citizen owned

Related: co-owned, impute

Remixing P2PFoundation.net/User_Owned

Consumers invest through commitments of either Sources or Skills.

Horizontal_Diversification * Vertical_Integration = Local Resilience without token-passing.

Owners must pay the costs of production (including wages) but do not pay profit and have complete control over those products.

The titles of 'Producer' and 'Consumer' inspire visions of two, mutually exclusive groups.  But every Producer must Consume, and every Consumer must Produce unless that Consumer is a 'dependent' of some other Producer (such as infants, elderly, invalids, etc.).

.) Consumers Prepay as a special type of investment where Product is the Return.

.) Those investments can be either Labor or Sources or Profit.

.) Profit is treated an investment from the Consumer who paid it.

The owner of Inputs is the owners of Outputs.
Property in Sources gives property in Objects.

Profit is zero when a consumer of an Object is the owner of it's Sources.
Price equals cost when a Physical Source owner consumes the Objects of that production.

The typical owner who sells goods for price above cost,
He takes that profit as reward or to invest even further.

When taken as reward, it incents bad behavior,
For profit requires scarcity for perpetuation.

When invested in more sources, that business will grow,
But that new property is now controlled by just a few.

So ownership in production concentrates at each trade.
While the payer gains nothing though it was he who paid!

So what should we do with that amount above cost?
How could we treat profit so control is not lost?

Most organizations already invest that profit for growth.
But consider the payer of profit as investor (slightly coerced).

The payers are the initial and recurring investors,
And so should be the full and finally only owners.

The Contract never requires an Owner to give or sell goods or services, only that Sources be made available "at cost" to those with which he does trade.

Each Physical Source must be treated as maximally divisible to allow pre-emptive secession.

And how can we share without accidentally becoming one of the same beasts we currently fight (facebook, Google, etc.).

We need a detailed description of what to do and what not to do at each step so we can finally create a business model that is better than *either* of Capitalism or Corporatism.

This "Code of Conduct" would be a legal document that members of any group could apply to any material assets they intend to share.

So let's start with just 2 people and see what we can discover:

If 2 people are sharing some tangible object (say a computer), is there such a thing as profit?

The 2 people must pay for the costs to purchase, install, maintain, etc. the machine.

But they do not pay profit - for who would they pay it to?

Neither do they 'earn' Profit, but are instead paid in 'Product'.

Their ROI is the very output of that production. In other words, they are owning and working for Use-Value alone.

Ahhh, but if a 3rd person appears that does not yet have ownership, we can charge him more than real costs and thereby extract Profit.

Person #3 would not pay Profit if he had the co-ownership needed to protect him.

If he could also gain property, then he could become an equal peer if we use some of the profit he paid to buy and/or build more Physical Sources.

Treating profit as the payer's investment creates a negative-feedback loop that auto-levels resource allocation (growth only occurs during overbidding, and overbidding only occurs when growth is truly needed), distributes control to those who are willing to pay for it (in the end those who are willing to work for it), and safely drives Profit toward 0 and allows abundance and automation without fear.

As an example, when you pay for the costs of copying an apple, which is better:

1. An arbitrary, non-working group of Owners control the care (they may spray the orchard with dangerous chemicals) of those Sources, and can charge a price above cost to profit limited only by other competing Owners.

2. The Owners are the collective Workers that plant, water, maintain and harvest the fruit.  They control the Sources similarly to the Owners in #1, but at least they can pay themselves a higher Wage.  The consumer still has little control, is not allowed to do any of the work himself, and is still at the mercy of those who Own.

3. The perfect* Mode where the collective Owners are the Consumers themselves.  They can make the copies themselves (tend their portion of the orchard in the manner they see fit - and within the constraint of realistic divisibility), or they may hire others to work for them, but either way we (the users/consumers) are in complete control.  Such a mode also causes Price to be the same as Cost, as Profit has no meaning when the consumer Owns the Sources - or in other words, if the Consumer did pay profit it, he would be paying himself.

(*)Option 3 is not achievable in a perfect or static manner (especially during the initial growth period) because the consumer may not yet Own the Sources that were used during the round of production that created that exact object, but this Mode can always be "approached" by Owners who choose to apply an inter-owner contract that requires any profit paid by consumers be an investment in more sources, or toward paying-off some current investments, and that that those shares become the semi-divisible property of that very same consumer."

An initial group of potential consumers co-purchase some physical Sources and choose to put that property under a contract that requires Owners treat all Profit gained during the sale of surplus be treated as an investment from that new user toward more physical Sources needed to increase the scale of that production.

This causes growth to wax and wane according to the demand of those consumers.

* Price covers the costs of the last round of production.
* Price may also contain dependence/desire-to-grow represented as profit.
* A co-owner failing to pay costs represents a desire to shrink or sell-off that property.

* Abundance is goal
* Unemployment is not a problem
* Insurance is actual

Treating profit as the payer's investment creates a negative-feedback loop that auto-levels resource allocation (growth only occurs during overbidding, and overbidding only occurs when growth is truly needed), distributes control to those who are willing to pay for it (in the end those who are willing to work for it), and safely drives Profit toward 0 while also creating a basis for production withou fear of automation or unemployment.

