PLANET P2P » P2P Foundation

P2P Foundation (4 unread)

Links for 2008-06-25 [del.icio.us]

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 10:00pm PDT
- Marketing 2.0, l'intelligence collective
  new book by Denis Failly
- Brand Tags
  The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is. 1.1 million + tags and counting.
- Reverse tagging for brands
  once you have made a number of tags and played for a while, you can go to reverse mode, and see the tag lists of other users and try and guess which brand the array of words is referring to
A reply to ideas about the loss of credibilty and viability of “the movement”

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 7:16am PDT by Sam Rose

This is a blog post in reply to [blog.p2pfoundation.net] and the quote therein from James Edwards:

“I feel that if the movement doesn’t free itself from its dependence on corporate support it can’t legitimately claim to be a viable and credible alternative to the current system.”

Problem is not that p2p production is or is not a viable or credible alternative.

The problem is whether enough people *see* it as a viable alternative. I am not ready to write it off quite yet, as the conditions for change have only just begun to emerge.

I think land is important. But, I already have land. I already own land. And, I am beginning to build ways to produce on that land. It’s not enough to own land. You have to find people who are willing to work with you to change the way you live on that land (which is exactly what Marcin Jakubowski is doing trying very hard to do with [openfarmtech.org).] I fully support what Marcin is exploring, but I am focused on applying work with Marcin to helping people find better ways to live in Urban/Suburban systems, because that is where I am physically located, and it is also where most of the people are.

I think even more than land, property, means of production, etc, while they are all very important, it is the way that people see and regard land, property, etc that will be the fundamental, deep core pattern from which everything else will unfold. That being said, I think part of what will help people see will be to experience hands-on the democratization of design and production of physical technologies, and the immediate/local production of foods.

For instance, the only way for a group of people to take advantage of p2p network dynamics around physical resources like land, is for them to *see* and use the resource, and co-govern the resource, as a commons. This is the *infrastructure* that is needed to replace existing. Not everyone is willing to do this right now.

Therefore, it is my theory that, if you desire to co-govern property, knowledge, land, etc as a commons, that you collaborate directly with those who agree with you. But, you also make room in your plans for those that don’t. Figure out how you will make your alternative systems survive and grow within existing systems.

Also, the people who agree with you, in this day and age, are not going to fall in line lock-step and all do the same thing. The people who are immediately ready to see a change are actually a “Long tail” of people with many different interests. How can you work with all of them? If collaboration really does require social negotiation, then give people space and time to negotiate socially. Don’t sit them all in chairs and make them listen to what you have to say. Turn control over to them, and become an enabler. Remove obstacles and get out of the way. I have seen this work enough, to be thoroughly convinced that bringing people together who resonate with the idea of treating common pool resources as an ongoing “commons”, and letting them hash out how they will create an ecology, will be the route to plausible alternative “peer to peer” infrastructures.

It won’t come from academics, other than some on the fringe of academia, who are already working to change academia. It won’t come from business, other than from people now on the fringe of business who are bypassing traditional business notions and systems.

But wait a minute, let’s rewind back through everything I just wrote here for a minute, because if I am right, and the people who are most ready to change and explore alternative infrastructure systems are part of a “long tail”, that means there are more of us in total than people who want to keep things the same. I think that I could actually find some convincing proof that what I am asserting here is correct, in existing work of different types. At this point, I am just taking it for granted that people like me, who do not like things the way they are, and have insight and desire for change that is workable, outnumber those that want to keep everything the same. If someone reading this would like to challenge me on this assertion, I will do the work of proving it and then we can move on.

The important point is that, if you buy what I am saying (and I do buy what I am saying), the majority who want and are ready for change are fractured by way of their scope and area of interest.

In my opinion, the next thing to do is to start bringing together diverse groups of these people. But don’t try to force them into doing specific tasks. Instead, give them ready and free, unfettered space, time, tools, infrastructure, and they will start to realize the possibilities beyond their current narrow scope of interest. They will start to realize that the building blocks for alternative infrastructure already exist. This “magic, pie in the sky” emergence of realization will happen just as soon as all of the people reading this, all of the people concerned with seeing this type of change, clear paths and get out of the way enough for it to happen. So long as we are foisting our narrow focus upon the great, diverse masses of people who are hungry and excited for change, we’ll just confuse and muddle their genuine progress further.
Marcin Jakubowski on a policy to expand material peer production through land

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 5:50am PDT by Michel Bauwens

In one of the email discussions taking place around the edge of the P2P Foundation, there was a vigorous exchange after a remark by James Edwards:

“I feel that if the movement doesn’t free itself from its dependance on corporate support it can’t legitimately claim to be a viable and credible alternative to the current system.”

This was the occasion for Marcin to give the following strategic and tactical considerations for a transition to ‘material peer production’.

Marcin Jacubowski:

“If you are talking about peer physical production, then I invite you to raise the level of expectations, expand your index of possibilities.

