[p2p-research] The "Free Market" requires scarcity

[Michel Bauwens]

some short reactions inline ..

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 11:49 PM, Kevin Carson <
> free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 4/25/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I actually think consumer cooperation might play a significant role in
>> the larger alternative economy movement, and as a building block in
>> the post-capitalist economy.  I just don't see the producer-consumer
>> distinction as that central.
>
>
> To me, this is a crucial theme.  To flip a few questions on their heads, we
> need to ask a set of basic questions:
>
> 1. Is there some reason why, given a plurality of nations and cultures,
> that a "correct" economic system has not arisen?
>
> By way of partial answer to my own question, I have serious doubts that
> there is anything new under the sun without significant technology changes.
> That is, I am will to declare the end of political economics as a separate
> field from technology futurism.  There is no "post-capitalism" absent
> technology change or cataclysm beyond anything any sane person might wish
> for.
>

this is an area of disagreement, of course, tech is crucial, but it does not
operate independently but in functions of interests, social structures and
social choices .. there is no inherent technological reason why pharma's
don't develop medicines for diseases affecting the poorest 98%; but in
combination with social choice, we agree, human will alone is not enough, it
has to be congruent with new affordances that can materialize that will (I'm
not suggesting that technology is a definition of conscious will but it is
related to the human structure of desire as expressed in social life)

>
> 2. If P2P is really a technology and not a political movement, isn't there
> a much broader umbrella for participation and hope?
>


it's both, and growing on both counts


>
> 3. If the issue is technology, and not purely commons, what sorts of
> technologies are sea change/game change impactors that will move things in
> some positive direction?
>
> 4. What are we not willing to give up?  I think this is really the dividing
> question where politics are concerned.
>


I think we shouldn't give up any of those freedoms, as long as the golden
rule applies (do not harm others), on the contrary, they should be expanded,
i.e. not just the few, but the many should enjoy these freedoms, and this
expansion, to my mind, is incompatible (to a degree) with the continuation
of present structures. However, a lot can be changed with the current
structures, as long as they continue existing. I think D is most
problematic, and sometimes justified. For example, the existence of major
holdings of fallow land under monopoly ownership and with conditions of
hunger and poverty, is immoral.

>
> A. Liberty to make a profit
> B. Liberty to hire wage workers
> C. Liberty to accept work as a wage earner
> D. Freedom from collective takings of property
> E. The right to property
> F. The right to personal sovereignty (and definitions of what that means)
> G. The right to form nations/states and the right to establish certain
> rules and orders in those states
> H. The right to have co-operative or corporate entities
> I. The right to form and share commons
> J. Freedom of movement
> K. Freedom of expression
> L. Freedom to transfer wealth from one party to another
> M. Freedom from...?
>
> Partial Answer:  For me, P2P hints at a refinement of existing co-operative
> elements combined with the hope that technologies will allow low cost
> sharing in manners that eliminate the market value of most intellectual
> property--not through unlawful takings, but through the obvious capacity of
> people to build alternative mechanisms to those created at cost by investors
> and to redistribute those alternatives at prices that make capital
> investment profit less likely if not impossible.  That is, technology is
> causing a movement to free and a movement to "here comes everybody."
>


Technology is enabling it, but as you can see with ACTA, existing forces are
preparing a reaction to roll-back ... however, in the long run, this will be
ineffective


>
> If this partial answer is true...P2P ought to search out the following:
>
> 1. How to enable and expand co-ops
> 2. How to redistribute the intellectual know-how of society in fair and
> appropriate means so as to expedite an expanding free universe.
> 3. How to discuss and predict outcomes as older social systems predicated
> on credit/investment/profit frameworks start to become infeasible.
> 4. How to interject value propositions concerned externalities (e.g. the
> environment) that are often overlooked in conventional political economic
> and social discourses.
>

I agree with all four, though four should be coercive (dirty word to say,
embedded in the very logic of the system) in case where the natural
environment is in danger (which is of course the case now)

Michel

>
> Just some random thoughts...
> Ryan
>
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>


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