Related: diary
May-31-2010: Noticed WasatchCoop.org suffers from the same confusion as all our organizational efforts: >>To be profitable for the cooperative and its owners
May-27-2010: Mass Production -> Productive Mass
May-27-2010: How to communicate the difference between the 'physical' and 'virtual' realms.
* Physical
animal
body
carnal
corp
direct
flesh
gravity
instance
mass
material
object
physical
sensual
soma
source
stuff
tangible
* Virtual
type
class
emulated
simulated
translated
virtualized
May-27-2010: Layer 0: Hosting the Physical
May-27-2010: Reigning Freedom -- The Sunny side of Cloudy Computing
May-27-2010: Posted to LibrePlanet-Discuss@GNU.org (revised)
Subject: On the impossibility of sharing hardware
Could we ever learn to share the hardware needed to host 'regular' server-based Free Software to compete with FaceBook?
I can't seem to find any discussion of that difficult step.
I have some ideas about how to approach the problem, but don't know if this is an appropriate forum for such a discussion?
Even more aggressively I want to talk about how we, the users, can own and control the entire physical layer to become a Free as in Freedom ISP and cell-phone services, etc.
Anyone have any ideas or pointers to groups or lists addressing this subject?
Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com
May-26-2010: Posted to ListCultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures
Michel Bauwens wrote:
> society consists of dynamic and less dynamic individuals,
> the first get ahead,
Or are ahead because they were born into it - from "old money".
Or are ahead because they murdered to gain that position.
Being ahead may not indicate worthiness - in fact it often indicates the opposite!
Those who are ahead should consider all others and should wonder why there is a divide at all.
There is a deep flaw in our system (raw Capitalism) that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This is caused by the Positive Feedback Loop constructed when we treat Profit as a reward for the current owners instead of understanding it to be a plea for growth from the latecomer who just paid it.
> and by doing so, create the conditions for the second to progress,
Bullshit. The rich do not want the poor to progress. They want exactly the opposite - for if the poor were to gain the property needed to get out from under the thumb of those who are 'ahead', then the value called Profit would no longer flow out of those workers and into the hands of the parasites who subjugate society and purposefully murder our planet to perpetuate the scarcity that Profit requires.
> and this is good ...
Either I am misunderstanding you or you are suggesting the rich "ought to get richer" because they are simply superior humans and the poor are poor simply because they are inferior.
May-25-2010: Posted to OpenKollab.net
Mark Janssen wrote:
> It's interesting that you conceptualize it in terms of "production":
> production has little use in and of itself (unless you define animals in
> nature as "productive").
Products are, of course, the 'results' or 'outputs' of production.
For humans, the most fundamental (cannot do without) products are food and medicine which are primarily (and could be solely) aquired from productive plants and animals.
The reason I talk about "production" is because of the importance of these outputs. Did you eat breakfast? Will you eat lunch and dinner? Where did those inputs come from?
Most production within our current system (raw Capitalism) is not done "for product", but is ignorantly done "for profit"; and so we face mountains of trouble caused by this misdirected effort to keep Price above Cost which requires scarcity therefore promoting destruction and even war.
The production I talk about is "for product". We cannot live without some production, for we must consume the outputs of plants and animals and also must repair our shelters and clean our bodies, etc.
We currently face a terrible but mostly unspeakable crisis in that we do not own the Sources of these products.
We try to own some of these plants and animals individually, in solitary confinement through gardening and DIY tools etc.
But we haven't yet discovered how to *share* Sources of Production - leaving that to "for profit" corporations who care nothing of the use-value of those commodities (except for their outward appearance for the purpose of tricking us into purchasing them). Their only goal is to keep Price above Cost.
We do not know how to 'scale' any "for product" organization primarily because we have been fooled into believing Profit arises as a result of labor, and so almost universally tend to begin with the unquestioned false notion that the Workers should be the owners of the Sources of Production and that Profit should be treated as their reward.
It is easy to see Profit (the difference between Consumer Price and Owner Costs) is actually a result of the Consumers' lack of ownership using the following example:
Let's say a small group of olive-eaters co-buy an olive orchard for their own good.
They must pay all the Costs of Production, including any Wages, but they do not (and cannot) pay Profit because they do not *buy* the product at the end of the season, but own it already - as a sort of "side effect" of their ownership in the Sources of Production.
This is true of any and all production. Profit has nothing to do with Work and has everything to do with Consumer dependence upon the current Source Owners and so should be treated as an investment from the Consumer who paid it - so he also gains the ownership needed to protect him from those who would otherwise exploit his lack of preparedness.
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com
May-25-2010: Listening to AWS.BlueHome.net/saas.html >>Richard M Stallman- Software as a Service - Given at LibrePlanet 2010, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, at the Harvard University Science Center. 20th March 2010.
