[p2p-research] - Re: [Commoning] �ce

[j.martin.pedersen]

On 30/12/10 16:25, Patrick Anderson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 6:40 AM, j.martin.pedersen
> <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> On 30/12/10 03:28, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>>
>>> My own view in this is that peer production, in the context of abundance of
>>> digital reproduction
>>
>> I don't understand "abundance logic" without a denial of resource,
>> labour and energy use. So when you say that you don't disregard those
>> important and very high overlapping social and environmental costs of
>> digital commons, how does a philosophy and architecture of commons that
>> turn on the concept of abundance actually work?
>>
> 
> Keep in mind everything from Avocados to Zucchini can also be "copied
> for zero marginal cost" once the are established.
> 
> In fact, that type of production is even *less* environmentally costly than
> the industrialization required to produce, connect, power, maintain and
> recycle computers.
> 
> It also requires less labor when these "manufacturing plants" are local.
> 
> My friend in California owns an Avocado tree for which he does nothing
> except to occasionally pluck the fruit.

Does the tree not drink water, does it not grow in soil that was stolen
from the native people, does your friend not labour to care for it at all?

(In any case, avocado trees that are not grafted do very rarely bear
fruit, so the fruit carrying tree itself cannot be reproduced simply by
means of the seed in the fruit.)

Perhaps it is simply my ignorance - and I would be very happy to be
enlightened here - but in the absence of some revelating explanation I
do not see much of a difference, systemically speaking, between the
abundance logic of the Euro-American colonial empire, which lives in
abundance paid for by others (through exporting the costs by means of
exploitative trade, slavery, land grabs, resource squeezes) and the
"abundance logic" of cyberspace. There might be differences in degree,
but the principle appears to be very similar: see no evil, hear no evil,
feel no evil, - like an ostrich with the head in the sand.

m