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

Mon Jan 25 18:44:06 CET 2010

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:49 AM, Michel Bauwens
<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

I see. I think a set of processes could be adapted based on those
assumptions, and if they are understood by participants, can lead to
success.

> 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
>>
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
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>>
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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:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
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>
>
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