[p2p-research] Why Post-Capitalism is Rubbish

[Christian Siefkes]

Hi Dmytri,

(sorry for the delay--I was traveling, among other things.)

Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
>> Stan Rhodes wrote:
>>> Christian, your peerconomy is a market in everything but name.
> It is unfortunate that you respond to Stan's clear question (posed to you
> before by myself and others)
> with trite fallacies and self-congratulating gibberish.

Stan didn't pose a question, he made a statement. But if you want to
reframe it as a question, no problem.

> At it is still based upon individual prices on items and transactions, 
> will you explain in which way your system is not a market?

Markets are based on private, uncoordinated production using privately
owned means of production, whose output is afterwards exchanged.

In the peer economy model, production is not private but social from the
very start: Since the tasks necessary to satisfy peoples wishes are shared
(divided up), producers always know that they are meeting an existing need,
that there will be somebody who will use their products.

In the peer economy model, resources and means of production are commons.
They may be used by projects (i.e. they become possession--something that is
used), but they are never privately owned by anybody: nobody has the right
or the effective means to sell them or withhold them until the others
fulfill one's conditions. (Owners of resources and means of production have
the means of backmail non-owners--that's never the case in peer production.)

So these, I think, are the fundamental differences between markets and the
commons-based peer economy: production is social from the very start since
tasks are shared; and production is based on commons, not on private
property.

There are, of course, other important differences such as that, in a peer
economy, nobody would need to suffer hunger or other basic wants due to
being unable to successfully sell anything. But these differences actually
follow from the differences outlined above, between sharing tasks (where
there is a bit to do for everybody) and selling/exchanging stuff, as well as
between private, exclusion-based access to resources and means of production
vs. common, inclusion-based access.

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 --
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

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