[p2p-research] Fwd: Launch of Abundance: The Journal of Post-Scarcity Studies, preliminary plans

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Christian,

I have some more time.

again some comments inline
>
>
>
> Funding is a serious concern, but it will usually require "real" money,
> accepted in the outside world--"affinity group" money will hardly satisfy
> your providers. There are ways to get funding for external costs without
> violating the internal logic of cooperation: donations (cf. Wikipedia),
> membership fees (cf. hacker spaces such as the c-base, which are also open
> to non-members), grants from foundations and the state.... I agree that
> funding is a difficult issue, but I would clearly separate the need to get
> money to cover external costs from the internal logic of peer production.



Hi Christian,

most monetary alternatives are called 'complementary' and it is for a
reason, i.e. they accept that they cannot exist 'on their own' but co-exist
with legal tender

there are many different approaches, but here is one that explains how a
70-year old system works:

- if you are one of the 65,000 member-businesses of the WIR, you can pay
part in WIR, part in Swiss Fr, the ratio depend on the state of the economy.
When the mainstream economy goes well, the amount of WIR is relatively
small, when there is a recession, it goes up. The logic is simple, when you
lack mainstream money, instead of going bust, you create mutual credit
through WIR, which keeps anyone in business, but circulates only amongst
members, which is a drawback. Studies have shown the effects of it to be
counter-cyclical, i.e. not only does it help the swiss economy as a whole,
but its member fare better than the general average, because they continue
working and trading when others can't, thereby also helping their
surroundings, since they also keep spending.







>
>
> > While I agree with you on the underlying logic of exploitation by
> > capital, many other aspects of the superstructure have their own
> > influence; for example, it matters whether we have a social-democratic
> > welfare state, strong unions, different monetary systems; I think you
> > are probably not familiar with the convincing literature which shows how
> > instrumental the design of money is, to steer certain logics; for
> > example, the linkage between interest and infinite growth, and demurrage
> > and long-term planning ...
>
> "Infinite growth" follows from the way capitalism works: a company buys
> means of production and labor force; it throws them together and sells the
> resulting commodities--if everything goes well--with a profit (because of
> exploitation, as explained). Infinite growth follows from the tendency to
> re-invest part of the profit, and continue the process at a higher level.
>
> Similarly, "interest" is not an effect of money per se that could be
> changed
> by modifying the nature of money--as I already mentioned, send money to the
> moon to find whether it can indeed grow interest by itself.



but most people will empirically say their experience is different isn't it,
if you just have your work, you'll never get rich, but you can fructify your
money <g>

in any case, what you faill to see is that the core process is surrounded
and can only function, embedded in all kinds of other processes that have
their relative autonomy. This is why keynesianism has different effects than
friedmanism, or social democratic parties than fascist parties. In a similar
fashion, a monetary system that  restricts acculumation, will have different
effects, independently of the core process. The truth is also is that even
if you had a non-capitalist economy, but used an interest-based money, you
will still have an infinite growth compulsion, because the non-existing
interest burden can only come from two sources: 1) growth 2) from others.
This is why self-sufficiency oriented pre-capitalist systems outlawed it.



>
> So it's wrong to think that by changing the properties of money-as-money,
> you could somehow eliminate interest or infinite growth--these are
> properties of capitalism itself, not of the money it uses.


Yet, whenever it has been tried, it has worked better than the mainstream
money and mainstream economy, protecting the locales from the worst effects
of the recession/depression, and in all civilisations when it was used, it
led to long term vision of investments

The aim of monetary transformation  is not the abolition of capitalism, nor
can it indeed ignore many of its effects, but it can nevertheless be a
powerful tool in the interest of communities using it.
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