[p2p-research] Profit Measures the Payer's lack of Physical Source Ownership

Wed Feb 17 16:54:37 CET 2010

hi ryan,

something we agree on, also an answer to Peter's earlier query in a way:

- The reason to have regulation, law and governance is to manage
externalities.   What P2P allows is to minimize governance to a set of rules
mutually enacted.  But the commons still requires protection, order,
structure and "artificial" mechanisms to exist.  There is no dissolving the
state or classes (which of course don't really exist anyway outside of a
social model) and then having some residual order and sustainable outcome.
Justice is a social construct.  We attain (or approach) social construct
ideals through artificial means of implementing governance.  There are no
final solutions, ultimates, fiat utopias or steady-state economies.
Fundamentalism is not compatible with P2P...not market fundamentalism, not
equity fundamentalism, not religious fundamentalism.  Indeed, the boundaries
and barriers of the fundamental are antithetical to the commons which must
be inherently dialogic and practical.

as for your remark on Marx, many including his enemies, have taken him
seriously, so your total inability to find anything of value I find
extremely puzzling, I can only conclude that there are some things you can't
see,

your remark on him could well apply to christ, buddha and gandhi as well,
and I think it would be equally off-base, but you will admit that to argue
fully on the merits/demerits would take a lot of time, perhaps another time,

Michel
On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>> Thanks.  And I accept your corrections.  I would still like to see
>>> Stallman answer the question...is he a Marxist?
>>>
>>> I personally don't see where you derive that Smith had a labor theory of
>>> value.
>>>
>>
>> see the fount of all truth, the wikipedia: "Various labor theories of
>> value prevailed amongst classical economists<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_economics>,
>> including Adam Smith <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith> and David
>> Ricardo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo>, culminating with
>> the socialist theories of Karl Marx<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx>
>> ."
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value)
>>
>> and please note how some (post)Marxists, like Negri and I believe Carlos
>> Castoriadis, also reject the labour theory of value
>>
>>
> To call what Smith wrote a labor theory of value is clearly a miss reading
> in the sense Marx meant.  Smith understood supply and demand.  He did not
> work out that S&D would be self-regulating (which it isn't), but he saw
> price and value as elementally driven my the market, not by cost or inputs.
> Of course there is a relationship...but it is only half the relationship (at
> best).
>
>
>>
>>   He clearly understood markets.  I've meandered through Wealth of
>>> Nations more than once...but I'll put the question to Gavin who is certainly
>>> the authority...and a decently trained economist as well as historian.
>>> http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/
>>>
>>
>>
>> Smith may have understood markets well , and many smith scholars insist
>> current markets have nothing to do with the original version of smith, since
>> he clearly saw them embedded in socially friendly structures (his earlier
>> work on the ethical economy)
>>
>>
>
> Sadly, I could not post on Gavin's comments for some reason...my Google
> account was not recognized.  I've traded emails with him before...but he
> doesn't list his email on his blog.
>
> I do agree that what people call capitalism now was not the intent of Smith
> who was arguably a modified localist.  He believed in free trade but that
> was mostly in response to mercantilism.  To my mind, his moral sentiments
> were far more developed and coherent than Marx's.  To my mind Adam Smith is
> far more relevant to P2P than Marx could ever be.  But Smith is merely
> moral; he isn't rebellious.  As such, he doesn't have Public Enemy cache for
> the alienated.  What I think both did, one far more successfully than the
> other, was to paint a vision of how "forward" might look.  In a sense, they
> were both futurists.  One succeeded in painting a stable and workable world,
> the other succeeded in painting a utopia that has inspired countless
> personal and national disasters.
>
>
>>
>>> As to profit, the big boogeyman of this list, I'd love to see someone
>>> define it and categorize it without a cost theory or labor theory of value.
>>> I'd also love for someone to advance a moral theory as to why profit is
>>> definitively inefficient, immoral or otherwise detrimental or when and under
>>> what conditions it might be so.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Profit is not the bogeyman, but profit as the sole guide for a society's
>> functioning, with complete disregard of any , a and social externalities,
>> clearly should be
>>
>>
>
> I agree tthat there are people obsessed with profit...and with growth.  And
> there are people obsessed with equality too.  Both obsessions are dangerous
> in my opinion.  I agree completely on externalities, as, I'd guess, would
> Smith.
>
> The reason to have regulation, law and governance is to manage
> externalities.   What P2P allows is to minimize governance to a set of rules
> mutually enacted.  But the commons still requires protection, order,
> structure and "artificial" mechanisms to exist.  There is no dissolving the
> state or classes (which of course don't really exist anyway outside of a
> social model) and then having some residual order and sustainable outcome.
> Justice is a social construct.  We attain (or approach) social construct
> ideals through artificial means of implementing governance.  There are no
> final solutions, ultimates, fiat utopias or steady-state economies.
> Fundamentalism is not compatible with P2P...not market fundamentalism, not
> equity fundamentalism, not religious fundamentalism.  Indeed, the boundaries
> and barriers of the fundamental are antithetical to the commons which must
> be inherently dialogic and practical.
>
> Regardless, I think Marx is really a charade with nothing to offer except
> rebelliousness.  There is no "truth" to any of it as theory in that truth is
> being useful for enlightening current understanding and positive planning
> for a reasonable future.  Marx did not explain the course of capital,
> capitalism or the nation state.  His sociology is fiction in that the
> constructs he relies on are not real and not relevant to most people's
> reality.  His politics has, as attempted, repeatedly failed and led to
> misery and poverty.  He has contributed nothing to environmental protection
> or has he inspired great subsequent ideas that are widely esteemed.  What
> does this giant offer us?
>
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