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

[Michel Bauwens]

I don't think we disagree, but may use different semantics, especially as
how we understand the meaning of 'peer governance', which I use in quite a
restrictive fashion,

what is equally important though, is that 'democracy' is not used to control
contributions 'a priori', that scarcity management is not used to control
abundance ...

one of the innovations of p2p processes is to route around endless consensus
meetings as well,

Michel

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Sepp Hasslberger <sepp at lastrega.com> wrote:

> Hi Michel,
>
> I agree that FLOSS Foundations could be a way to efficiently organize
> scarce resources, keeping them available to the peer-to-peer community, even
> in the absence of a traditional business model.
>
> I would not separate, as neatly as you seem to do, peer governance from
> democracy.  As we find the corruption and distortions in the current model
> of democracy, we look for alternatives to make democracy function better.
>
> Peer governance (and the introduction of it into the democratic process)
> may well provide a way to arrive at one of those "other forms" of democracy
> we are looking for. After all, democracy only really means decision making
> (and government) is done by the demos, the people who are being
> democratically 'governed'. It looks to me like the citizens in a democratic
> country should first of all be peers, and that their (p2p) decisions should
> be reflected in the democratic process that informs government.
>
> So in my view, p2p could be said to be an important element in the future
> of democracy.
>
> Kind regards
> Sepp
>
>
>
>  On 25/gen/10, at 10:21, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
> Hi Sepp,
>
> just to re-iterate my vision of this:
>
> - I consider democracy as one of the means for managing scarce resources,
> and while current forms are obviously corrupt, we can imagine other ones
>
> - I consider peer governance to be operative only in contexts of abundance,
> where free self-allocation can occur
>
> Projects often being hybrids, some combination of the two seems inevitable.
>
> If we are not utopian and just see what is co-evolving with peer
> production, then we must conclude that it is the FLOSS 'Foundations', mostly
> democratically organized, which are managing the scarce infrastructures of
> cooperation ...
>
> It is easy to imagine, since they are now also being created for open
> hardware, that this is a viable model, which could expand beyond FLOSS and
> become partners with the existing but mutating government and governance
> models ...
>
> Michel
>
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Sepp Hasslberger <sepp at lastrega.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> On 05/gen/10, at 15:29, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>>
>> Hi Sepp,
>>>
>>> I agree with your points but don't see that multinational aspect
>>> necessarily missing in my view ... but perhaps it does.
>>>
>>> As you suggest, some things, like space exploration, may actually require
>>> a large scale organisation, so possibly/probably broadly relocalized
>>> manufacturing and global knowledge sharing networks, are not enough.
>>>
>>> In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was the instrument of scale,
>>> think the Crusades, despite the local fragmentation .. what could be such an
>>> agent in a world with p2p as its core?
>>>
>>> perhaps something akin to the FLOSS Foundations?
>>>
>>>
>> Michel,
>>
>> yes, a very interesting question: What could take the place of the
>> Catholic Church as an aggregator, an instrument of scale, in a world
>> dominated by (predominantly local) p2p interactions.
>>
>> I believe that p2p will be transformative not only for economic efforts
>> but also for governance/government. Instead of representative democracy,
>> which we are realizing more and more to be a mere façade, we will slide
>> towards a much more distributed way of decision making. Internet-enabled
>> direct democracy efforts are the first beginnings of this trend.
>>
>> It is the transformed structures of governance that will eventually
>> provide that unifying element, where great projects can be realized either
>> by traditional structures like the large corporations, or by ad-hoc
>> cooperative ventures that leverage the world of p2p production. FLOSS is
>> definitely a first step in that direction.
>>
>> Sepp
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
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>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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