Related: diary
Apr-30-2009: Answers.com/topic/labor-theory-of-value says
"'The labour theory of value was fully developed by classical economists, especially David Ricardo and Marx. Ricardo argued that the price (strictly, the exchange-value) of a good was in ideal conditions determined by the quantity of labour that had gone into producing it (including producing the capital goods that helped to produce it). Marx argued that this was the price the worker deserved to get (thus making an unspoken connection with Locke before him and, paradoxically, with Nozick after him). However, the worker actually tended to get only enough wages to keep him at work and capable of producing children. The difference between the two was the worker's surplus value. Under capitalism, surplus value was unjustly appropriated by capitalists; under socialism it would belong to the workers, as in the classically Marxist formula of Clause IV: 4 of the Labour Party constitution (1918-95), which defined its objective as being "to secure for the workers . . . the full fruits of their industry".
The labour theory of value takes no account of the role of demand in setting prices. Two labourers may burn up the identical number of calories in breaking up identical volumes of ore that they have mined on the common. But if one yields iron and the other silver, they will not fetch the same price.
'"
Apr-30-2009: CommunityForge.net >>Community Forge is here to help middle class local communities adjust and re-organise for some of the dystopias that we may be heading for. We believe communities should be taking the initiative, organising themselves, providing their own services, managing their own economies, energy supplies & communications.
Apr-30-2009: Posted as an explanation for my subscription to Groups.Google.com/group/ofcs:
"'I am working on an alternate Mode of Production, it's accompanying currency and a detailed plan of implementation within our current system.
The high-level goal is to help Consumers co-own the Means of Production required for the Goods and Services they need.
This is, of course, in striking contrast to the traditional approach which assumes the Workers must organize and own the Means of Production (Sources).
This distinction is not arbitrary, and the effects are profound.
When the Consumer of any Object (let's say an apple) happens also to be the Owner of the Sources (apple tree, land, water-rights, tools for pruning and harvesting, etc.) of that Object, then he must pay Wages to anyone he might hire, but he does not pay Profit, for who would he pay it to? Profit is apparently undefined in this special case.
But if we want to guarantee such an arrangement continues - so that ALL future consumers who arrive late can also gain the ownership they need to control their destiny - then we must treat any Profit that current-owners might charge against those future Consumers (who do not yet have enough Source ownership to 'protect' themselves from being charged Profit) - we must treat that price above cost as an investment from the Consumer who paid toward even *MORE* Sources of Production so they (the new, late-arriving Consumers) also work their way toward Source ownership.
The currency (I call GNUrho) is not quite solidified, but is currently based on the idea that the receipt given to the paying customer is actually a Title or Deed of Ownership signifying the Sources that will be purchased in his name, and the vesting date of that investment. We can also think of this ownership as 'shares' or 'stock', but not in the usual, Capitalistic manner, for the owner never receives any profit paid by anyone else, but instead receives the "at cost" Products (Objects) of that investment as his return.
For instance, let's say you purchase a hamburger from such an organization for $5 but the total actual costs for delivery (including all wages) is only $3.50. In this case, the organization will charge you the full $5, and the price above cost (the Profit) will be re-invested into growing that business, but the big difference is that YOU are the (not-yet-vested) Owner of that little bit of property. The current owners will use your $1.50 investment (your payment of Profit) along with the payments of many other customers to purchase more beef cattle, wheat seed, tomato plants, onion bulbs, etc. plus Land and Water Rights needed to 'host' those organisms.
So the business will grow almost "as usual" and yet the typical problem of Capital Accumulation does not occur because the ownership is automatically 'distributed' (it's not that the ownership actively distributed, but that the ownership is NOT concentrated into the hands of the current owners).
'"
Apr-27-2009: Coercive Taxation can be replaced by Optional Source Investments made by any group of citizens (consumers) wanting that 'public' good or service. This insures control of that Source to the payers and solves the "Tyranny of the Majority" problem through a sort of "pre-emptive secession" made available as the default stance to simply not pay.
