[p2p-research] User Freedom and the Purpose of Profit

[Patrick Anderson]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> I am not sure what "the physical sources" means, concretely.
> Suppose the product is wheat.
> Does this mean that the users become part owners of the farm?

Within such a system, pre-payment - whether as initial funding or as
profit paid - would be invested in *more* physical sources that are
not yet operational.

For example: Let's say you pay $5 for a hamburger from such an
institution, but it only cost the current owners $3.75 (including all
wages) to deliver it to you (and clean up after you, etc.).

The difference between price you paid and the costs of production was $1.25.

That $1.25 is pooled with the payments of profit by the many other customers.

When there is enough funds to act, the current owners purchase *more*
physical sources with that revenue.

But the ownership of each of those investments is retained by the
original payer.

Your overpayment becomes your automatic investment in beef cattle,
fields of alfalfa, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, chickens, etc. and all
the land and water rights and tools and any other supporting sources.

The payer becomes part owner in farms and factories, but would only
become part owner in some of the *current* physical sources if there
happen to be some up for sale, and that group of owners were accepting
you as co-owner.

Otherwise, and more often, your investment would be used to grow the
size of the organization by purchasing even more physical sources.

He who pays profit slowly becomes owner,
He who owns enough no longer pays profit.

Profit is invested by the current owners, but the payer would retain
full ownership of those 'shares'.

These investments then 'vest' as their literal productiveness comes online.

There seems to be a need for the current owners to have some control
over that investment, but that control must taper toward 0... or
actually it should taper toward their % of ownership in any co-owned
source.  A crude solution might be a time period where the payer is
inhibited from immediately "cashing out".



> Does this mean a new customer has to pay more than old customers, in
> order to buy from them a share of the farm?

The difference is not between 'old' and 'new', but between 'owning'
and 'non-owning'.

As a new, non-owning payer, you have little choice but to pay the $5.

But as you pay your percentage into the system (as you pay profit),
you accrue real, tangible, material, productive, generative assets
that are under your full dominion (within limitations of realistic
divisibility with other possible restrictions ...).

When you own an apple tree, you must pay all the costs of labor,
tools, water, etc. but you do not pay profit, for you own the objects
already.

When you co-own an apple tree orchard with some other people, then you
must pay the same things, and you own the objects already, but it is
easier to do with others helping.



> I think it is easier to make this work for small production
> activities, which might have thousands of different customers, than
> for large ones with millions of customers.

Yes, small is better for some things, such as agriculture and many
types of simple manufacturing.  It also brings pollution costs local,
which I think is a good feedback.

But we could also pre-pay into a phone and internet system that could
deliver service *at cost* to billions.

We could send audio, video, even terabytes of data from our
wrist-phone while only paying for the *real* costs.

How much do you pay to operate the network within your home?

When a user owns the sources he only pays the costs of initial
investment, real wear and tear, the energy and space consumed and any
needed labor.


> Perhaps the biggest problem with investment today is when it goes into
> large companies.  Perhaps if we could arrange a way to discourage
> large companies, it would eliminate the problems of investment today
> with a smaller restructuring of society.

Yes, corporations are homicidal megaliths because treating profit as
owner reward is a positive-feedback loop incenting even more profit.

But since profit measures consumer dependence,
and since scarcity increases consumer dependence,
Corporations tend to withhold, restrict, disable, destroy.

...

Treating profit as payer investment is a negative-feedback loop that
allows growth to occur, but tapers off (profits approach zero) as
consumers gains sufficient ownership in all the physical sources of
that production.

We can form new corporations under a special Terms of Operation that
enforce this constraint, and any other rules we find may be needed to
ensure freedom.

Here is my shot at this:
http://patware.freeshell.org/general%20public%20law.htm

Here is an earlier attempt that is more complete in some ways:
http://patware.freeshell.org/gplv4%20draft%201.htm

These should also help understand the idea:
http://p2pfoundation.net/User_Owned
http://patware.freeshell.org/thesis.htm