[p2p-research] a new funding mechanism for useful online services

[Kevin Carson]

On 1/5/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regardless, I don't expect the current work situation to extend to the
> normal lifespans of my children who are 8 and 12.  Work is about to change
> dramatically...I'd guess within 15 years.  The end of the baby boom,
> demographic crises, etc. are all drivers.

Also quiet declines in total employment as a percentage of the
population, and in average work-weeks, that don't really show up very
well in the kinds of macroeconomic indicators you see in the newspaper
every day.

My hope is that the growing surplus of industrial capacity and labor
power will continue to be reflected in such quiet stagnation, and not
in sudden or catastrophic mass unemployment.

It would be good, toward that end, if artificial scarcities in
benefits like healthcare were removed so that it would be easily
affordable outside the traditional model of full-time employers as the
primary institutional base for the social safety net.

It would also be good if some sort of job-sharing, either formal or
informal and unannounced, gradually chips away at the average work
week rather than there being a sharp dichotomy between the
still-employed and a growing class of long-term unemployed.  We could
gradually transition to a society in which a shrinking percentage of
people had full-time jobs, and a larger share were part-time workers
living in extended families, cohousing and other income-pooling
arrangements.

And it would be good, in general, if more social safety net functions
were to gradually shift from the employer-based welfare state to
primary social units like the income-pooling arrangements (e.g.,
membership in one of Greco's credit-clearing networks might entail a
modest monthly payment (assessed as a percentage of one's total
transactions within the system) that would go toward sick benefits,
unemployment and disability, old age pension, etc., so that those who
became incapacitated would be able to obtain necessities from members
of the network.

What's needed, in sum, is 1) a "cramdown" or "mark to market" of most
of the inflated asset values that impose high fixed costs on the
average person, 2) an end to the artificial scarcities that enable
owners of fake property rights to prevent the benefits of increased
productivity from being passed on to workers and consumers, so that it
takes fewer hours of work to live comfortably.

If the full-time work week today were reduced to 32 hours in lieu of
10% unemployment, but the price of housing were allowed to fall to
normal historic levels (i.e. 20% of the average monthly income, rather
than 40-50%), and per capital healthcare expenditures were reduced to
European or even Canadian levels, we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html