[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p

[M. Fioretti]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 18:35:20 PM +0100, Wittel, Andreas wrote:

> I completely agree that it is difficult to establish a real
> collective [ownership] 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.

Andreas,

I have just realized reading this comment from you, another reason
why, inconsciously until today, I don't instinctively warm up at the
idea of collective ownership: I'm not sure it can be only bottom-up.

I know people who have set up small consulting companies (5/6 people):
they are all co-owners with equal rights and responsibilities. Problem
starts when what they do (construction work or advanced design in
various areas) is only needed by much bigger companies. These guys can
be good and full of great ideals all the way, but current laws, just
because they're made to order for big companies, make it very hard for
them to survive, or for most others to follow their example. So I'm
not sure that collective ownership, to work well on a broad scale, is
much less top-down than POCLAD stuff.

> 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

I'm sure about it, and it would be an international can of worms.
Think of migrants. You guys may have heard of the discussions in Italy
these days about intercepting boats full of illegal immigrants south
of Sicily in international waters and towing them straight to
Lybia. For heaven's sake, let's not start a discussion here about
Italian or worldwide migration management policies, but...

Are foreign residents entitled to basic income? If not, what do they
do, the official (not just de-facto) "slaves" of those who live of
basic income, which sounds a bit too much like creating an official
ethnic-based caste system? Do you kick them out of the country? If
yes, how do you handle them? If basic income were granted to every
*resident* in Italy (or even all of Europe, it really doesn't make any
difference), regardless of citizenship, the only way to make migratory
flows much bigger than they already are, ie more difficult to manage,
would be to have the same basic income in the countries were those
migrants come from.

Marco
-- 
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