[p2p-research] Altruism, New Economics, etc.

Michel Bauwens michelsub2004 at gmail.com
Sat Jul 24 15:58:01 CEST 2010 

Dear Robin,

as per your request material on the gift economy from our wiki,
http://p2pfoundation.net/Special:Search?search=gift+economy&fulltext=Search see
below

see also my specialized tag http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Gift-Economy


   - Gift Economy <http://p2pfoundation.net/Gift_Economy>
   ... contrast to a planned economy or a market or barter economy. In a
   planned economy, goods and services are distributed by explicit command
   and control rather ... The internet is often called a "gift economy".
   48 KB (7773 words) - 01:05, 19 October 2009
   - Is Compulsory Education needed in a Gift
Economy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Is_Compulsory_Education_needed_in_a_Gift_Economy>
   way? In a gift economy, driven by the power of imagination, backed by
   842 B (139 words) - 15:11, 25 March 2007
   - Art Gift Economy <http://p2pfoundation.net/Art_Gift_Economy>
   ... t to select lists of the "right" people(*5) , demonstrates that this
   "gift economy" is robust enough to command investment and trade in
   reputation (*6). • The aim then of the artist in the gift economy is to
   have their work shown, to the betterment of their reputation, and to ...
   3 KB (509 words) - 09:35, 9 February 2008
   - Social Capital and the Gift
Economy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Social_Capital_and_the_Gift_Economy>
   * What is the gift economy? How does it relate to the commercial economy?

   731 B (99 words) - 09:49, 17 October 2008
   - Douglas Rushkoff on the New Gift
Economy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Douglas_Rushkoff_on_the_New_Gift_Economy>
   ... nterview with Douglas Rushkoff: "The beginning is really to develop a
   gift economy"
   1 KB (154 words) - 03:48, 3 June 2009
   - Gift Commodity Internet
Economy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Gift_Commodity_Internet_Economy>
   I have characterized this paradox economy as the gift commodity Internet
   economy (Fuchs, ... for free, the more profit can be generated. Although
   the principle of the gift points towards a postcapitalist
   5 KB (703 words) - 18:11, 30 June 2009
   - Larry Harvey on the Gift Economy at Burning
Man<http://p2pfoundation.net/Larry_Harvey_on_the_Gift_Economy_at_Burning_Man>
   Podcast via http://www.radioproject.org/2010/01/burning-mans-gift-economy/
   ... s one of the most unusual economic structures in the world–a ‘[[Gift
   Economy]]’. Making Contact producer Andrew Stelzer’s been there, and sat
   down ...
   493 B (70 words) - 07:53, 11 January 2010



On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Robin Upton <robin2008 at altruists.org>wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Thanks for including me in your discussions of altruism, gifting, the
> commons, etc. I'm sorry that due to other work, I've been unable to
> contribute to the discussion until now. I'm not up to speed on which mailing
> lists etc. you're using, so I'm skipping them. I see a bunch of people at
> https://we.riseup.net/noncommercial-economies, but no discussions. Is that
> where we're going to archive these discussions? Or are they going on
> elsewhere? Feel free to forward this as appropriate.
>
> *Re: Defining altruism*
> My definition of "altruism" is following the Golden Rule/Karma (
> http://altruists.org/215) - i.e. doing as you would be done by. Why I
> think it's useful, as a label, is that it's a general positive term that
> hasn't been colonized in the way that, for example, "pro-life" has. I
> basically ignore Randroid's use of the word "altruism" - it's a straw man,
> and I'm glad to see it less present in the top Google search results than 5
> years ago. "Philanthropism" is another one I avoid like the plague -- a
> label used by those who, having run out of material things to buy, want to
> buy a good name for themselves. c.f. Bill Gates etc, though there is more
> sinister stuff there than sheer ego-tripping, I have no doubt.
>
> I hope it is obvious that whilst altruism is innate in most people, the
> existing money system, its zero-sum mentality and idolisation of those who
> hoard, discourages altruism. (http://www.altruists.org/ae606<http://www.altruists.org/d998>).
> To non-western mindset, discussion of the existence of pure/impure altruism
> seems somewhat pointless - people who grow up in a family with
> neighbours/friends who are lifelong supporters, tend to assume without
> question that a gain for one is a gain for all, a loss for one is a loss for
> all. Money has been the main means of undermining this spirit, and the
> Western academic discourse which would reduce altruism to enlightened
> self-interest is a partial reflection of how atomised Western society has
> become due to monetisation. http://rentafriend.com, anyone :-)?
>
> *Re: Poor = Lazy/Stupid/Indisciplined*
> George Lakoff's "strict father" model is highly recommended to understand
> US politics since the 1960's, especially how people consider the poor as
> deserving of their plight. This has been aggressively promulgated by
> Economic Literacy "education" programmes.
>
> *Re: Requests/Needs*
> Beware of conflating the two. They are different (http://a-z.name/misc/nvc).
> I have a request for well done Roquefort on toast, I have a need for food.
> The current economic system conflates the two, and as a result, African
> farmers grow coffee and cut flowers for Europeans, while Africans starve. A
> system which meets everyone's requests is inconceivable. I am interested in
> developing a system which meets everyone's needs.
>
> *Re: Financial Programming Language/P2P based computing*
> I don't see the need for a special language. XML datatypes would do, and be
> more in harmony with the open, decentralised approach, expecting data to
> flow around and get processed by all manner of tools/languages. I have
> written a programming language for distributed computing (
> http://xn--p5b4c.com/soft-systems/default/debug.php<http://কম.com/soft-systems/default/debug.php>)
> and made the unusual choice of insisting on an XML syntax because I wanted
> snippets of program to flow around as easily as data.
>
> *Altruistic Economics*
> This is my suggestion for how decentralised accounting could work.
> Accumulated reputation is a fairly close analogue, though it's on a large
> (global) scale. The main differences from several of the alternative systems
> I've heard are
> (i) complete decentralisation - no LETS/cc management needed to run the
> system
> (ii) non-zero sum. i.e. We can have an interaction that makes us both
> richer - c.f. how physical object money has winners and losers
> (iii) not-limited to accounting, but can express care relationships, and
> abilities to produce/exchange resources.
> (iv) lack of mandated "currency". AE has not specific currency. If you make
> websites, you can use "hours spent" for your accounting, or "page hits", or
> whatever. Of course you can also use € or £, or a basket of whatever units
> you rather. So people will use different currencies for different things.
> http://nopom.info is a science fiction book by a sociology
> professor/systems administrator about a pretty similar electronic currency
>
> *Unwelcome Guests*
> I recently took over production of a weekly radio show from a friend.
> Today's episode (http://UnwelcomeGuests.net/509<http://unwelcomeguests.net/509>)
> is on the gift economy. If anyone has more material on the Gift Economy,
> please send me a link - I will be doing next week's episode on the same
> topic.
>
> One of the other works which has kept me so busy has been making a
> presentation on the corruption of money.
> It's a 37 MB download available here <http://altruists.org/ae606> (PPT) or
> here <http://altruists.org/c999> (ODP).
>
> Robin Upton
> http://altruists.org
> http://RobinUpton.com <http://robinupton.com/>
>



-- 
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;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100724/182b3a92/attachment.html>

More information about the p2presearch mailing list