Related: diary
Jul-30-2009: Growth is self-leveling and auto-distributed when profit is invested for the payer toward more physical sources of production that then vest to that same payer as his portion of Co-Owned Property.
Jul-29-2009: Why Words Fail
Individuals and groups will downplay, deny and even despise negative feedback.
Every negative message is interpreted as an attack that intends to disrupt or destroy.
The receiver will not admit he is wrong, nor will he be taught, for both are considered 'losing'.
The messenger becomes the enemy because it appears he wants the receiver to fail.
This causes many potential messengers to avoid communication and the progress it might bring.
Messengers that continue to try become more and more outcast until they are blocked completely.
The messenger might instead communicate through physical action, but that is difficult alone.
But organizing with others (to communicate through physical action) usually requires communication...
Jul-28-2009: Posted to P2Presearch@ListCultures.org
If you, along with a group of other concerned consumers, co-owned the Means of that Production, then you would have ultimate (above management level) control of your portion of the output; and so, could direct the high-level goals without necessarily having the skills needed to accomplish those goals.
But that Mode of Production is too efficient, since the Profit we have been hypnotized into believing should be in the pockets of those workers would fail to be collected from the consumer - since you, the consumer, must have already paid all the costs of production before completion and are left with ownership of the product as a side-effect of your ownership in the Means.
Jul-27-2009:
Paola Di,
Hello. I am very excited about "Public Ownership of Social Software?" because it intends to be "owned and managed by users".
On the other hand, I think the title is confusing because of the potential for "Ownership" to be interpreted as Copyright which might make this appear to be a bid to create a new license.
I think a better name would use the word 'host' and maybe 'physical' or 'material' or 'space' or 'storage' to help convey our intent to help users collectively buy, install, operate and maintain (or pay others to do so) the physical infrastructure required to host "social software" (or really any software and/or any media or data or any kind in my opinion).
Jul-21-2009: Noticed Wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_acquisition_is_initialization is similar to my self-taught technique of "Resource Management via Object Lifetimes".
Jul-17-2009: Posted to IEET.org/index.php/IEET/more/3207
Marcelo,
I've been wishing the city I live in would choose nut trees, fruit trees, berry bushes, grape vines for the otherwise ornamental plants they install. We (the people of that city) could also choose spices and herbs for the smaller ornamentals; and many other plants such as squash, peppers, even tomato and potato look as pretty as many of the barren greenery we suicidally choose instead.
By doing so, as oil increases in price, and as unemployment increases in severity, and as the Federal Reserve Note continues to lose value, we will then have plenty of work to do with enormous direct reward.
But this is all assuming we would be growing for our *own* consumption instead of attempting to sell any of the product.
Since we don't have any real control at the city level I wonder if you see a neighborhood/community doing this - moving toward permaculture - do you see that as a negative thing?
Must we continue to water and work on plants that have no value whatsoever while hoping we can afford to purchase Pine Nuts from China? Wouldn't you rather know what was sprayed on them and wouldn't you rather have the security that those trees will produce each year, dropping the food nearly at our doorstep without the need for petroleum or the increasing political difficulty of crossing borders?
Do we really want to be in the stranglehold of another nation?
And even if the food is produced in the country you live in, if it is owned by a for-profit corporation, then they will make it too expensive to even consider.
We could have hundreds of tons of nearly free food and the raw materials for medicines, soaps, clothes and building materials if we would get-over our myopic mindset that governments should never be productive.
Local production is difficult for single individual, but is a powerful solution when we can "get together" to share the complexity.
We (the people) should be owning sawmills, plastic-recycling equipment, repair shops, restaurants (yes, restaurants), storage facilities, agriculture equipment and factories of all sorts.
But we are too scared or too stupid ... but another problem that leads to such pitifully weak cities is the way property taxes punish improvements while allowing land-hoarders to withhold as much as they want - leading to sprawl and destitution.
There is more to this, but I must "go to work" to pay a mortgage (literally "death grip") to bankers that never did any work in their lives and yet steal almost all of our value because we fail to organize locally for our good. We, the potential consumers, must organize for product instead of profit.
Jul-16-2009: UrbanGardenShare.org >>There is limited green space for food and flowers in this place we call the urban jungle. Matching homeowners (with garden space) to gardeners (with experience) is the perfect solution for cultivating both food production and community. Condo and apartment dwellers are faced with containers or p-patches as their only prospects for vibrant gardens. Homeowners can be overwhelmed by yet-another-garden-project. Together, we make a great team.
