[p2p-research] Global Guerrillas: Is our current Economic Model Parasitic Predation?

[Ryan Lanham]

Aren't transitions important?  Even with the sort of collapse seen post WW2,
basic systems deployed along lines then existing.  Do you anticipate a sort
of collapse that requires a walk-off from existing frameworks?  I personally
doubt that will happen soon.  I have no moral disinclination to makeovers,
do overs, revolutions, etc., but I do have moral disinclination to
re-education programs that are coercive, restricting, top-down.  It seems to
me that Stalin-ism, Castro-ism, Leninism were/are even bigger failures that
Victorian capitalism or investment bank capitalism.  Post-modernism is an
intriguing term, but it must mean something concrete.

So, you either have to envision a collapse of end-times proportions, or you
have to look for niche ecological (evolution versus revolution) approaches.


The "what" for me...the performance games, are modes of offering certain
types of competitive advantages where like-minded policy groups (networks)
want to live, act, perform in a certain way...more sustainably, for
instance.

P2P seems an intermediate ground between individualism and coercive
collectivism.  It is structured individualism.  Regulatory capitalism (New
Deal Social Democracy) seems to me to be slightly coercive collectivism.
Maybe that's an inaccurate continuum, but it is how I have envisioned it.  I
see P2P as a framework of determining what by using technocracy to design
open, sustainable models that rely on little hierachy.  P2P reduces the
state, but keeps regulatory frameworks.


