education expert and you will
hear endless stories of people who have "solved the great issues" and built
machines that run without fuels, etc.  There is a consistent tone to many of
these discussions.  It is that everyone else is naive and that a person has
had a unique and foundational insight unavailable to others.  Perhaps that
happens in this world, but it is rare.  A while ago I thought I had a
profound insight on using a form of ocean energy production to produce
ammonia from sea water.  Turns out it had been mainstream research in dozens
of labs for a generation.  It doesn't mean advances don't happen.  It means
that they happen in collaboration, in part, with experts.  Experts are in
the academy, in fields of practice, and in individual research.  Advancing
on one's own is not likely to be productive in this Age in my opinion.
Profound insights must build on current dialogue and acceptance.  And we
must and should be highly skeptical of new ideas until they are
well-refined, field-tested and considered by many experts who work in the
field.  That is, to my mind, the very idea of peer-review--the original P2P.

Ryan


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net>wrote:

> Ryan Lanham wrote:
> > On your specific point, I think in the broader world it is considered a
> > crank position to be against markets as a means of allocation for most
> goods
> > and services.  No one has yet advanced anything like a coherent
> non-market
> > framework that would be freely chosen or even plausibly sensible for
> > implementation on a large scale.
>
> Your're ignoring my work: http://peerconomy.org/wiki/Main_Page. I presume
> you didn't read it?
>
> Also, reliance on markets means that millions of children die of hunger
> each
> year, even though enough food is produced for all, and that millions of
> people die each year because they can't afford to pay for the medicine that
> would save them.
>
> Taking these facts into account, I find it impossible to consider market
> allocation a sensible system. Maybe that makes me a "crank", but I'll
> rather
> be a crank than a cynic...
>
> 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 --
> When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
>
>
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