[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p

[Wittel, Andreas]

Hi Marco,

On a related note, I wonder if collective ownership can ever really
work or if it makes sense at all unless an organization is quite
small, surely much smaller than todays multinationals.

Ownership is good when it corresponds to real possibilities for every
owner to make informed decisions and real possibilities to make things
better with your own work, otherwise it may be more hassles than
advantages. Both conditions are very hard to achieve for everybody in
a big company.

I completely agree that it is difficult to establish a real collective in big companies. There is no plan on the table how this would work, and I suppose we'd see many failed attempts before a model evolves which might work. However what intrigues me about this strategy is that it would be bottom-up, it would be about emergence, and in this this respect, it would be similar to opensource and p2p worlds.
 
The only alternative to this is the basic income idea, in a way a very beautiful idea. But it has one downside. It owuld involve the state to sort this out. It would be top-down, and actually I don't think that one state alone could afford to go ahead with this in a globalised economy. It would open a can of worms, as all sorts of differentiations would need to be introduced (e.g. life in rural areas is less expensive than life in urban spaces etc etc.)
 
POCLAD's suggestions (limited life span for companies, size regulations, laws against the purchase of companies) are all strategies that need to be implemented on the state level, this makes me quite sceptical.
 
Top down had its days in my view. Time to give emergence a chance.
 
Andreas


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