[p2p-research] The Production Bubble: Why Capitalism Withholds Solutions and Gets Away with It

Sat Aug 7 13:54:50 CEST 2010

I'm merely repeating the official ideology of the present system, that we
need a system based on self-interest, which automatically resists in the
greatest good .. and which has gradually lost and countervailing trends
(such as say adam smith's stress on moral sentiments and community) ...
milton friedman insisted that corporations should ONLY look to their bottom
line, and gordon gecko is of course fictional, but paradoxically hailed by
the very people the film criticised ...

it is not fanciful to ascribe the logic of the present political economy, to
a theory of rationally self-interested agents, it's their own acknowledged
self-description and social ideals ..

but I may have misunderstood the meaning of your remark ..

asia of course, while at the same time very 'capitalist', if not
'hyper-capitalist' because it has hardly any critique or opposition against
mass consumption as only worthy pursuit, has mostly preserved large swaths
of precapitalist community ... it's still possible for people to rely on
family support structures in hard times, and I do indeed find that an
attractive part of the culture .. you could say that the true adam smith's
prescription are still much more alive here ... in atomized Europe, peer to
peer is now the essential relational counterforce to reconstruct human
solidarity (in a context of almost disappeared family structures and
weakening forms of state- based solidarity)

if you go back to history, liberalism was of course once progressive, it is
because of the incessant wars and devastation of Europe after the
Reformation, that the new elite looked for an alternative way of organizing
culture and civilization, which would henceforth not be based on lofty
claimed ideals, hypocritically practiced and used as justification to
eliminate opponents, for a system in which "war" would be sublimized into
"business competition" ...

I think we are now ready for a new sublimation, from business competition
(cooperation within competition) to commons-based rivaly (competition within
cooperation)

I think the gay pride is actually a uniquely p2p phenomena, bottom up
organized and a ode to joy, and part of a affinity-based community
construction ... it is based on a recognition of the gut, but also a
transcendence of the gut ... I see it as an anti-thesis of neoliberalism
actually .. few communities have been so successfull as the gays, in
building new solidarity infrastructures (think of the aids buddy system, and
much more)

Michel

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Alex Rollin <alex.rollin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fanciful, Michel, how you can ascribe gigantic swaths of multi-agent
> continental history to "petty" motivations.  I can only assume this is
> another reason you don't live here in lovely, wonderful, sweet
> smelling Europe.
>
> It's gay pride day in Amsterdam, today.  A bit rainy,but that won't
> stop the million or more visitors.  Is that a "petty" thing, to enjoy
> a parade?
>
> A
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 11:36 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > do you agree that there is a difference between:
> >
> > 1) knowing your gut and
> >
> > a) based on the contradictory tendencies of our gut, built in the right
> > nudges against the most destructive  behavior
> >
> > b) glorifying the worst part of our gut ('greed is good') and devising a
> > system that nudges us even more in that direction
> >
> > what you see as the socialist system by the way, was completely built
> around
> > such desires for petty advancement ...
> >
> > as far as I'm aware neither the amish or the tibetans have actually
> 'burnt
> > down the colonies' (have they?), but the hedge funders have nearly
> succeeded
> > in destroying our biosphere ...
> >
> > Michel
> >
> > On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:26 PM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 15:18:19 PM -0400, Ryan Lanham
> >>> (rlanham1963 at gmail.com) wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Scarcity is a function (always) of incentives.  What most people on
> >>> > this list fail to try to understand is the psychology of incentives.
> >>> > Incentives are why utopian colonies always fail.
> >>>
> >>> Ryan,
> >>>
> >>> _if_ you feel like it, may I ask you to elaborate (separately?) on the
> >>> last two sentences above? I understand (I think) everything else you
> >>> said, but the part above makes me real curious.
> >>>
> >>> TIA,
> >>>        Marco
> >>>
> >>
> >> Hi Marco,
> >>
> >> I will try.
> >>
> >> There seems to be increasing evidence that, as apes, we care about
> caste,
> >> hierarchy, structure, relativity of reward and that these systems of
> reward
> >> and motivation are not to be reasoned away...they are in the bone.
> >>
> >> If this is true...if...then we must somehow come to terms with our own
> >> sense of desire.  We want.  We need.  We hope.  Intellectualize that
> away,
> >> and we become socialist robots devoid of our human desires...in Star
> Trek
> >> terms, we abandon our inner Klingon.  It will not be abandoned.
> >>
> >> For the Klingon in us is what makes sex power and joy and what makes
> >> cities vibrant and full of despair and dreams.  Kill the animal and AI
> has
> >> won in all the wrong ways.  The true AI will be emotional, devotional,
> >> wanting, passionate and hungry for experience, emotion, and experience.
> >>
> >> It is a strawman (as usual) to posit that the so-called neo-liberal
> >> transhumanist state leads to money-making robots talking to other
> >> accountant-like robots.  No.  The killers need to drink blood.  It is
> indeed
> >> the equilibrium seekers who expose their fear of their own humanity.  It
> is
> >> they who seek to be neutered.  To be sexless, emotionless, desireless
> monks
> >> lost in inner worlds of metaphysics because the real world is too
> emotional,
> >> too traumatic for them to bear.
> >>
> >> And so, we must know our gut.  We have to plumb passion if we are going
> to
> >> be peers.  We need to understand the tentative nature of our wants and
> the
> >> delicate balance of peace in a bar full of tail.
> >>
> >> Until we do that, until we realize that hierarchy and mud wrestling are
> in
> >> us like intestines and marrow, we're not on a good path.
> >>
> >> It is these passions set loose that kill the idealist and the utopian.
>  It
> >> is the Amish whore who burns the colony down.  It is the desirous monk
> who
> >> rises to command an army of Tibetans.  There is no abandoning these
> >> tendencies.  They are us.
> >>
> >> R.
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
> > Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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