Profit from consumers will likely be high in the early stages of development, but safely approaches zero as each gains their own percentage of real co-ownership in the Physical Sources of the production they need.

A legally-binding Social Contract Owners could apply a to collective Physical Sources so profit would always be interpreted as User Investment whenever the products were given, rented, shared, sold or traded.

This inter-owner Trade Agreement should allow maximum divisibility so any user may opt-out or 'fork' their portion to treat it differently without needing the approval of all other owners. For instance, let's say you have gained ownership in beef cattle because you paid PriceAboveCost for hamburgers. You may vote (weighted by your % of ownership) on how ALL those animals are treated as a group, but if you have some special goals that few other owners would agree on, you can also *DIVIDE* out a realistic portion from the whole if your ownership is large enough to meet the minimum granularity. So if you want your animals to be fed grass instead of grain, the granularity would be at one animal, since it is impossible to feed part of an animal one diet, and the other portion another... In another case, if you are only concerned about how the meat is packaged, then the granularity is much finer, and you should be able to meet those goals - though it would be your responsibility to organize that division and to pay any extra costs (such as wages) required to do any extra work.

Any group of co-owners will disagree on policy over shared property.

Some types of 'contiguous' things, such as roads, sewer, water, electricity, gas lines, etc. need more logistic restrictions in their divisibility.

Profit is an inverse measure of competition and a direct measure of monopoly. Profit is the portion of Price, Rent, Tax or Interest that goes beyond real costs. That profit becomes usury unless it is treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it.

Profit should be interpreted as a plea for development because it measures consumer dependence. Usury gained against consumers disrespects their natural desire to grow, so hampers true progress.

Profit collected as a reward for the owners is secondarily troublesome because it inverts the goals of that corporation from abundance and freedom toward scarcity and power.

Collective ownership as a body - in-corp-oration is the original and only valid purpose of government.

Citizens and consumers are the same, and should be the owners for maximum performance, freedom and peace.

Whether you call it a church, a city, a club, commons, community, company, coop, corporation, county, cult... managing collective property is difficult.

Business and government are separated now only because we understanding that most businesses, especially the larger ones are somehow not fully aligned with the goals of the rest of society. It is the mistreatment of profit that inverts our original goals of peace and abundance.

Owners may accidentally squander their inheritance. 1st-world nations are covered with barren and even poisonous plants and mostly worthless animals - no chickens in the yards and the bees are dying.

Originating Owners hold no special status; each consumer who pays more than cost becomes an investor in Physical Sources to insure their ownership of future Objects.

It is the difficulty in organizing large collective investments that stops consumers from co-owning the Physical Sources of Production that would allow us to each have full control of the outputs.

Some important aspects of this Organizational Form:

* Eliminates exchange of finished goods as the consumer becomes a Source Owner.

* Abundance and real solutions are goal and never thought 'destructive'.
* Scarcity is not sought and those physical sources are real insurance.

* Unemployment is not a problem, it is the second goal.
* Work is to be eliminated as a hurdle on the road to riches.

* Low prices are always good and tend toward cost.
* Profit is meaningless except as consumer growth.

* Entire production chains are finally localized.
* Development is solved instead of being sustained.

Related initiatives:

Consumer Owned Net work
Village-Telco

http://Appropedia.org/GNP_Physical_Sharing_License

''According to Metcalfe's Law, the value of an internet connection rises with the number of users on the net work. However, the phone companies do not get to raise their prices in return for that increase in value. This is a matter of considerable frustration to them.

The economic logic of the market suggests that capital should be invested by whoever captures the value of the investment. The telephone companies are using that argument to suggest that they should either be given monopoly pricing power over the last mile, or that they should be allowed to vertically integrate content with conduit. Either strategy would allow them to raise prices by locking out the competition, thus restoring their coercive power over the customer and helping them extract new revenues from their internet subscribers.'' -- http://Shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html

''What's the best way to ensure "net neutrality?" Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor and Toronto native who first coined the term, has a simple suggestion: customer ownership of internet connections. Could consumers own their internet connections?'' -- http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/12/01/tech-fibre.html

''CA * net 4 is similar to the first mini-computer: instead of being invoiced and bandwidth use, the consumer takes possession of the net work, it controls totally. He can do absolutely what he wants with the net work. Rather than pay each time the user "buys" the net work once and for all.'' -- http://p2pfoundation.net/Talk:Customer-Controlled_Networks
More from Bill St Arnaud:
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARgRwniJ-qh6ZGdiZ2pyY3RfMjc3NmdmbWd4OWZr&hl=en

Some are trying to create local wireless net works owned by the users such as http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/06/22/18603456.php or the VillageTelco/MeshPotato guys, etc.

Google is considering helping the customer own the "last mile" of the internet connection through "Homes with Tails"
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/11/homes-with-tails.html
http://www.broadbandprime.com/2010/02/will-that-be-googles-ftth-business-model.html
http://greensboroistalking.com/2010/03/24/homes-with-tails
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3787661/Moores-Law-for-Broadband-or-Homes-With-Tails.htm
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/homes_tails