May-21-2010: Reading http://ck.kolivas.org/patches/bfs/bfs-faq.txt
May-21-2010: Posted to ListCultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures
>> Samuel Rose wrote:
>>> re-invest the profits
> Patrick Anderson wrote:
>> Who will receive ownership of those new investments?
>> <sarcasm>I'm sure it must not be those who paid them, right?</sarcasm>
Samuel Rose wrote:
> What do you mean by "those who paid them"?
I mean the persons who paid the value called 'Profit'.
The Consumers pay this value, but in our current system they never gain any ground (never acquire ownership) because we misunderstand the origin and therefore the proper 'destination' of Profit.
Profit only occurs when a Consumer lacks sufficient ownership in the Sources of Production.
Otherwise, when a Consumer owns enough Sources (say the eater of an Avocado is part owner in an Avocado tree), then all Costs must be paid as usual, but Profit cannot be paid since there is no exchange of goods after production. The Avocado is neither bought nor sold, but is *already* in the hands of the actor who will consume it and so Profit becomes 'undefined'.
This seems to prove Profit has nothing to do with Workers hired to install, maintain, protect or operate, the Sources of Production.
I am not trying to exploit the Worker, I am trying to protect him "from underneath" by helping him build the foundation of ownership he needs to protect his ability to Consume instead of pretending Work is a need in itself.
This allows us to let Wages float according to the market (any Worker can reverse-bid for any job) without needing to prop them up with 'protections' such as minimum-wages or labor unions, etc.
It also frees us to utilize automation and robotics as much as we like without ever worrying about putting people "out of work" since we finally have the horse in-front of the cart so that creation is no longer 'destruction' and abundance is no longer a 'problem' and value is not in 'crisis'.
May-20-2010: Noticing these words:
reciprocate
resonate
recur
vibrate
pulse
oscillate
wave
vibrate
alternate
bounce
period
cycle
beat
rythm
season
phase
stroke
reflect
pendulum
shake
harmony/harmonic
rotate
A 'reciprocating' engine requires a "negative feedback loop" as does a sustainable economic system.
Does this relate to the pulsed DC-current used to create the so-called "charged water" and/or Brown's Gas/HHO?
May-19-2010: Not yet Posted to PaperDesk.sf.net >>Manage every Window, Package, Program, File, Setting of your GNUnix Operating System.
Integrating the Window Manager, Control Panel, Package Manager, File Manager, Display Manager, Image Editor and Viewer, Video Player and Editor, Music Player and Editor, Text Editor, ...
May-19-2010: Reading Wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism and Wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
May-17-2010: Not yet Posted to http://Groups.FSF.org/wiki/User:AGNUcius
Focused on solving the issue of [[User Freedom]] in the physical realm through [[Customer Ownership Groups]] (COGs).
I question the
We, groups of users, will cooperatively purchase and manage 'regular' centralized servers '''for our own benefit'''.
We will start a "Free as in Freedom" wiki, email service, a video hosting site, file storage, cloud services, etc.
We will use advertising or micro-payments to cover costs.
For the static case the difference is that we, the users, will be the sole proprietors.
For the dynamic case we will treat [[Profit]] as an investment from the User who pays it - so he gains the ownership he needs to protect his Freedom.
==Explanatory pages==
* [[General Public Law]]
* [[Hosting User Freedom]]
* [[Hosting User Freedom]]
* [[Physical Sources]]
* [[Profit]]
* [[Property Left]]
* [[Short Circuit Production]]
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com
May-14-2010: Started GNUnix.sf.net
Simplified X11 Desktop using an orthogonal set of re-branded "best of breed" applications.
We also merge the "Start Menu" with the "Package Manager" and the "Window Manager" with "Bug Report/Feature Requests" for holistic ease of use.
May-14-2010: Not yet Posted to hPlusMagazine.com/articles/economy/peoples%E2%80%99-capitalism-pathway-abundance
Dr. James Albus wrote:
> Your example of owning an olive tree and eating some of the olives yourself is perfectly plausible. In fact anyone who grows vegetables in their back yard is an example.
> There are many other examples. Most of the early pioneers built their own houses. A few people today actually build their own cars. Some people make their own clothes. If you are self sufficient enough you can live completely outside the economic system. However, there are some things that individuals can't do for themselves. You can't build your own cell phone, or television set, or internet. You can't make your own gasoline or do your own brain surgery.
> If you want to enjoy life with all the modern conveniences such as flush toilets, running water, air conditioning, etc. you need to have a market where such things are offered for sale, plus a medium of exchange that is convenient to use, such as money, i.e., cash or credit.
> As to your question: How will we make sure investors always target ownership in the Means of Production for which they have no interest in the products thereof so profit will continue to flow?
