[p2p-research] the arvidsson-carson maker turf-out ..

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/25/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Adam's new update makes it clearer ... it's the keynesian proposal
> for a basic income to restart demand as counterweight to the value crisis,

Ah, I get you.  I agree with Adam that the problem is the capitalist
value form, and the difficulties of adapting the system of exchange to
the technologies of abundance.

But rather than a basic income (the demand side), I'd prefer to focus
on the supply side:  eliminating the artificial scarcity component of
goods.

At the same time, most of the problem on the demand side can be
addressed by some other expedients:

1) the use of work-sharing and shorter work weeks to evenly distribute
the amount of necessary work that remains;

2) the rise of extended family or multi-family income-pooling
arrangements, cohousing projects, urban communes, etc.;

3) a shift of consumption wherever feasible, from the purchase of
store goods with wage income, to subsistence production or production
for barter in the household economy using home workshops, sewing
machines, ordinary kitchen food prep equipment, etc.  If every
unemployed or underemployed person with a sewing machine and good
skills put them to full use producing clothing for barter, and if
every unemployed or underemployed person turned to such a producer as
their first resort in obtaining clothing (and ditto for all other
forms of common home production, like baking, daycare services,
hairstyling, rides and running errands, etc.) the scale of the shift
from the capitalist economy to the informal economy would be
revolutionary;

4) the promotion of local alt currency and barter networks taking
advantage of the latest network technology, and of mutuals as
mechanisms for pooling cost and risk.

Suppose the amount of necessary labor was only enough to give everyone
a twenty-hour work week--but at the same time the average rent or
mortgage payment fell to $150/month and anyone could join a
neighborhood hospital co-op for a $50 monthly fee, and a microfactory
in the community was churning out quality manufactured goods for a
fraction of their former price.

Putting it all together, the answer might be 1) for people to transfer
as much of their subsistence needs out of the money economy as it's
feasible to do right now, and to that extent to render themselves
independent of the old laws of economic value; and 2) where exchange
value and scarcity persist, to restore the linkages of equity between
effort and purchasing power.


-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html