[p2p-research] Charter Cities

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Paul Romer, who gives that talk, is very market-based.

I wrote on his ideas last year:
   http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
"""
I'm not talking about the market apologist version of "post-scarcity" at, 
say, Stanford:
     "Post-Scarcity Prophet: Economist Paul Romer on growth, technological 
change, and an unlimited human future."
     http://www.reason.com/news/show/28243.html
   If you read that carefully, that supposed "Post-Scarcity Prophet" seems 
more obsessed with ensuring an abundance of ... scarcity. :-)
   There is not much talk of "free" or "cheap" for *everybody* as much as an 
obsession with more patents and more copyrights and more secrets -- which 
are all ways to create artificial scarcity in a market economy. So, a 
supposedly brilliant economist presumably would promote even more artificial 
scarcity through draconian copyright and such. This person (shortlisted for 
the Nobel Prize, the article says) can't understand that if *all* the basics 
are essentially "free" to the user through the miracles of improving F/OSS 
technology and a healthy natural world, then people's personal time for more 
desktop innovative R&D is mostly "free" too. :-)
   An example where he misses that is when he says: "If you're going to be 
giving things away for free, you're going to have to find some system to 
finance them, and that's where government support typically comes in."
   Maybe that is true now, but it is less and less true with each passing 
day. And no charge for this "free" essay, by the way. :-) A typical related 
problem is to confuse or ignore free as in "freedom" and free as in "price" 
by the way. This essay is free as in both (see the license at the end. :-)
     http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/
   Here is part of a sci-fi story about the flip side of that "Imagine" 
world kids are thinking about, where it all goes horribly wrong, say, with a 
Stanford-led elite unable to let go of a fear of scarcity, and instead using 
the robots to guard most of the world who are kept in "welfare" prison camps:
     http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm
     "Time to turn around Jacob Lewis105. There is construction in the next 
zone and, for your safety, we cannot allow you to proceed." There were a 
hundred reasons the robots gave for making you turn around. Construction, 
blasting, contamination, flash flooding, train derailments, possible thunder 
storms, animal migrations and so on. They could be quite creative in their 
reasons. It was all part of their politeness. If you turned around you were 
fine. If you made any move in any direction other than the one suggested, 
you were immediately injected and woke up back in your room. I had only 
tried it twice.
   To me, "post-scarcity" means the end of rationing the basics for 
everybody, where what is defined as "the basics" grows and grows over time. 
:-) And one of those basics is unrationed access to important information. 
Ration units went out of use with World War II, you might object. But what 
is a US Federal Reserve Note (commonly called a fiat dollar) if not 
essentially a "ration unit"? So, in that sense, to quote Iain Banks, "Money 
is a sign of poverty", meaning that money's presence in a society indicates 
the society believes (as part of its mythology) that there is not enough 
stuff to go around.
   I suggest Princeton economists start ignoring the next Nobel Prize sure 
bet listed above, who is claiming to be "post-scarcity" while taking us down 
the road to Marshall Brain's scarcity dystopia linked above (though read to 
the end of Marshall Brain's story for some hope).
"""

In that video, Paul Romer focuses on the notion of creating rules. Market 
based ones mainly. Well, maybe we do need some rules. But they should have 
as an assumption not creating *artificial* scarcities, IMHO. And they should 
not assume labor has much value anymore, as this video you linked to a while 
back shows:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation

With that said, as in my previous post, I think creating new cities is a 
great idea.

Paul Romer, saying cities are just the right scale between villages and 
nations, seems to be rediscovering Jane Jacobs work, but without crediting her?
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

But beware of market based people like Paul Romer, for these reasons:
   http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/aefe17328d00fb67
"""
Except markets have all sorts of problems:
* systemic risks of collapse, especially from pyramid schemes involving debt
* negative externalities like pollution are paid by society
* positive externalities like global health are ignored in product design
* money tends to get centralized, as it takes money to make money
* those with a lot of money set standards to benefit themselves
* competition can be very wasteful if people otherwise agree on goals
* preparing and fighting war is profitable
* as above, human labor is needed less and less for production
* money tends to corrupt the political process
* the market doesn't hear the needs of people with money, so people can
starve or sicken amidst physical plenty
* extrinsic security and planned obsolescence may be more profitable than
intrinsic security and durable goods
* money distorts information flows about news
* money corrupts the medical decision making process (conflict of interest)
* money corrupt academia (Kept University)
There are probably others. :-)
"""

He talks about "choices", but in practice, without a basic income or 
capital, most people won't have choices. They can just pick who their owner 
will be as a wage slave (if they are *lucky* these days).
   http://www.whywork.org/

So, city idea like Jane Jacobs is great; the emphasis on free markets 
emphasizing a income-through-jobs link at this point, given the ending of 
work as we know it, is obsolete IMHO. And that was known to be coming in the 
1960s:
   http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

He's got a cool moving graphic about land use and cities. But the raw idea 
has been said before:
"The Truth About Land Use in the United States"
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
"By far the greatest impact on the American landscape comes not from 
urbanization but rather from agriculture. According to the U.S. Department 
of Agriculture, farming and ranching are responsible for 68 percent of all 
species endangerment in the United States. ... The ironic aspect of this 
head-in-the sand approach to land use is that most agriculture is completely 
unnecessary to feed the nation. The great bulk of agricultural production 
goes toward forage production used primarily by livestock. A small shift in 
our diet away from meat could have a tremendous impact on the ground in 
terms of freeing up lands for restoration and wildlife habitat. It would 
also reduce the poisoning of our streams and groundwater with pesticides and 
other residue of modern agricultural practices."

The "manual" of "Charter Cities for Dummies" he talks about was what OSCOMAK 
was supposed to be. :-)
   http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/goals.htm
"The Oscomak project is an attempt to create a core of communities more in 
control of their technological destiny and its social implications. No 
single design for a community or technology will please everyone, or even 
many people. Nor would a single design be likely to survive. So this project 
endeavors to gather information and to develop tools and processes that all 
fit together conceptually like Tinkertoys or Legos. The result will be a 
library of possibilities that individuals in a community can use to achieve 
any degree of self-sufficiency and self-replication within any size 
community, from one person to a billion people. Within every community 
people will interact with these possibilities by using them and extending 
them to design a community economy and physical layout that suits their 
needs and ideas. "

But, alas, twenty years ago I got all sort of static trying to do that in 
the Ivy League. Of course, now I understand why -- there is a difference 
between pitching an idea good for everyone, or pitching an idea good for the 
people already on top.

He does talk about the only limit is a "failure of imagination" and the 
power of ideas. I can agree with that.

Paul Romer is an interesting mix. He half gets so much. But doesn't seem to 
be able to go all the way. I can only hope that is an act to bring people 
along. :-)

His rules for changing rules are, for example, the US constitution; the 
problem is they get gummed up in other social issues and social inertia. 
Maybe that is often a good thing, but not always.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

Ryan Lanham wrote:
> It does create the prospect of P2P trials in the small.  If people think
> they can grow the commons and commons-like institutions as core social
> vehicles, a charter city would be the place to try it.
> 
> Ryan
> 
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>> I fear that like charter schools, it creates a few good schools at the
>> expense of all the rest that stays on the wayside ..
>>
>>   On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 4:30 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>>   TED Talk links on a new vision for a fragmented future...charter
>>> cities.
>>>
>>> http://www.chartercities.org/home