[p2p-research] [Open Manufacturing] Fwd: A joint statement on P2P and post-scarcity thinking

[Nathan Cravens]

Hi Franz,
I will now act as if you are directing that message to me, even if you did
not state that explicitly. I believe the outcome of your message
essentially, as well meaning as it may be, exchanges fascism for tyranny. To
adhere to the outcomes you would like had will mean genocide by neglect for
the elderly populations to come due to preserving a then faulty past
tradition.


> To make a strong statement: P2P (and also GlobalVillages) is not about
> post – scarcity, but about restoring the right balance between scarcity
> and abundance – which is an alltogether different thing.
> It does not believe that technology by itself provides any complete social
> solution, but it is always embedded in and driven by particular social and
> political logics
>

A human is a linear being that can only experience so much at one time. In
the strictest theory, we may never have infinite resources, but all
resources, just as they were before from the environments that once fed us
before agriculture, can be managed or coordinated in a way to meet all
needs. I apologize for not breaking this down into a spreadsheet per product
or outcome, but that is not required, (even if I lack the capacity) so long
as those interested in a given area act in a way to better enable the user
to produce for themselves, personally.


> For example, automation is very much driven by capitalist competition to
> be more productive than other market players. It is absolutely not sure
> that autonomous communities would choose to totally abolish manual work.
> It is totally legitimate that communities or countries would choose
> industrious development paths preserving and augmenting direct human
> involvement in material production.
>

Automation came out of capitalism to disempower labor and, somehow
paradoxically, maximize returns. In so doing it has shaped a consistently
ill person, a consumer within an exchange trade system is a pawn by which
constant distraction diverts attention toward appropriate mice trappings
such as sports, professions, corporate ownership, state sanctioned murder by
political dictatorship; call it a congress if you like; the results are the
same. . .

Yet from this automation comes the hope of better craft tools we're seeing
come out of fab labs and hackerspaces; and they are becoming more affordable
and more intelligent for less market cost. Franz, its really not a question
of if we want full automation, but rather, do we think automation of any
sort is appropriate in the communities we choose to live in? Our choice must
not to the greatest degree affect the choices of others. Your statements in
attempting to reject post-scarcity conceptions can only lead to a desperate
grasp of mutual exploitation within a collectivist toilscape I would much
rather not be a part. That does not suggest I want you to live differently
to your own settings, but that you not try to interfere with those that
would prefer different outcomes, such as the ones I would like, that do not
otherwise effect your own.


> For example, an agricultural community may want to preserve its
> traditional ways of life – and that is a freedom we want everybody to have.
> Maybe we can say that our contacts with local activist communities have
> made us aware that the identification with post-scarcity thinking is
> politically problematic – in particular the image of the „magical
> technical fix“.
>

I reject this argument for lack of clarity! ;p


> We do not want to stop the dialogue, but we would like to make clear that
> no consensus can be assumed on that - and as a movement we do not want to
> be identified with it. It is not a central message, it is merely the hope
> of some, of people that we do respect but also who carry a much stronger
> burden of proof. People who make extraordinary claims are bound more than
> others to show practical implementations.
>

Smári and I, for example, share this burden. I look forward to discussing
these burdens in detail so we might overcome or transform them in some way.
We cannot do it alone, but it can be done, we assert.

Again, if a group wants a tradition to be preserved, they must agree to do
so. For those born within these groups or for a member that may be persuaded
otherwise see these views as faulty, that person must have the ability to
choose a different way, one that may include automations in a community that
would prefer not to experience such silliness. . .


> All the material we have in the P2P wiki are actually existing projects
> and it is out of the observation of these existing social practises that
> we draw our conclusions.
>

The datasets in response to these blanketed claims of scarcity are coming. .
. ;p


> STRATEGY
> P2P is operating in a world which is characterised by 2 main factors,
> mostly wrongly perceived:
>

'Wrong' is mostly an opinion; which means I may be wrong for saying so.


> - Scarcity of natural resources, which is increasingly accelerated by a
> dysfunctional mode of production and is putting us into ever more serious
> planetary management problems. We are in friendly terms with the
> environmental movement(s) that adresses these issues and becomes more
> practical every day (renewables, solar, distributed energy...)
>

Automations can account for these concerns given artificial intelligences
are adaptive.


> - Our own priority as P2P movement is adressing the second factor, which
> is the enclosure of the intellectual and scientific and cultural commons
> which is being addressed by the „Open Everything Movements“.  Opening up
> the realm of ideas and allowing the massive collaboration of the general
> intellect of the world is an essential condition of mastering the
> ecological crisis and to the fulfillment of the better promises and
> achievements of our civilisation through the building of a new
> civilisation or rather new culture.
>

Opening up to the ideas expressed by post-scarcity concepts will further
enhance these pursuits in parallel with p2p practice. I am stating here that
p2p and abundance are mutually exclusive, that one cannot function as
intended without the other. You must begin to understand and accept this,
dear Franz.


> But there is a third necessary factor that is crucial for a thrivable
> solution which would allow for further human evolution:  without true
> active participation of all in the design and production of our material
> life, without the involvement of the majority of human beings into the
> effort to find a new social contract, we will not be able to reach the
> goals of a better life on this planet. Therefore P2P has to join forces
> with the third mass movement on this planet, which could roughly be
> characterized as the social justice movement, involving the struggles of
> workers, farmers, entrepreneurs and knowledge workers.
>

Struggle is a systemic and communications issue.


> We currenly see a strategic convergence of these three movements and we
> think it is our own responsibility to help make it happen. We believe that
> a perceived identification between P2P and post scarcity is counter to
> that goal, because post-scarcity is intentionally ignoring important
> issues raised by the other two movements, i.e. the ecological and social
> justice movement.
>

I believe I have affectively argued the contrary, but I am willing to debate
this with you further.


Nathan
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