> Under Peoples' Capitalism, investments would be through a mutual fund, IRA, 401k, or Thrift Savings plan. This provides diversification of the portfolio and assures a more or less steady flow of dividends.
> Jim Albus
May-12-2010: Posted to hPlusMagazine.com/articles/economy/peoples%E2%80%99-capitalism-pathway-abundance
>Submitted by Kcirtap Nosredna
Dr. Albus,
I've been envisioning your proposal and am concerned that profit, under certain conditions, will not be available as payment for ownership.
The case I am examining occurs if the investor (and therefore co-owner) in some Means of Production is also the *consumer* of the outputs of that industry.
For a simplified example: If someone who likes olives invests in an olive tree (or co-buys an orchard with some other consumers), then they must pay all the Costs of Production, including any Wages, but do not pay profit because they do not *buy* the product at the end of the season, but own it already - as a sort of "side effect" of their ownership in the Means of Production...
Now this may seem like a good arrangement, since the consumer then gets goods "at cost" and under their full control. And if they have any extra olives, they can still charge profit against anyone who needs to buy them.
But the problem occurs when everyone on earth invests in this selfish manner - for then *nobody* will need to buy olives, but will instead be getting them "at cost" causing profit in that field to approach zero.
How will we make sure investors always target ownership in the Means of Production for which they have no interest in the products thereof so profit will continue to flow?
May-12-2010: Reading OnTheCommons.org/content.php?id=2399
May-10-2010: Reading Dow5000.com/Brother%20can%20you%20spare%20a%20dime%20pg%202.htm >>Torpedoes, tear gas, rotten eggs, brickbats, and planks used to puncture truck tires figure in this latest effort of out belt farmers to boost the prices of their products to the cost of production. Declaring a holiday on selling, thousands of farmers have been picketing the roads to "persuade" their neighbors to join in holding back produce for higher prices. The movement began quietly but soon was dramatized by the dumping of several truckloads of milk on a road outside Sioux City, Iowa. The pickets allowed milk and cream for hospitals to enter, however, and they donated 2,200 gallons of milk to the unemployed. Suddenly realizing that 90 percent of the shipments from nearly milk-producers had been cut off, Sioux City people began frantically to order milk shipped by train from Omaha and to have the blockage run by trucks bearing armed deputy sheriffs. . . . At the height of the Sioux City milk war, two thousand sunburned and overall-clad farmers were living in tent colonies along the nine truck highways leading to that city. Some were armed with pitchforks for use on truck tires. But except for sporadic outbreaks the picketing has been peaceful, and truck drivers not amenable to arguments have been allowed to pass on. On August 17, a crowd of 450 farmers, equipped with clubs and brickbats, tried to remove animals from stockyard pens in Sioux City and from trucks which had run the blockade, but this attempt was repulsed by deputy sheriffs and city policemen. . . . .
May-10-2010: Modified post to ListCultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures
Traditional taxation punishes Specialization by taxing the exchange of goods and services (both through Income tax and through Sales tax).
It Punishes Improvements Improvements and Clustering (causing sprawl) by taxing the property built upon Land instead of taxing the "withholding of Land" from others. This is explained by Henry George in his book "Progress and Poverty" with the solution titled "Single Tax". See also: http://p2pfoundation.net/Chris_Cook_on_P2P_Taxation_Reform
Tax can alternatively be thought of as the 'Cost' portion of Rent.
Private property owners 'tax' those who use that property.
Instead of begging current owners or the politicians they puppeteer we can implement such a "tax as rent" through co-ownership in a "Simulated Commons" (see P2PFoundation.net/Common_Property_Regime).
May-05-2010: MetaPhorObservatory.com >>Where living metaphor is explained to death.
May-05-2010: GlobalCommonsTrust.org >>For several centuries, modern industrial societies have been living off the common capital of the planet. During this period, the world's natural and social resources have been drastically underpriced and we have amassed huge debts to the environment, the poor and future generations. It has become increasingly clear that the businesses and governments which created these imbalances are also incapable of correcting them through their present policies.
May-04-2010: Posted to PostScarcity@GoogleGroups.com
Edward Miller wrote:
> Why can't workers and consumers be the same people,
> and own cooperatives on that basis.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but will try to answer meaningfully.
Today society we have a parasitic arrangement where massive owners of Capital are Consumers but do no valuable work. They are the true bums of our society.
In a better world, every consumer will be a worker in some manner.
And of course we already know every worker is the a consumer of *something*, for nobody can live without food and water and probably shelter and sanitation.
1.) One reason a consumer may not be the worker for the product he needs is because of "variance in skill".
For example, even if they have access to all the tools, most people cannot troubleshoot and fix problems with diesel engines.
