[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Stan Rhodes]

Christian, your peerconomy is a market in everything but name.  I've said
it, Stefan's said it.  I don't know if Kevin has read it, but I'm willing to
wager he'd say the same, upon review.  If Ryan reads it, he'll say the
same.  In your proposal, if "the products I want to have cost 20 weighted
hours" (your exact words), I then pay that cost through production effort.
That's exchange, in a market, with units of value!

When Ryan says "allocation of most goods and services," as he did
originally, we can separate them into two groups: rival goods (goods of
substance) and nonrival goods (information).  Services (labour, if you will)
are needed to create both.  I've written about it before, but in very simple
summary: the future of nonrival goods is increasingly p2p production, the
future of rival goods is more equitable markets.

We see exactly that distinction if we look at current examples of peer
production.  The difference is simple: rival goods are allocated by their
very nature, whereas nonrival goods can be used simultaneously by many by
their very nature.

-- Stan


On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Christian Siefkes <christian at siefkes.net>wrote:

> Ryan,
>
> Ryan Lanham wrote:
> > 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
>
> And how many of them, do you think, are seriously and unprejudiced
> considering non-market-based solutions as alternatives to the market and/or
> state-based solutions? 100%? 50%? 10%? The figure would be closer to 0%, I
> suppose. And if you've already accepted thinking inside the box, then of
> course you'll never come up with outside-the-box solutions.
>
> I don't think it's a surprise that all the non-market-based production
> models that we already have -- free software, Wikipedia, wireless community
> networks, hacker spaces, Couchsurfing, you name it... -- were NOT developed
> by highly paid economists and related professionals, but by people who
> didn't simply swallow the collective wisdom of the day of how software was
> created or an encyclopedia was written.
>
> Do you think Galileo would have made and expressed his discoveries if he
> had
> been paid by the Catholic church?
>
> > 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.
>
> That's very true, and fortunately such communities, who haven't just
> internalized the standard wisdom of the day, exist. They are, for example,
> the German (through now also English) keimform.de Blog, where my own work
> originated, Oekonux, The Commoner magazine and indeed parts of the commons
> research community, parts of this mailing list, the openmanufacturing list,
> and so on. It's a small community, but it exists, and it is growing.
>
> You should be happy that it exists and encourage it, rather than trying to
> convince it that it should just give up...
>
> Best regards
>        Christian
>
>
>
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