We must continue to pay 'external' taxes to the various levels of government we are growing withing (at the level of city, county, state, federal, world) until we can overgrow them or become parallel entities, but Physical Sources wholly co-owned by it's investors can approach funding for "public utilities" within that organization in whatever manner that group sees fit.
For instance, when we can organize a few thousand people to buy the land an capital to start a small city outside the borders of any other city, then those (and only those) co-owners can set the policy for funding public utilities within their jurisdiction. A city cannot (legally) refuse to pay County or Federal taxes, but has full dominion as to how City taxes are to be paid and applied.
This is a fairly obvious statement. Of course the joint owners of any property (for instance, a vacation house) will have arbitrary rules and regulations regarding it's use. But what is sometimes (maybe often) overlooked is how this pattern is the same as that of any so-called governmental body.
So owners operating "'within the context of jointly held private property'" have a certain amount of sovereignty that at the very least allows them to *ADD* rules about how that property is treated. They can't *DELETE* rules enforced by any of the containing governments because that is considered "breaking the law".
But adding rules (think of rules as private laws) is actually all we need to begin - for what is missing from our organizational efforts are the constraints needed to thwart 'unfair' accumulation.
Determining what is 'fair' is a big problem. And even if that can be decided, what will we do about it?
Many have claimed the root of problem lies in workers being underpaid. If only we could get the workers to be the owners, it is said, then they could collect both wages AND profit - and therefore would be compensated fully for their labor.
This approach is based on the Labor Theory of Value which says profit is the result of (occurs because) the worker puts more value into the production of that good or service than he is paid in wages.
The LTV doesn't say anything about why a consumer would be willing to pay that price above cost. The consumer is left out of the discussion as though he has no impact on the price.
But that approach seems myopic or even downright misleading since price is set at the point-of-sale as a transaction between a salesperson (another employee separate from the production laborer) and the end consumer.
Wikipedia.org/wiki/Consociationalism >>a form of government involving guaranteed group representation, and is often suggested for managing conflict in deeply divided societies. It is often viewed as synonymous with power-sharing, although it is technically only one form of power-sharing.
Apr-23-2009: ThePhone.coop >>shared values - a better provider This is the way a business should be run. For you, the customer. We provide the best service possible because we are owned by you, our customers. With no outside investors taking profits.
Unfortunately, inside investors *DO* take profits:
"'The Phone Co-op belongs to its members, and membership is open to every customer who opens a share account with us and invests a minimum of £1. It's that simple.
As a member you:
* Get a share of any profit, which is distributed through the Member Dividend. This takes the form of a % return on your total spend with us during the year. For the financial year 2006-2007 this was equivalent to 1.5% of what you spend with us*. This year the board is recommending a dividend of 2% to the AGM.
'"
Apr-23-2009: FoodCoops.org >>the home of food co-ops on the web
Apr-23-2009: CommunityShares.org.uk "'Community owned enterprises will benefit from an exciting new government-backed initiative which aims to stimulate investment through community share and bond issues.
Community investment is different. Instead of turning to the private sector and wealthy individuals for support, community investment is about engaging communities to invest in themselves.
By harnessing the collective investment powers of whole communities, large amounts of capital can be raised in small sums from members of the community.
Be it a small village shop or large scale housing development, a community recycling project or major renewable energy scheme, they all have one thing in common -- actively committed and motivated members who recognise the wider benefits of communities investing and engaging in their own solutions.'"
Apr-23-2009: Another paper title idea: Municipal P2P -- Optimal Investor Clustering for Cooperation without Centralization
Apr-22-2009: Idea for the title of a future paper: Exclusion and Rivalry in ALL Production (both material or immaterial) -- No Pay, No Play.
Apr-21-2009: email: Marginalism - the religion
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Diego Saravia <diego.saravia@gmail.com> wrote:
> "production" (duplication)
There is far more to production than duplication.