2.) Another reason a Consumer may not be the Worker for the product he needs is because of "need of help".
For example, even if they have access to all the tools, *nobody* can perform brain-surgery upon themselves.
3.) Another reason a Consumer may not be the Worker for the product he needs is because it "improves efficiency".
For example, even if they have access to all the tools, it is valuable to have someone else cook for an entire neighborhood while I am out shoveling manure and others are programming computers, and others are fixing teeth, etc.
> Instead of paying with money to become a member,
> you'd pay with sweat equity.
I agree. We need Land, Capital, and Labor (by 'Capital' I primarily mean Tools, Buildings, Energy, and all other inputs of production).
> The reduced labor costs make it better for the
> members-as-owners and the elimination of profit and
> labor costs make it better for the members-as-consumers and the
> ownership aspect would make it better for the members-as-workers. Mix
> this with open source, and then you don't have to hire a bunch of
> expensive smart people to reinvent wheels.
>
> The only problem is that this doesn't necessarily work so well for
> narrow companies that produce few products. It would work better for
> large vertically integrated companies. Perhaps the logical extension
> of that idea would be an arcology where all members are workers,
> consumers, and owners. Like a cruise ship or Disneyland.
Yes, Let's make an "Everything Workshop" where you can rent tools to work on cars, make furniture, use large washing machines and expensive/heavy-duty sewing machines, and get all of your meals "at cost".
If nobody else is trying to rent the machine when you want it, then it will be available "at cost".
But if there is a scheduling conflict - if someone else want it at the same time - then you will bid against each other.
The winner of that auction will be paying a "price above cost" (Profit).
We will treat that overpayment as HIS investment toward the purchase of yet *another* instance of that type of tool since the fact there was a conflict proves there were an insufficient number of instances needed to meet peak demand...
On the other side of this, as co-owners of those tools begin to neglect their upkeep (because they no longer care about them), then those who rent - even when just paying maintenance - should probably incrementally become the current co-owners ... but this is a delicate matter that I have not fully explored.
> Except under this scenario profit could still exist for non-members.
> People could come visit your arcology and enjoy all the amenities as
> long as they are willing to pay above-cost.
>
> This still has the problem of late-entry members. Perhaps those sorts
> would have to pay money to make up for the lost sweat equity.
Yes, we would charge "price above cost" (Profit) against those who do not yet have sufficient ownership to protect themselves from it, but would then treat that overpayment as an *investment* from the very same person who paid it.
Treating Profit as Payer Investment is a "Negative Feedback Loop" that causes those latecomers to incrementally gain their own property which means they eventually will also receive all goods and services "at cost".
> Also, all sweat equity is not created equal, so this is a serious
> issue. Valuable workers perhaps could work less hours, but that would
> probably seem unfair. Unless people are only admitted members if they
> fall within a certain sweat equity value range. Which seems to
> exclusive, subjective, and conformist.
There is something wrong with the idea that work and time are identical.
One example of the trouble it causes is how it incents workers to 'milk' an occupation - to drag-out the solution because to complete the job early becomes a punishment!
We want to incent the automation and the elimination of drudgery.
Work is not a need in itself, it is a hurdle on our road to success!
We should reward clever solutions that destroy jobs. If we are carrying water in buckets (metaphorically), we want the "young whipersnapper" to feel safe enough to say "maybe we should lay some pipe".
>
> So I think ultimately, each cruise ship needs to just have one member-
> worker-owner and a bunch of robots. That is probably the logical
> extension of mutualism.
Are you saying we must do everything in solitary confinement?
If so, then what is the point of this discussion?
May-03-2010: Reading HPlusMagazine.com/articles/economy/peoples%E2%80%99-capitalism-pathway-abundance
May-01-2010: Posted to LUF-Team
Greg wrote:
> The *problem* with geothermal is that once the infrastructure is built, the energy is essentially unlimited.
That would be terrible! ;)
> it is unlikely that oil companies will willingly give up their current (highly profitable) business model of continuously selling an expendable resource in favor of a selling a one time service.
You are assuming the "oil companies" would own the geothermal infrastructure.
What would happen if we, the collective consumers of that energy, were
to organize and purchase the land and then build those facilities for
our *own* good?
Our 'return' for our investments would be the energy itself. We
wouldn't need to scarcify the output because the reward would be
Product instead of Profit.
> The only way to make a one time service as profitable is to monopolize the service capabilities, jack up the price, and otherwise limit supply through legislation (i.e. making it illegal or bureacratically difficult for individuals to drill their own EGS).
That is why we must return to producing for *Product* instead of for *Profit*.
When Consumers own the Means of Production abundance is no longer
'bad' and efficiency can be maximized without danger.
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com