[p2p-research] against human rentals

[Alex Rollin]

Patrick's understanding of profit is rather nuanced.  Patrick I
applaud your efforts at creating stories and analogies that help us
all to understand the nuances that you have discovered.

I am under the impression that many folks would agree that it would be
really neat if all the planet, all the material resources, were a part
of a single unified commons where every human (and perhaps even all
sentient) beings was considered a stakeholder.  This would mean, at
the very least, that each stakeholder would have a say in things.

If this was the case, this would be a window into a situation where
all users where owners.

>From this point on, things get more complicated.

>From talking with Patrick on another thread recently, we found a line
of inquiry where we were looking at what the reasons were for worker's
and owner/users(hereafter owners) to set themselves up as separate
stakeholder groups.

The obvious answer is not so obvious.  It's a complex diagram already
with at least 3 perspectives - owners, workers, and a commons of some
sort that contains productive resources.

If you add multiple currency commons on top of this, it gets more
complicated yet.  For example, sovereign currency and "asset backed"
currency like "milk units" or something.

One rationale for workers and owners to have separate groups is:

They want different things.
Workers want ... more milk, and owners want less.
Workers want one currency type and owners want another different type.

The recent discussion about protocol and networks that was blogged
about brought up some of the reasons why, for me, P2P is a great set
of tools and understandings for picking apart this set of
relationships.

That said, the "solution," if there is such a thing, might include
quite a bit of diligence and definition.

For example, if consumers own a common resource, under what agreement
could they simultaneously operate as common equal-share
equal-authority governors, and yet still individually derive differing
amounts of asset-based value units from the same common pool?  If this
was possible it would mean that each owner can somehow make a play to
gather more asset-backed value units from the operation than another
owner.    Let's call this asymmetric gain, for short.  Because the
attempt to derive asymmetric gain is subject to the common-governance
of the equal-share equal-authority owners group, let's say, for short,
that the means by which co-owners decide the rules by which asymmetric
gain is derived is called the owner protocol.

So, to restate, what is the text of the owner protocol that would
allow an owner to derive asymmetric gain?

If you can answer this, then what is the reason for adding an
additional stakeholder group for workers to the mix?

The short "solution" (is it incomplete?) might be:

Owners and workers operate as common equal-share equal-authority
governors under owner protocol.   An owner wishing to derive
asymmetric gain is subject to owner protocol.  Additionally, workers
who wish to engage in the trade of asset-backed value units may do so
subject to owner protocol in as much as they wish to derive gain or
asymmetric gain from the common resource in order to trade the
asset-backed value units for other, different, asset-backed value
units.  Once in possession of asset-backed value units owners may
trade these as they wish.

The difference is that workers are not always interested in the direct
asset-backed value units that are produced by a certain resource.  In
some cases workers are interested in the trading value of the
asset-backed value units, or the use of units as leverage.  All
workers have needs, and some workers have skills that are necessary
for the operation of many different forms of common resources.  All
owners have needs, and from the perspective of a global commons they
have a stakeholder interest in all productive assets.

Our current economy puts us in the poorly defined middle ground most
of the time.  We use sovereign currency units to trade value between
small owner-stakeholder groups.

A








On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 3:25 AM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Samuel Rose wrote:
>> If a worker cannot accumulate what they earn,
>
> Nobody can 'earn' Profit!
>
> Profit only occurs when Consumers lack ownership.
>
>
> Consider this scenario:
>
> Let's say I'm good at jack-hammering, but am sick
> and tired of my boss being paid more than it really
> costs him to supply the tools and to pay my wage.
>
> After many years of saving I finally have enough to
> buy my own jack-hammer.  So I quit my job as a
> wage-slave and advertise my services as an
> entrepreneur.
>
> Soon I have many clients and things are going quite
> well.
>
> One day a wealthy so-and-so suddenly decides he is going to open a
> tool-rental business with a strange goal:
>
> The terms of operation for this business is to "Break even, but do not
> charge enough to Profit."
>
> So now everyone in the area is able to rent jack-hammers and pay
> exactly the same amount it
> costs me in oil, repairs, extra parts, etc.
>
> Now whenever someone needs such work done, I
> can only charge the real Costs plus Wages - where
> Wages are determined on the "open market".
>
> This, by definition, means I will no longer be able to
> collect Profit because competition in that field is now
> under perfect competition.
>
> In other words, competition reduces Profit and perfect competition
> *eliminates* profit.
>
> The reason for this is that before the tools were available
> to the Consumers "at cost", I was able to keep other
> workers from competing against me because the
> barrier-to-entry was the initial expense of the Means
> of Production (the jack-hammer).
>
> This shows that Profit has nothing to do with Work, but
> is only a result of Consumers lacking at-cost access
> to the Sources of Production - and where the *ultimate*
> guarantee of at-cost access is through real ownership.
>
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