[p2p-research] information sector: a qualitatively different mode of production?

[Roberto Verzola]

> Does the tree not drink water, does it not grow in soil that was stolen
> from the native people, does your friend not labour to care for it at all?
>   

Trees normally don't need human care to bear fruits. But people can do 
so if it makes them happy.

If you go back far enough into the past, most occupied land today is the 
result of a land grab.

I probably live today on land that was in the past stolen from someone 
else, who might have also grabbed it from an even earlier native, or 
traced far back enough, from some animal hunting ground. It should not 
stop me from planting trees and growing a vegetable garden in order to 
create a little abundance for my family. A farming family might be 
fighting an ejection case by a landlord, but they can still maintain 
their garden and make a living out of it.

In the information economy, information abundance comes from the 
near-zero marginal cost of reproducing information. In agriculture, 
biological abundance comes from the instinct in every organism to 
reproduce itself (whether or not a human takes care of it). There is 
another source of abundance I did not mention in my Berlin paper: 
creative organization. Separately or arranged badly, different 
components may not produce much or none at all, but organized in a 
special way, they interact synergistically, produce more than the sum of 
the individual parts, in abundance.

Today, much of the potential abundance is either privatized/monopolized 
or suppressed/undermined, to create artificial scarcity. But the more 
conscious the people are of the potential, the better the chances they 
can act together to realize that potential and focus on ways to make the 
abundance accessible to more people and to make the abundance last 
longer, or even make it last indefinitely.

> I do not see much of a difference, systemically speaking, between the
> abundance logic of the Euro-American colonial empire, which lives in
> abundance paid for by others (through exporting the costs by means of
> exploitative trade, slavery, land grabs, resource squeezes) and the
> "abundance logic" of cyberspace. There might be differences in degree,
> but the principle appears to be very similar: see no evil, hear no evil,
> feel no evil, - like an ostrich with the head in the sand.
>   

The difference is between a source of abundance (be it information, 
biological, creative organization, or others) that is held in monopoly 
for profit-seeking, and one that is held in common for the general good. 
Between these opposite poles are shades of control and ownership that 
have to be studied and tried out.


Cheers,

Roberto Verzola