First, that can be done by becoming engaged effectively in the process of physical production, to make tangible objects (tech, food, energy, etc) that carry with them essential economic power. This tangible power cannot be coopted IF IT TRULY MEETS NEEDS. It then becomes replicable and in demand. It has to be better. This does not have a magic solution - this is a life of work for many.

Such production can be better if political-finance-trading-distribution-advertising-retail functions are unified and interoperable in a peer economy. We are calling for nothing less than this in a peer economy:

1. Peer political power - comes from economic power comes from production comes from resources come from land. (Note that land tenure is and always will be the ultimate frontier of civilizations). Political power in a peer economy comes not from the welfare state, but from distributed producers. On a practical level: once we have real production at Factor e Farm, I cannot see any other scenario than thousands of people adopting peer product in our area. I think the connection is pretty clear.

2. Peer finance - natural resources are capital if you have the means to convert the raw into the usable, largely by tools such as open source fab lab infrastructures; peer money systems or accounting systems are to be made based on this productivity. People today mistake finance capital as something real. Finance capital is funny money today - and should be reclaimed by converting it back to substance.

3. Peer trading - markets are local for needs, global for wants. This is similar to today, except that many needs are today sourced globally. Trading relies on productivity relies on land.

4. Peer distribution - physical and electronic transportation means are there already; new and novel physical and electronic ones can also emerge

5. Advertising - is replaced by social networks of peers

6. Retail - this is largely replaced by produsage, prosumerism. The age of the salesman (#1 job in America) will end with the peer economy.

I am suggesting the above as VIABLE PARALLEL OPTIONS TO THE MAINSTREAM SYSTEM. It is my opinion that most people are so satisfied with mediocrity that they will never aspire to the peer-culture economic processes. Yes, humans are quite adaptable. So a parallel system should exist for those who desire it - and I think such a parallel system will have about 5-20% of the world’s population as its adopters.

Marcin continues on how to start such a process on a more practical level:

Regarding practical action, one program for land acquisition that we are developing, and which we hope to deploy as the first or second route to replicating our facility to other locations - is the following.

It is based on productivity, so it requires skills and getting of ass.

The program is for 40 acres, which would be a small, manageable scale that we can implement readily.

The program is simple, boring Community Supported Permaculture, based on the CSA model but providing a product base primarily from perennial culture.

The program is: take 100 subscribers who pay for a $2k lifetime membership each. They just get product - about 2000 (conservative estimate) pounds of product (fruit, nut, tuber, egg, herb, vegetable, etc) every year for a lifetime.

This provides $200k of capital for land acquisition. That is $5k/acre - enough for land in many places.

Advantage: good method of capitalization; it is easy to find organic/local food freaks in any city who can support such an operation. Disadvantage: requires proximity to city, where subscribers are located. Requirements: open source tractor and ancilliary equipment; high level of skill in operators; renewable energy resources. Status: we’re developing all the requirements at present. We are beginning to understand the potential and productivity and labor requirements of a highly integrated agricultural operation, in year 2 of its existence. Next steps: master the cultivation and propagation of even larger plant, animal, etc. base; install solar turbine; complete LifeTrac Challenge: optimization of production so that supporting 100 full subscribers takes no more than 2 people full time to manage; our hopes are that it is about a half-time effort for these people once the operation is under way.

Consider this as another variant of big daddy Vinay’s Buying Out at the Bottom. Once land is secured, people can move in. Productivity of 40 acres is so huge that there’s space for an additional 1 person/acre in this scenario. So other operations of good life can begin.

This is my first public debut of this concept. It just became clear to me recently - once I started to understand the things under Status above.

I believe a capitalization package, based on production - is both replicable and doable. We are approaching the freedom question from the standpoint of land - the ultimate resource that can make you free. I think land -> productivity -> economic power -> social transformation -> land is the cycle of transforming the world to freedom. Legal transformation is a byproduct.

I don’t know if you know how productive the land is - but if you do - you will probably say that this is impossible to do at low effort. I think it is doable if you master nursery operations, open source equipment, skills, and other prerequisites. We are working on all those and asking for help to accelerate the process.”
Hacking tax forms: One of many presentations given at barcamp gov in Amsterdam

Posted: June 25th, 2008, 3:01am PDT by James Burke

Links: slideshare presentation - tax choice(larger version) - tax report (larger version)

Here are the slides to an informal presentation i gave at the Barcamp Gov. in the Netherlands which kickstarted a lively discussion on taxation, engagement and accountability. Participatory budgeting is usually a municipal rather than nation state level, or, dare i say, multi-scalar affair. People liked the personalized reporting of where their tax contributions went, while the tax choice form was a little bit too far out there, on an implementation level, and on a “scary-factor” level.

Other recent barcamp gov’s have taken place at Graz in Austria, Amsterdam, Antwerp and London, with one planned for Canada.