There are Wages and other Costs associated with the initial Investment, Installation, Operation, Maintenance, Housing/Storage, Insurance, Pollution of the Physical Sources (Material Means of Production) required to *host* any and all information production.
There is also the special cost of Exclusion that users inflict upon each other when too many try to use these finite resources simultaneously. Scheduling and allocation is therefore just as much of an issue for information goods as it is for physical goods. They both require a physical substrate to exist.
Living things such as a Strawberry plant can be thought of as pure design (DNA) that has been applied to the minerals and organic matter causing the plant to grow and reproduce (duplicate). I'm no Christian, but it may be worth noting this is spoken of in a literal manner in the Holy Bible (Sun Book) when it is suggested that life comes "from the dust" or the 'clay' or 'ashes'.
> of info goods is only a copy of bytes, 0 marginal cost
We cannot ignore the ecologic Costs of even 1 bit!
Are costs Marginal for moving 64k from one memory location to another? Would a programmer agree with you?
Are TeraBytes across the globe Marginal? What is BitTorrent?
Is sharing copies locally cheaper? Are those savings always only Marginal?
In either case, do the copper wires cost nothing to mine, smelt, purify, cast/form, finish, cover, ship, store and sell?
What about the electricity? What about the noise? What about the heat? The pollution?
> if you have internet
That's no small if!
Who gets the internet for Free as in Beer?
This view of reality is so perplexing to me.
How can such barriers to entry be so ignored?
Price matters! And we are all being overcharged.
> the only scarcity is "artificial" , copyright law
Copyright and Patents are primarily used in an attempt to make the holder Royal - in that the rest of us must then pay Royalties.
But it is possible to use Copyright and maybe even Patents in our favor.
The GNU GPL uses Copyright to require Users receive at-cost access to the "informational" Sources of Production such as source-code, build scripts, CAD designs, VLSE.
Without Copyright there could be no Copyleft, and without Copyleft, users could not be guaranteed the 4 freedoms in perpetuity because some future developers would build upon those informational commons while making the result proprietary for the purpose of increasing profit (scarcity measures profit).
When users (consumers) have "at cost" access to the sources of production (both informational and physical), then competition is maximized because every potential worker can vie for that job without external 'owners' getting in the way - for in this case the user and owner are the same.
> so info goods are not economic goods
This is what I don't understand.
What about the owners of the physical sources needed to *host* those informational goods?
Are the cost of creating and maintaining Google's server-farms marginal?
What does this guy [ http://www.alex-reid.net/2009/04/from-immaterial-labor-to-immaterial-profits.html ] mean when he says:
"... the costs associated with maintaining all that user-generated content continue to rise. The article reports a Credit Suisse estimate that YouTube lost $470M last year."
And $470M is just the *loss*. What about the *gross* costs before the ad-revenue paid for some of it? Is $1 Billion dollars marginal?
Patrick
Apr-21-2009: Thinking last night and this morning about mechanical soil preparation. The idea is to design and build a 12-inch wide sod-removal machine that has a conveyor system to pull the sod-dirt-rocks over vibrating screen that would let most of the soil fall through while 'harvesting' most of the living plant material and larger rocks. The mesh of of plant roots would pass through the machine and end up as a sort of foot-wide wind-row on top of that same space. The rocks might be collected and deposited at the ends of the rows, or - in very rocky soil - might be conveyed to a an attached trailer.
