[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Michel Bauwens]

I'm not sure where these ideas are that have always failed. I have heard
from many different people that my record of predicting trends has been
pretty accurate (of course I do make mistakes and I am constantly adjusting
my expectations to observable facts.

Denying that almost any sector of our mainstream economy are run by dominant
monopolies would demand pretty strong blindfolds, but indeed they are being
undermined by the new p2p economy, and not by capitalism itself which has
been a monopolistic system probably from the beginning of the century. The
whole system is stacked in favour of big players.

As for GMO being favoured by farmers? There are numerous farmers
associations and many other civil society groups fiercely opposed to GMO's,
and the majority of the public, including in the U.S. clearly states that
they would not buy or eat GMO foods, if it werre listed on the package (of
course, that's why the industry refuses to list this). Your GMO story is
really warped. Are you not aware that capitalist markets are destroying
agricultural households by the hundreds of millions in the world, forcing
people to flee to the cities.

It is strange that you say that free and p2p are winning all over, yet you
are opposed to communal property. But this is exactly what open knowledge,
free software code and shared designs are, as clearly defined by their very
licenses! But you probably mean that you oppose coops then, i.e. communal
property in the physical world? (and please note that public state property
is NOT communal property). Fair enough, I like coops and they have a very
good record, they are the largest employer of the world, bigger than all the
multinationals combined. Yes, I admit it, I prefer, for many reasons,
distributed property above oligarchic exclusive property that is based on
massive expropriation.

Michel




>
> I am equally baffled.  What you argue for is a set of ideas we know has
> failed and has always failed.  Where is the permanent monopoly in our
> world?  The US?  The British Empire?  Japan, Inc?  Microsoft?  GM?
> Volkswagon?  They are all swept away by progress.  So too will be Monsanto.
> Someday Africa like China will train its own GMO scientists who will built
> their own capacities to have whatever sorts of seeds they need.  And if they
> are blocked by a patent, they will grow something else.
>
> The big pharma companies are rapidly dying.  This is no secret and is
> widely covered in many well-known and respected outlets like the blog Pharma
> Gossip.  They have been cutting staff for years.  The old model doesn't
> work.  It won't work in GMO.  So the response is to go back to some sort of
> communal property idea?  Why?  Free and P2P are winning all over.  It's a
> total route.  I hear people over and over again discussing how cheap
> computing and entertainment have become...by innovation...not by forced
> sharing.  Capacity is abundance.  Technoliogy is capacity.  R&D makes
> technology. R&D = abundance...over time.  Sure, there are time constraints,
> but only for a period that is deemed acceptable to create incentives for
> progress.
>
> Farmers are not imprisoned by GMO, they are liberated by it.  They have new
> options to produce products people want more--on, say, a Paris or
> Atlanta market shelf.  If some of that enabling technology is compensated,
> everyone can win...a chemist in St. Louis and a grower in Malawi become
> partners.  If it is forced that the seed becomes free, then it is not
> produced, and the farmer in Malawi grows poor crops and the chemist in St.
> Louis doesn't send her daughter to college but rather lives a life of quiet
> despair sipping nodka like some old apparatchik in Belarus.
>
> This all seems so obvious to me, I must admit I feel great frustration at
> arguing it.  From my perspective it feels like it is arguing about the truth
> of Darwinian evolution or the efficacy of vaccines.  It is just obvious and
> measureable.  But I have learned enough to know that what can seem obvious
> can be wrong, so I keep rechecking.
>
> I have grave doubt that capitalism can be surplanted as an engine of
> R&D--the great hope.  My sadness derives from the fact that it is starting
> to reach levels of diminishing returns do to free and open systems and the
> rapid acceleration (especially this) of technology development.  This is
> evolutionary and unstoppable.  There will be a new order.  I simply hope it
> is an order that works for people and doesn't recook failed ideas from the
> past.
>
> What saddens me is that seemingly most of the people associated with the
> free and open systems movement do not understand why they are
> succeeding...and that is because they are applying 19th century socialist
> theories to a very much 21st century problem.  R&D...competitive actions
> offering free...open...that is what is winning.  Not some tired idea of a
> utopian socialism.
>
> Ryan
>
>
>
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>


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