[p2p-research] the most important article of the year so far ...

[Ryan Lanham]

 Michel,

Thanks for sending Gopal Balakrishnan's paper.  It broke up a dull day for
me.

As an initial aside, I wish I had a dime for every time I've seen Martin
Wolf's "Seeds of its own Destruction" article cited left and right.  That
little column sure had legs.

Positives About Balakrishnan's Article:

1. It was magisterial in scope.
2. It followed traditional New Left themes and language in a way that was
easily understood and consistent with others
3. It pointed to real, if nebulous, outcomes to expect.
4. It laid out a convincing explanation for why a number of bogeymen (fiat
currencies, huge debts, failure to materialize technological solutions,
failure of green solutions, etc.) will lead to this "gray" world.

Negatives

1. I think vast themes were ignored.  First, I think he left out
demographics almost completely.  I read today where the average child born
in a US hospital today can expect to live to 100.  The average.
2. I think he underplays Japan and focuses on the US when Japan actually far
more illustrates his own points.
3. I do not believe he compelling theorizes a decline of China due to a lack
of consumers.  I doubt seriously it will go that way.  China can turn inward
(as it has many times in past) to build a Xanadu consumer wonderland.
4. I think the End of History metaphor is lost...he needed to show how
Fukuyama's history failed--democracy has been overtaken by neo-liberal
technocrats and therefore has become an underground movement--a la P2P.
These are not "dispersed agents of opposition, but technologically empowered
persons who need no organization--no parties, etc. which he feels are
missing.

Overall, I found him to be technologically naive--not in that he was not a
technophile--but rather in that he didn't see the enabling powers of
emerging technologies to sweep aside the sort of 20th century
organization (unions, left parties, etc.) he seems to crave.

That is a minor critique to a good paper on what seems to be a slower spin
to the current world of capitalism or neo-liberalism as it attempts to
de-lever.  What is profoundly difficult about such a paper is the need
to explain all.  I think that is where Marxian ideas come up short.  In
fact, they are too magisterial.  The world now is nano-fragments.  It cannot
be synthesized easily or well.

I myself have speculated somewhat formally in the last two days that the US
is headed for a second civil war...a war of small interests against
institutions that have betrayed the public trust.  In short, a new
democratic revolution against the conventional republic which has become
torpid, corrupt and self-serving.  I see such a fight brewing now in the
increasingly dysfunctional political dialogue.  That sort of Apache-like
sniping...a technical P2P war against the institutions, seems much more
plausible to me than the slow spinning death GB theorizes.

Your waves are interesting and I look forward to your formal expositions,
but I feel, frankly, that they are like a sort of Aristotelian set of
complexities for what may be a much more simple set of occurrences.  That
is, I feel they may be bent to fit the reality rather than descriptive of
it.  As an illustration, I can see where it is useful.  For now, I
personally remain unconvinced Kondratieff is a real phenomenon rather than a
descriptive apparatus.  I will study more to see if I can convince myself
otherwise.  In general, I am skeptical of thematic, Newtonian, mechanistic
futurism.  It would be interesting to be convinced otherwise (not your duty
but mine).

Thanks for sending along the article.

Ryan
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