Jul-16-2009: Posted to P2Presearch@ListCultures.org
Ryan Lanham wrote:
> agricultural production not a very safe business
This sentence contains the ever prevalent broken-mindset assumption that production must be for profit instead of for product.
The fundamental reason we are failing as a species is because we work *against* each other when we attempt to keep price above cost and the Means of Production out of the hands of those who actually need the products thereof.
Production should not be about "exchange value", it should be about "use value".
But only consumers care about "use value", and they have not yet become aware enough to realize they must organize and OWN the Means of Production for themselves, even when they do not happen to have the skills needed to operate them, so they can receive the product "at cost" while also being in full control of how that production is achieved.
Profit is not a measure of success, it is a measure of failure!
Profit increases as a consumer becomes more dependent upon the current owners of the Means of Production.
We must stop playing this hideous and immoral game of keeping price above cost, for it causes those who are rewarded to make choices that further increase scarcity - including biodiversity destruction through the elimination of entire species.
In the future a few of us will organize (obviously the profiteer-controlled and therefore scarcity-seeking governments will never help us) in a GNU way that treats profit as an investment from each payer - causing ownership and therefore control to be continuously distributed (actually just not centralized) into the hands of those who really need it, and the only ones that deserve it, and the only ones for which production should ever occur.
Jul-16-2009: Posted to P2Presearch@ListCultures.org
Kevin Carson wrote:
> from the consumer's perspective it will likely be
> cheaper in labor terms to "make" rather than "buy."
Yes, as you say, if the *consumer* is the owner, this is true (or can be true for experienced gardeners) even for a single-owner plot, and almost always will be true for a multi-owner (owned by multiple consumers) plot since their price for the product will then be exactly cost without the needless drain of profit.
When *consumers* are the owners, production is for "use value" (product) instead of "exchange value" (profit).
But the article seems to focus on "exchange value" (profit), with no regard for "use value" (product) at all. Typical wrong-headed, business-oriented, scarcity-seeking mentality.
> Putting him back on his own land, land that was
> stolen from him or his parents so it could be used to grow cash crops
The concept of "cash crops" is as vile and destructive as any and all "for profit" business since the only purpose of that production is to keep price above cost (to collect profit from the consumer). This is, unfortunately, also the case for all "worker owned" business.
> for those who can afford them, where he can produce directly for his
> own consumption, is the ideal solution.
Even if he cannot do the work himself (let's say an accident has left him paralyzed), he will benefit tremendously by owning the plot of land and the tools needed for that work, since he will then only pay for the costs of production (wages are also a cost) and never for profit.
Jul-16-2009: Posted to P2Presearch@ListCultures.org
> Stefan Merten wrote:
>> [scarcity] is not unneccessary for an exchange based system
>> because otherwise the exchange based system you mention
>> would not need to protect it.
Stefan,
By "exchange based system" are you talking about *any* form of trade, or are you talking about the "for-profit" subset that attempts to maximize "exchange value"?
Kevin Carson wrote:
> The exchange-based system isn't created to "protect" or "lock in"
> scarcity; it is also a way of dealing with scarcity when it exists by
> nature.
Kevin,
If by "exchange-based system" you are referring to "for profit" trade, then you are incorrect in claiming it does not require scarcity, since profit (price above cost) is the very measure of scarcity with regards to the consumer who pays it. Without scarcity, price hits cost and profits hit zero, while wages are unaffected (wages are a cost).
Furthermore, a "for profit" business would never attempt to 'solve' scarcity, for to do so will reduce and finally destroy profits.
"For profit" businesses are on a desperately problematic and really even suicidally dangerous road requiring artificial scarcity and purposeful destruction to keep their consumers dependent.
A http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback loop that will 'solve' scarcity is treating profit as a payer's investment - so that ownership in the Means of Production is continuously balanced across all those willing to spend more than cost for the products they need.
When I say 'spend' I don't mean any sort of 'money' is necessarily required. I'm talking about protecting the worker, but from the *consuming* side, for every worker is also a consumer.
Treating profit as a consumer's investment is the only http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_stabiliser needed to solve scarcity.
Sincerely,
Patrick
Jul-15-2009: Posted to OKFN-Discuss@Lists.OKFN.org
Rufus Pollock wrote:
> * What do you think the Open Knowledge Foundation is?