Apr-21-2009: Building on marc fawzi's "Power Words" idea:
Free, Freedom, Libre, Liberty
Commons, Collective, Coop, Co-Op, Cooperate, Collaborate, Commune, Connect, Join, Net, Web
Social, Trust, Organize, Group
Fund, Invest, Capital, Finance, Loan, Debt, Bank, Money, DeathGrip (MortGage)
Means, Source, Input
Product, Object, Output
Service, Network, Transport
Tax, Cost, Price
Revenue, Dividends, Earnings, Profit
Scarcity, Abundance
Material, Immaterial
Copyright, Patents, Copyleft
Copy, Duplicate, Instantiate
Royalty, Propriety, Proprietary
Ownership, Property, Private, Public, Personal
Money, Currency, Cache, Bank, Store, Credit, Debt
Govern, Manage, Admin, root
Land, Capital, Labor
Rent, Profit, Wage
p2p
design, software
implementation, hardware
gift
work
stakeholder, shareholder
user
investor
coordinator, custodian, manager
hierarchy
space+time, mass+energy, design+genetics
change, time, cycle
share
prototyping
join
plan
system
garden, permaculture
custodian (means of production)
operator (maintaining and expanding use value of means of production)
and the investors (expanding means of production).
Apr-19-2009: Email: Governance and Incorporation (was Socialized Infrastructure (Sweden))
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 3:02 PM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi@gmail.com> wrote:
> /. wrote:
>> "Symmetric, 100 Mbps service in Stockholm costs $11/month [in Stockholm.]
>> Conditions in every city are different, but part of the explanation for the
>> low cost is that the city owns a municipal fiber network reaching every
>> block. They lease network access to anyone who would like to offer service.
>> The ISPs, including incumbent telephone and cable companies, compete on an
>> equal footing."
If the customers are paying $11/month the ISPs are taking a profit,
then it *could* be even cheaper.
Right?
I mean, if the WE (any group with any need) knew how to share, then
the WE could pool their resources to lease the line and then share the
benefits at cost. Right?
And if the WE were even more aggressive, the WE could even purchase
and *own* the Material Means of Production (the physical network in
this case).
Now the ./ article seems to imply that the WE (in Sweden) own those lines.
But that is not quite true because the supposed WE (the city in this
case) will not lease the line directly to customers, but instead
require for-profit corporations become the "middle-men" - taking
control and value (profit) away from the customers.
There are more administrative costs if THEY (the city government) were
also the ISP layer.
And the semi-valid argument against such a move is that it creates
centralized State Socialism.
The reason that argument has some validity is because almost all
governments are currently under the direction of Capitalist (profit
maximizing and therefore scarcity maximizing) corporations.
....
So we won't be able Govern ourselves effectively until we have control
of Production.
But we can't control Production (can't organize effectively) until we
discover how to share the Material Means of Production.
And sharing Physical Sources for the purpose of maximizing freedom and
(secondarily) utilization means we must know how to self-Govern.
So it seems we may be at an impasse.
We can't change our current governments directly (voting is theater)
because they are controlled by Capitalist Corporations.
And we can't change how we create *new* Corporations because we do not
yet know precisely what is wrong with the current entities.
I mean, sure they're 'evil'. But what causes them to be such bullies?
Is there any chance it is a structure that rewards scarcity?
If so, then where is the root of that reward?
Is profit related to scarcity? If so, then what shall be done with it?
Patrick
Apr-03-2009: Business title idea: BuyCo and CoBuy
Apr-02-2009: Business title idea: Square Foot Grocer
Apr-01-2009:
Sustainable-Everyday.net "'The Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP) proposes an open web platform to stimulate social conversation on possible sustainable futures…
The SEP network is organized around 3 core activities.
The promotion of a Scenarios laboratory where new visions of sustainable everyday life are proposed and discussed.
The constitution of a Catalogue of cases showing examples of social innovation from all other the world developing original solutions promising in terms of sustainability.
The organization of a traveling exhibition to meet public events, confront with close scientific communities and give visibility to new visions of sustainable daily living.
The SEP platform hosts several research activities and didactic workshops. The Platform is an organization and communication tool providing an open web space and visibility for activities relating to the fields of design and sustainability in the everyday context.
SEP is an independent network funded by public research projects and organization of events. Editorial activities are based on a voluntary participation.
SEP events are placed under the patronage of UNEP United Nations Environment Program.'"