Related: diary
Mar-26-2010: Noticed PeoplesSupermarket.org >>Anyone can join The People's Supermarket - and as a member you must work in the shop for a few hours every month. Because the workforce is nearlly all volunteers, staff costs are kept low - which means your shopping can be cheaper. And any profits we make go back into making the food even cheaper still. There are no bonuses for bosses or dividends for shareholders, it's the members who benefit from shopping here.
Mar-24-2010: Updated http://MetaGovernment.org/User:Patrick_Anderson
Hello all,
The original purpose of Government is Production.
That is OK when the purpose of Production is Product.
Under that condition (usually coincident to small groups), the people composing the operational body (the Corpse or Corporation) are the direct beneficiaries of that Production and are also in direct Control as literal Governors of that Property.
Production and Governance are on the same side because they are the very same set of people, and are Ownin and Working for thier own Use Value.
But when the purpose of Production is Profit, well the story changes considerably because Profit requires Scarcity and Dependence which drives those Owners to work against the 'real' goals of society.
Under that condition, the people composing the operational body (the Corpse or Corporation) are a set of owners that are NOT the Users of the Outputs of that production even though they are in direct Control as literal Governors of that Property.
I have an idea implemented through a contract ~ or actually a kind of self-inflicted and legally binding "Inter-Owner Trade Agreement (IOTA)" that is willingly applied to private property by the co-owners of that property.
The Property would be held privately by each group, but for the explicit purpose of hosting a specialized sort of commons similar in initial structure to http://P2PFoundation.net/Common_Property_Regime =
"'In common property regimes there is no free access to the resource and common-pool resources are not public goods. While there is relatively free but monitored access to the resource system for community members, there are mechanisms in place which allow the community to exclude outsiders from using its resource. Thus, in a common property regime, a common-pool resource has the appearance of a private good from the outside and that of a common good from the point of view of an insider. The resource units withdrawn from the system are typically owned individually by the appropriators.'"
It is similar in purpose to http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_ownership with some very specific rules for enforcing "user freedom" in the physical world by treating Profit as a Payer's Investment.
It is intended to help interested groups to Co-Own Productive Sources for their own benefit.
The idea is to create a large numbers of smaller semi-private 'commons' that are under the full dominion of those current Owners.
Each 'common' would be private property, usually with more than one owner over things such as land, buildings, tools, plants, animals, etc.
In this case there is no separation between the governing and the governed --- they are the same set.
This approach also solves the issue of Tyranny of the majority through what I call "pre-emptive secession" implemented in two ways:
1. By inverting the typical structure of taxation to a model where any group-funded operation (think "public utility") is only accomplished if the sub-group attempting that goal can get enough others to commit work and/or resources toward it. Anyone disinterested in that initiative is not effected and need do nothing (there is no "opt-out" procedure). There are some complexities such as border issues and others that need to be detailed...
2. By offering (through the above-mentioned contract) a "maximum divisibility" for each physical resource - so that sub-groups can split (or 'fork') from the rest of the owners in that group.
Oct-23-2009: Posted to http://ListCultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org
Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> How about a new city in the USA designed for walkability?
Walkability is hindered by a property tax structure that punishes improvements instead of weighing against excessive holdings.
This creates a 'speculation' market for physical location where investors (or even innocent farmers that find themselves encroached-upon by the growth of a city) can hold large amounts of land *just as long* as they do not develop it.
This is why we see so many underdeveloped patches within cities. These unproductive lots add distance to our travel and so cause excessive transport of both goods and humans.
> the deeper issue is how we build our ideology into our physical infrastructure.
The P2P movement can create a physical infrastructure if we can formulate a realistic "cost recovery" mechanism so we can begin hosting the intiatives we seek.
This requirement applies to 'online' work such as a social networking site that needs physical computers and buildings and electricity and workers to install and manage them etc.
And applies equally to 'offline' work such as installing useful plants and mushrooms on 'public' grounds within our GNU city.
In either case we must discover a way to cover the expenses of operation.
Governments have traditionally taken the approach of "gather a bunch of money into a slush-fund, then dole-out funding to projects as some 'representative' council sees fit".
A much more direct, and in my opinion, "P2P" approach that avoids some of the "Tyranny of the Majority", allowing citizens to retain much more control would be:
1. Allow any citizen to 'advertise' any project proposal.
2. Other citizens that become interested may choose to fund those projects.
2a. Funding can be in the form of Money (Will add X$) or Labor (Will work to accomlish Y amount of some goal) or Physical assets (Will supply a roto-tiller during some window of time).
3. When any project receives enough funding, then it can begin implementation.
4. Citizens who helped fund the project are stakeholders in the same % that they invested.
5. Citizen do not fund projects they do not care about, so have much more control.
----
Patrick Anderson
Personal Sovereignty Foundation
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com
http://patware.FreeShell.org
Mar-15-2010: UrbanLabs.net >>Conceive, develop, test, implement and distribute components of a new operating system for the city, which improves the processes of communication, participation and consumption under open, efficient and sustainable parameters. It will be necessary to design and/or reutilise different type of interactions and of networks between technologies and people in the urban space, like this like mechanisms of visualization, distribution and improvement of each one of the components of the system. UrbanLabs OS can be composed of different autonomous projects that follow these aims, which at the same time realize the potential of the OS.
Mar-12-2010: Posted to Groups.Yahoo.com/group/luf-team
> > David Neely wrote:
> >
> > a cadre of core members who have jobs they
> > can do from a remote location
Eric Hunting wrote:
>
> what's the real percentage of the middle-class population
> that actually have such jobs?