An attempt to increase "User Freedom" for data similar (in my opinion identical) to the FSF's goal to increase "User Freedom" for code.
> * What do you think it should be doing?
There is no reason to treat data separately from code. Whether it be Genetic-info (DNA), Music, Video, software, CAD-files, indigenous knowledge, techniques and information about how to accomplish any thing, etc. it is all the 'design' part of nature.
The GNU GPL tries to "lock-open" copyrightable design. This works for code or data - it is the same. The 'source' of a movie is the original, uncompressed data that is needed to make *quality* changes to that design.
But the GNU GPL does not, and cannot go far enough because it is only addressing the 'design' half of reality.
The GNU AGPL tries to poke the material sphere by legislating source be delivered even when a design is being 'expressed' on resources the user does not own and then being made available in a 'remote' fashion to that user.
> * What impact should it be having?
The most potent direction we could travel (and this is the same message I have for the FSF) is to realize "User Freedom" can and must be insured for the 'material' or 'physical' components that are required to "host" any and all designs.
Licensing that "locks-open" a design is good and needed, but it can only go so far because all design requires space, mass and energy for storage and 'expression'.
The next step is to devise a "Terms of Operation" or a legally binding Contract that groups of users can choose to apply to some "Physical Sources" they will then use to "host" things such as email, video, audio, home-pages, wikis, etc. ... and even the far more important goals of housing, plants and animals for food and medicine production, factories, mines, ... ANY and ALL material Means of Production.
We can and must learn how to share Physical Sources and begin ignoring the for-profit corporations that want to withhold our freedom through artificial scarcity and purposeful destruction of our otherwise natural inheritance.
Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
Jul-15-2009: Posted to Facebook.com/pages/Telekommunisten/102485508561
Telekommunisten.net says "'Telekommunisten is controlled by it's workers'". This is certainly better than being controlled by an arbitrary group of absentee-landlord investors. ... But there is an even more deserving group we neglect to consider.
Jul-13-2009: Some news links:
H-Online.com
Wine-Reviews.net
LXer.com
FSDaily.com
LinuxToday.com
TuxMachines.org
UbuntuHQ.com
Wine-Review.blogspot.com
HowFlow.com
Raiden.net
Jul-07-2009: An economic system requires a Wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback loop to avoid the problem of overaccumulation. Treating profit as payer investment is the Wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_stabiliser we missed.
Jul-06-2009: Message to FaceBook.com/profile.php?id=528259074
Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't yet put this into action...
My plan is to start something that sounds (in my mind) similar to what you propose - I think of it as a "community center", but we could make it appear as an internet cafe or some sort of workshop or maybe a rental agency. Most of the space and most of the tools would be available for rent or purchase. Customers could rent storage areas as small as a mailbox or rooms to sleep or to relax in other ways (watch movies, play games, etc.); work areas for woodworking, steelworking, car repair, sewing machines, larger clothes-washing machines, etc. and of course (and really most importantly) we want to be installing and maintaining permaculture landscaping to regain control of of our food, medicine, soap, clothing and building materials.
I don't want to get "too carried away" at first so as to avoid capsizing the operation, but just wanted let you know my longer-term vision includes any and all forms of production.
I think we could start as simply as renting a commercial space in some city and incorporating under a "Terms of Operation" that enforce the treatment of profit as I have described.
It seems likely we might also be able to achieve "non-profit" status, especially if we become a religion - though that may be too confusing or become a burden in other unforseen ways...
Jul-02-2009: Wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand >>Supply and demand is an economic model based on price, utility and quantity in a market. It concludes that in a competitive market, price will function to equalize the quantity demanded by consumers, and the quantity supplied by producers, resulting in an economic equilibrium of price and quantity. An increase in the quantity produced or supplied will typically result in a reduction in price and vice-versa. Similarly, an increase in the number of workers tends to result in lower wages and vice-versa. The model incorporates other factors changing equilibrium as a shift of demand and/or supply.
Jul-02-2009: Essential econ concepts...
Capital, input, source, MoP
object, output, product
labor, service, work
demand, profit
need, problem, want
employment
manage, steer
cost, rent
economic rent, profit
consumer price,
worker wage
deed, own, property, title
allocate, border, auction, bid, co-own, schedule
invest,
competition, efficiency
protect, shield, shore-up
automation, robot