Ryan Lanham


On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 4:42 PM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the P2. Energy Economy model no resource uks sparse. It's an
> abundance sustaining game.
>
> I agree that performance can measure anything and everything just as
> there are so many kinds of units old measures.
>
> But the word 'Performance' is usually associated with the goal of the
> system. So performance in a capitalistic system is different than that
> in a social system etc..
>
> I agree also that the Open University model is good for the reason you
> mention.
>
> As far as the sudden collapse and renewal I'm looking for at the level
> of the whole economy (using the self organized criticality model) the
> purpose of it is to teach people the wisdom of abstaining from games,
> even good games. The idea is to show people that ultimately nature
> does not care about good or bad performance of the players (the
> various species) where good and bad can be in any arbitrary dimension.
> What nature cares about is its own survival, not the survival of a
> particular species no matter how 'good' is that species' performance.
> It is kind of dark but as far as looking at nature as a system it
> makes sense to see it as a selfish system with the primary goal being
> its own survival, which does entail its evolution and sudden sand-pile
> type collapse which happens at multiple levels and whipch sustains it.
> The word nature is used very loosely here. I mean the universe as a
> whole. Having said that there are plenty of mechanisms for reward and
> punishment but my point is that we confuse reward and punishment with
> the notion that nature wants us to behave in certain ways to avoid
> extinction, all while nature or the game we're in could not give a
> damn what happens to the players within it. It is its own game and its
> primary goal is its own survival. I can't help but notice that this is
> an extremely dark way of looking at things but its the only
> explanation that make sense if we think of life as a game.
>
> Having said that, if we were to stop thinking of life as a game (by
> being punished for doiong so using sudden collapses) then things turn
> a lot brighther and we start seeing the dissolution of the self and
> the emergence of the whole.
>
> That is truly what I'm trying to lead to thru the design of the P2P
> Energy Economy as of the next major release.
>
> In other words, forget democracy, forget open vs closed and forget all
> logic. The only winning solution is not to play the game.that is the
> teaching purpose of the P2P Energy Economy as of the next major
> release.
>
> But in order to achieve that purpose the model has to be very tempting
> as a game and it has to reward good behavior and be resilient to bad
> behavior yet reward no one in the end but itself. That's the only way
> people will learn to stop playing the game and converge with the whole
> by giving up the ideal and idea of the self.
>
> Marc
>
>
> On 3/29/09, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What I do advocate is more Open University type models where programs can
> > be
> > constructed from a range of disparate sources.  Wales as a country is
> good
> > at this.  Other places less good.  Evaluation of effort and content
> should
> > matter more than top down coherency of program.  Take law school...what
> is
> > the point of going to any one institution?  Clearly the point is
> > associative
> > value.
> >
> > In an energy economy (classic technocracy is an interest of mine) you'd
> > probably want to resolve by to Kcals or some other baseline.  Of course
> you
> > can add other dimensions, (economic, social, etc. in your note) at will,
> > but
> > even report cards have multiple topics.  The aim of evaluation is...?
> > That's the question for any sparse resource allocation game.
> >
> > Evaluation in individualistic societies tends toward money and/or
> anarchy.
> > Evaluation is collectives is support of the collective.  Performance is
> > just
> > a place holder for saying that whatever evaluation scheme you choose,
> > that's
> > what you will get (bye and large).  Train finance guys...you'll get a
> > culture of clinical financial metrics.  Train industrial engineers or
> > conservationists, you'll get limited Kcal's, etc.  In the end, you've got
> > to
> > come up with governance mechanisms that are trusted for establishing
> social
> > design...or you can be an anarcho-capitalist. Democracy is a how...it
> isn't
> > a what.  What is the interesting question.
> >
> >
> > Ryan Lanham
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 3:21 PM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> With respect to having a performance driven "Darwinian selection"
> process
> >> I
> >> think the criteria for selection should be a lot more than just
> >> performance.
> >>
> >> Performance (as it's defined in our education system) means a race
> toward
> >> efficiency in one game (getting the highest grades) at the expense of
> >> discovering new games (new possibilities outside the system.)
> >>
> >> If you place me (for example) in any game my prime objective is not to
> >> win
> >> the game but to break the game wide open, discover its inner workings
> and
> >> devise alternatives to it some better, some worse and some a mix of
> >> better
> >> and worse aspects.
> >>
> >> In other words, I generally play to fail because that's how I can get to
> >> understand the most about the players in the game, their psychology, and
> >> the
> >> nature of the game being played, i.e by taking the most risk. If I only
> >> play
> >> to win (which I do from time to time) all I care about is how to
> dominate
> >> and that feels deeply shallow to me and intellectually useless.
> >>
> >> At first, I want to understand the players more than I want to
> understand
> >> the game, then in the next stage I want to take the game apart and then
> I
> >> want to screw with the player and see what happens, and then try
> >> challenge
> >> the idea of the game and see what happens. Eventually, my goal is to
> have
> >> a
> >> holistic understanding of the game and people in it, and it's rarely
> >> about
> >> winning. I play to win only when I need to send a signal that I'm still
> a
> >> worthy opponent so that I get others to continue playing, so I continue
> >> studying them and how the game operates on them and how they try so hard
> >> to
> >> manipulate it or how they construct their rules for winning.
> >>
> >> I'm sure this behavior I'm describing of myself is shared with many