> most people can't unless they're entrepreneurs,
> usually with exceptional talents.
I have such a different view, it must be only part of the solution...
We are animals. We *must* have shelter, food, water, clothing, medical assistance, and all the services that make those things possible.
Many people must work almost every waking moment to meet even their most basic needs.
Money is important to begin, but we also need hands and hearts ready to get things done, and the ability to do so that without a financial umbilical-cord to the 'outside' world.
So here's my idea:
How about attracting people that are financially stressed but are otherwise fit for work in fields specifically within the realm of supplying the needs of *that very community* such as: building construction, agriculture, food preparation, medicine, machine repair,
etc.
The VC investors would be 'hiring' these workers, but instead of paying with money, they are paid by receiving their basic necessities of food, shelter, sanitation, transportation, etc. for free.
As they were allowed to continue to build, they would also build schools and hospitals that they could use for no more than cost.
Using permaculture, after a few seasons they would be producing far more nut, fruits, spices, etc. than they could ever use for themselves.
Some of that surplus would be used to pay the VC investors.
There is more to write, but it's not coming to me right now...
Sincerely,
Patrick
Mar-03-2010: Posted to MetaGovernment.org/pipermail/start_metagovernment.org/2010-March/002658.html
Subject: [MG] Metagovernment is an umbrella. What umbrellas do?
Pietro Speroni di Fenizio wrote:
> Why do you say that you have no control over MG?
Control rests finally in property ownership.
Owning physical sources gives you control of the results.
In this specific instance, I have no property ownership in the
computers hosting that software, and I don't help pay any of the real
costs to maintain them, so can only hope whoever is paying will let me
keep playing.
Each of us owns the sources of almost NONE of our needs. It is too
difficult all alone. Not only the difficulty of fully utilizing the
tools, but also a lack of advanced skills needed to perform some sorts
of work.
We need to learn how to Get Together for our own, collaborative
benefit instead of shaping our notion of exchange as one of predation
and advantage.
I like Ed's mention of a "funding mechanism".
If we could help interested parties communicate, those groups could
more easily buy Physical Sources and hold them as "Collaborative
Property" for the purpose of Use Value alone.
We could then buy and build farms, daries, factories, theatres,
go-cart tracks, etc.
But since we (each group) would own them outright, then the price
would be the simple costs of operation and profit would be zero.
This is fine for the static case, but once a non-owner wants access,
then we must have a rule about profit. For profit is a measure of
payer dependence, and so should be treated as his pre-payment toward
the purchase of more physical sources.
When profit becomes payer property, then collaboration is perpetuated.
This way we can grow in a strange way that avoids the overaccumulation
that Capitalism suffers.
Mar-02-2010: Unsent to a private list:
Michael Hughey wrote:
>
> There is a few good programs on TV---Democracy now, with Amy Goodman, on Link TV is a good example.
I heard (was it from you, Amanda?) that some of these good people are considered 'gatekeepers'.
I think they are probably most often ignorant and so innocent of the harm they cause as they distract us from fundamental reconsideration of our directions.
This is done by leading us to spend our time and energy thinking about very specific issues *within* the current contexts of war, economic turmoil, poverty, etc.
This creates a very limited 'arena' of thought and discourse - where there is much to chatter about how things "shouldn't be that way", but no time to sort of "step out" of those contexts to ask why or how we got here in the first place...
> We can learn from many sources
Yes, but we can also be 'programmed' from many sources, including text.
You might be tempted to think "well, it's not so likely if the book is very old" but I would say that is no guarantee at all.
But even Joel knows that one of the oldest and certainly the most know text: the Sun Book (Holy Bible) has shaped our society in such deeply profound ways that the soup of deceptions and distractions we live within can hardly be considered separate from objective reality.
Hmm... I just noticed this is another obvious 'corralling' of our thoughts - narrowing the focus of any adherent by nearly forcing them (through threat of eternal death) to build every discussion
Mar-01-2010: Posted to MetaGovernment.org
Matías Battocchia wrote:
> 'What we have to do to increase participation?'
My reason for low interest in MG is approximately the same as for my apathy toward all other governments I already pay for: I do not have any *real* control.
My explanation for this lack of control has to do with how traditional taxation and donations do not let the individual 'target' those investments toward what he thinks are important, but are instead put into a sort of "slush fund" that a well-intentioned committee or other 'representative' then uses as THEY see fit.
For example, let's say a City-Council decides they should build a new "Recreation Center" for citizens to use in various ways.
With traditional taxation, I am *required* to help pay for that construction unless I can get a majority of others to complain that it is not needed because I already paid taxes into an untargeted "slush fund".
I cannot opt-out unless I group with others to opt-out. If I 'win' by stopping construction, it causes others to 'lose' because they DID want to fund the project.
An 'opt-in' approach would allow individuals to fund only the initiatives they appreciate, while leaving others to do as they please as well.
Under such an arrangement, if 99% of the citizens want some certain project, and 1% do not, then the 99% choose to pay for it, and the 1% can simply ignore it. Nobody loses and nobody is forced to pay for something they do not want.
This all seems a bit disconnected from MG since I've never given any donation here (though I guess work such as this email, if considered valuable, might be a form of donation?)...
But I *would* be willing to send money and add value in other ways IF I have the control to *target* that value, and also to gain real ownership in the Physical Sources (Material Assets) used to host the MG activity.
So, toward answering the other parts of this email about pooling resources I present a challenge:
Could we host an instance of http://EtherPad.GoogleCode.com server, and if so, how and who would pay those extra costs?
Thanks,
Patrick Anderson