Related: diary
May-22-2009:
> Ryan Lanham wrote:
>>
>> Your contribution is determined to be inappropriate
>> by one or more of the list administrators.
>> ...
>> Any questions or comments should be directed
>> to the list administrator at:
>>
>> p2presearch-owner@listcultures.org
marc fawzi wrote:
>
> Nice... dictatorship.
Inappropriate? Hmm...
Non-Appropriate. To not appropriate. To not take ownership? To be without property?
The word 'property' begins with 'proper'.
Actions are arbitrarily deemed 'proper' and 'appropriate' according to who OWNS the associated physical re-sources.
Notice Ryan says you must write to the P2P Research List *OWNER*.
This is clearly a microcosm of what can and will happen within a 'real' P2P community unless we design some sort of internal ruleset to fend against too-powerful owners.
....
At first I was disinterested and maybe a bit annoyed about your experiment because it seemed to be distracting us from the 'real' issue of getting P2P going for the physical side of things.
But thinking last night it (finally) dawned on me this is small but real-life example of some of the very issues we will face when P2P is finally operating the material world.
....
I like to think about how things might work in a physical P2P Workshop.
How will we decide what temperature to set the thermostat?
How will we schedule access to the kitchen?
How will we decide where to put the loud music or TV or video games (audio pollution to some).
Will we be able to decide anything whatsoever?
....
Capitalism is a dictatorship of owners with policy enforced by 'police' (policy enforcers) they hire to keep things "in line" according to those owners' personal whims.
In Capitalism the owners may declare any arbitrary policy, and we (the non-owning consumers) must abide or be cast out.
That is the same for how the P2PResearch email list is being operated. Michel is the owner (well, he may be renting from someone else who has an even more 'ultimate' say) and Ryan Lanham is one of his policy enforcers.
I don't have *any* say in how things operate because I have no ownership and I think the owners (Michel) barely tolerate my presence. It is a totalitarian situation that is certainly NOT how I picture real P2P.
Some restaurants require men wear suit-coats. It's a stupid policy in my mind, but they ARE the owners after all, so I think they should be able to require it.
Even though property privatization and excessive ownership is a major problem right now (I can barely afford to pay for water already because I am paying both costs AND profit since my city is leasing water from a private corporation instead of holding the 'final' water for "we the people"...),
I believe ownership can be used in our favor if we can discover how to constrain "current owners" from gaining excessive advantage over non-owners during trade.
The beginning of my 'fix' to this problem is by groups of consumers becoming co-owners of physical assets such as a web-server or a restaurant or a bus or whatever so that *they* set their *own* policies instead of some absentee landlord.
Having real ownership brings the fight 'home', and finally gives each consumer-owner a real footing according to the % of ownership in each specific physical resource.
So if I have 21% ownership in a roto-tiller, I have 21% 'say' (a literal and potent 'vote') in how that machine is to be treated.
...
But what happens when 51% of the owners of some physical thing want policy to be in one direction while 49% want the policy in a mutually-exclusive 'other' direction (such as requiring suit-coat or not, trimming email messeages or not, having the lights on or off, etc.)?
Today we suffer the Tyranny of the Majority without any realistic means of secession.
But if we had *real* property ownership, then we might be able to *split* the resource during such an impasse.
....
For now, we non-owning consumers (users) have no real rights. We can only hope the owners decide our choices are proper.
We need to "get together" to co-own a physical computer and rent (though in the end need to own) the internet connection for that machine and allow anyone else that is willing to pay to also become a co-owner so we can have sharable control of email, storage, computation, etc.
If we can accomplish this for something as relatively cheap as a HTTP/FTP/IMAP/SMTP/etc. server, then we might be able to pound-out some of these same issues in the context of real, proper, appropriate ownership.
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:19 PM, marc fawzi wrote:
>
> Nice... dictatorship.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: <p2presearch-bounces@listcultures.org>
> Date: Fri, May 22, 2009 at 1:16 PM
> Subject: Request to mailing list p2presearch rejected
> To: marc.fawzi
>
>
> Your request to the p2presearch mailing list
>
> Posting of your message titled "Fwd: [p2p-research] Netiquette"
>
> has been rejected by the list moderator. The moderator gave the
> following reason for rejecting your request:
>
> "Your contribution is determined to be inappropriate by one or more of
> the list administrators.
>
> Further, you should understand that due to multiple recent complaints
> and frustrations reported to the list administrators, your moderator
> flag will be set to checked.
>
> With regard to this specific post:
>
> First, your note appears to violates widely accepted experimental
> protocols of research ethics by involving others in an experiment in
> which they may not wish to participate nor have they consented to
> undergo.
>
> Second, it appears to be openly hostile to the reasonably understood
> practicies of the list and seems intentionally meant to antogonize
> another user without productive cause.
>
> You are not removed from the list. You may refer any complaints or
> comments to the list for submission review and general discussion if
> they are not offensive.
>
> Ryan Lanham Research List Administrator"
>
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Ryan Lanham wrote:
> there are only two possible processes for determining how much of any good or service to produce:
> 1) One produces what can be sold profitably or
> 2) One produces what one is commanded to produce from a central point.
What about producing for your own consumption?
The product is not sold and you are your own commander.
Is that case not worth consideration?
> If one tries to produce a good without profit,
> then one is attempting to complete a perpetual motion machine
> ...where the output is continued even though the energy in
> is greater than the value/demand out.
Are you saying Profit is used to pay
for the Costs of previous production?
I thought Profit was the difference between
the Price a consumer pays for a good,
and Costs the owners paid for that production.
I thought Profit occurred when the owners
receive MORE than the costs of production.
Profit is important for growth, but growth should not be perpetual.
Production can be perpetual when Costs are recovered.
Profit is not a Cost, it is a payment *above* Cost brought about
by the payer's lack of ownership in the Means of Production.
> If you cost more than the world values
> your good or service, you cannot run forever
But what would happen if the world valued your good
or service at *exactly* the Cost of it's production?
I understand Profit is currently considered necessary
because we don't know what to otherwise pay the investors.
But what if the investors were the very people intending
to use or consume those goods or services?
They would be compensated with "at-cost" Product alone,
while avoiding the scarcity-seeking that Profit requires.
Would you pre-pay for "at-cost" internet or cell-phone service?
How about organic produce or righteous, raw milk?
[CAUTION: Cow-sharing is illegal in some US States]
If we could get a large number of people to pre-pay for such a thing,
then *they* (the consumers) would be the owners, and their 'return'
on that investment would be a drastically reduced price.
All those consuming-investors wouldn't necessarily need to be workers in that
exact industry (and in fact there wouldn't be enough jobs to fill).
The important point is that they are the Owners,
for when Owners and Consumers are the same, Profit is undefined.
That is a case of production without Profit, but is it worth considering?
May-12-2009: GNU.org/software/global/model.html >>GNU GLOBAL is a BOKINware defined in the following documentation. Our business is based on this business model. Since this model is written as a general public business model after the manner of the GNU GPL, everyone can start a business based on it.
May-08-2009: ZCommunications.org/zparecon/reimaginingsociety.htm >>Reimagining Society participants have generated a vast outpouring of content bearing upon vision for a new society and strategy to attain the aims.