> >> people
> >> here. I just want to be explicit about it in the context of what we're
> >> doing
> >> here, which seems to be a collaboration game with open ended goals but
> >> distinctly in favor or social progress, which is a game I can take
> >> seriously
> >> as it's a game to unravel existing games.
> >>
> >> When playing against people who are holistically reflexive (holistically
> >> intuitive and fast) the game becomes a form of meditation (like my
> >> discussions on Ning with Dante) not a competition and not a
> collaboration
> >> either.  Games that involve more than one dimension (i.e. more than just
> >> competition or collaboration) teach us a lot about life so we can use
> >> them
> >> to simulate future scenarios (in life) and understand our 'world'
> through
> >> them. Winning in such games is meaningless since the objective of
> >> life-like
> >> games (or life itself) is to open up and become part of the greater
> whole
> >> not separate from the greater whole by winning an internal game of pride
> >> and
> >> ego.
> >>
> >> What I see happening with the P2P Energy Economy model (which is not
> >> driven
> >> by efficiency for the sake of efficiency.. there is 'environmentally,
> >> socially and ecologically positive efficiency' or environmentally,
> >> socially
> >> and ecologically high performance.
> >>
> >> The simulation objective of the P2P Energy Economy is to see if people
> >> can
> >> live without the social, environmental and ecological inefficiencies
> that
> >> exist today? Will they rebel against environmental, ecological and
> social
> >> efficiency? Even if the efficiency model is designed to guarantee a much
> >> higher degree of resilience? For example, in Release 4.0 I plan to
> >> enforce
> >> constant renewal of the entire system (for sake fo resiliency and moral
> >> wholeness) through sand-pile type collapses (or avalanches) triggered by
> >> tiny events where the self-organized criticality that leads to this kind
> >> of
> >> large and robust response to tiny events would meander randomly to
> change
> >> the timing of when such criticality matures (when the system is ready
> for
> >> an
> >> engineered collapse)  This feature is not implemented yet in the P2P
> >> Energy
> >> Economy model and I'm looking for an algorithmic method for building
> self
> >> organized criticality into the model (it would make the P2P game version
> >> of
> >> the model very entertaining as one wrong move by one player can set off
> >> an
> >> economic avalanche wiping out a lot of the players' profits/status
> >> without
> >> affecting the foundation of the economy, which is unlike what seems to
> be
> >> happening now in the current economy... but more importantly constant
> >> collapse and renewal on the level of the whole economy is important for
> >> resilience and sustainability much the same way a renewable hierarchy is
> >> important)
> >>
> >> Where I agree with Ryan is that difficult propositions in any model
> (ones
> >> that are undesirable to most) need to be amended or changed or evolved.
> >>
> >> However, the idea of a renewable hierarchy is something that we have in
> >> the
> >> Constitution (for Congress, Senate and President) and it's something
> that
> >> I
> >> happen to be living everyday now as this whole place I'm living at is
> >> governed by a renewable hierarchy (based on elections not random
> >> selection
> >> from equally qualified members)
> >>
> >> Marc
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:39 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> <<
> >>> The key is to move education from credentialing for admissions to
> >>> credentialing for performance.
> >>> >>
> >>>
> >>> I believe that is true. Very good point.
> >>>
> >>> Imagine if everyone was admitted into Stanford and Yale and only those
> >>> who
> >>> compete and collaborate well enough make it as graduates. Unlike giving
> >>> Bush
> >>> Jr. admission into Yale and Harvard when he can't even make a complete
> >>> sentence.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Ryan Lanham
> >>> <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> It seems the great question for this century will be individualism
> >>>> versus
> >>>> collective.  That was not the case in the socialism/communism of the
> >>>> 19th
> >>>> century and 20th centuries where something more leader-focused took
> >>>> hold.
> >>>>
> >>>> Equivalency of outcomes is not appealing to most.  Equivalency of
> >>>> opportunity is appealing to large numbers, as is the implementation of
> >>>> sustainable processes. The balance between opportunity and
> >>>> sustainability is
> >>>> key.
> >>>>
> >>>> The renewal of hierarchy you speak of seems to come back to approaches
> >>>> that remove unearned advantages...very difficult, biologically.
>  People
> >>>> want
> >>>> to advantage their children.  The whole idea of property can be seen
> as
> >>>> a
> >>>> way to advantage offspring.  So, I think if you want renewable
> >>>> hierarchies,
> >>>> a place to start contemplating outcomes is equal access to elite
> >>>> learning
> >>>> credentials...not information.  It is the credentials which
> >>>> advantage...not
> >>>> the learning itself.
> >>>>
> >>>> The key is to move education from credentialing for admissions to
> >>>> credentialing for performance.  That is hard because the life blood of
> >>>> institutions is the capacity to create elites who protect exclusivity
> >>>> to
> >>>> increase the value of their own network associations.
> >>>>
> >>>> Ryan Lanham
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 11:59 PM, marc fawzi
> >>>> <marc.fawzi at gmail.com>wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Interesting that both parasitic and predator behavior are key traits
> >>>>> of
> >>>>> sociopaths.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Capitalism (the way it is now) makes heroes out of sociopaths.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The movie Watchmen actually captures that reality although in a raw,
> >>>>> archetypal way.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 2009/3/27 Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>  Interesting...
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/03/parasitic-predation.html
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Ryan Lanham
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> p2presearch mailing list
> >>>>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> >>>>>>
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
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