Related: diary
Sep-28-2011: Sowing Future Harvests
buying and owning property properly
planning and planting our solutions
growing and discovering old answers
Sep-26-2011:
robert searle wrote:
> it can work..if not too much money
> is created by governments.
If the humans composing our governments
were not so cowardly, we could have been
issuing our own currency from the beginning
and never gone into debt AT ALL.
There is no reason for groups of people to
enter into debt when they have all the Labor
value they can commit toward each other
as 'taxes' to achieve their 'public' goals.
Debt can easily avoidable by *groups* of
people if they can structure a reliable and
usable way to exchange commitments.
By what authority do the Private Banksters
issue currency, and why has almost every
city, state, nation on Earth relinquished
that authority?
Do we really believe corporations will have
incentives to not over-issue?
They don't even *print* the money anyway,
they only *issue* it electronically.
Issuance is a matter of holding down the 0-
key after some non-0 digit.
Gaaarrrr! The lack of careful thought and
reconsideration of why we our drowning in
debt is maddening for those of us that can
see this as an insanely unfortunate and yet
simultaneously unnecessary problem.
Sep-26-2011:
We can make private corporations that fill
this pattern by simply treating some % of
Profit as Payer Investment - so that every
User incrementally gains co-Ownership in
the Means of Production for all the Goods
and Services he needs.
But my intent is to leverage (oh no, did I really use that word?)
the traditional Angel Investors, Venture-Capitalists, Bankers, etc.
to fund the startup of a Vertically-Integrated Permaculture Mosaic
(VIPM) with the long-term goal of finally 'escaping' the current
system through a carefully crafted Trade Agreement applied to
the VIPM property so that ownership 'flows' to those who are
willing to pay Costs for Stasis and Profit for Growth.
Sep-26-2011:
Some say ecosystems cannot be designed,
and maybe that is true for some definitions
of the word, but not all intents.
Some people have the skills needed to bring
fungi, flora and fuana together, in symbiotic
settings where they help each other flourish.
This is Permaculture = Permanent Culture,
and has been systematically and in some
cases *purposefully* eliminated/destroyed
to disable populations ability to resist the
Capitalists/Profiteers.
But our attempts are feeble.
We fail because we do not know how to
scale while remaining a positive solution.
Tiny, Mom-and-Pop shops are not actually
doing anything different from Mal*Wart.
Even Permaculture activists must become
http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie
to "Make a Living"...
We need an improved "Scheduling and Allocation"
algorithm that we can apply to Property we co-own
as Groups - so we can reap the real Use-Value of
that Production without paying tribute to others.
dis-tributed. dis == 'without'. without-tribute.
This will allow us to scale as a fabric or mesh
or even flesh of "Freedom-Cells" (as compared
to "Terror-Cells"), recovering the Earth from the
current Owners one square-foot at a time as we
co-buy our way out of poverty and impotence.
Sep-26-2011:
Taxing the rich collects mostly Profit,
since the rich risk Capital, not Work.
Taxing he rich leaves Wages alone,
sine the poor risk Work, not Capital.
But who are those that collect the tax,
and who decides and enforces those
decisions about how that value will
be used in the Economy?
Profit is very powerful and dangerous
value that we are only beginning to
fully understand.
Some % of Profit must be redirected
back into the system as a feedback-loop
to distribute control and stabilize growth.
This is the same pattern as seen in a
steam engine needing a mechanical
governor which uses some % of the
steam to deliver controlled pressure
(sustained production) while allowing
acceleration (growth) when needed.
Sep-23-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Marcos wrote:
> a unified communications app for the flow of
> information across the "soul of mankind".
Will this app be enough, even if the wires are
still controlled by those who seek scarcity?
How important is our control of the Hardware
as compared to our control of the Software?
Could the Software be so good that we can just
ignore the Hardware and goals of those owners?
We must not forget the profane (physical) in
our search for the sacred (virtual) - they
rely upon each other, and cannot exist alone.
Sep-23-2011: Jobs are a Problem to be Eliminated when Product is the Return on Investments
----
We can treat Product as ROI when Owners/Investors
are the Users/Consumers of that very same Product.
This eliminates much of the need for exchange because
the Owners of Sources Own the Products already.
----
We must also treat Profit as Payer Investment so those
late-comers gain co-ownership as well, eliminating *their*
need to buy Product as well...
This eliminates much of the drive for excessive growth
because there is no incentive to own more Sources
than you have need of that Product.
Sep-23-2011: Jobs are a Problem to be Eliminated when Product is the Return on Investments
Rick Casey wrote:
> problem (technology improving productivity to the point of
> producing increasing permanent unemployment)
> problem of structural unemployment is just too obvious.
Work is not a solution, it is one of our primary problems!
We don't want the drudgery of repeating rote tasks when
we could be otherwise engaged in solving larger issues.
But we have been confused into this bizarre stance from
long-standing problems with Property concentration.
There is another way to look at this.
We use the wrong lenses, seeking wrong goals.
Our goals should be peace, abundance and leisure,
but Profit requires scarcity and finally war,
while leisure is a problem because we do not
use Property for Use-Value, but can only imagine
it being for Exchange-Value unless on single-
ownership basis...
You can imagine owning an Apple Tree all alone,
with no trouble with eliminating all the work
that might ever be needed to care for the tree
and harvest and store the fruit.
But try to imagine owning an Apple Orchard with
99 other people, and a Milk Dairy with 150 other
people, and a group of cell-phone towers with
1,000,000 other people.
If we co-own as Users, treating Product as the
Return for that risk, then we can safely eliminate
all the chores we are able to eliminate without
worring that we are doing the wrong thing.
Jobs will not be a goal of society
when Users own the Sources of Production.
Sep-22-2011: [P2P-F] Why we can afford Climate Change...
Tadit Anderson wrote:
> mask the reality that "credit" is debt by another name.
This is difficult to picture at first.
Try the movies:
"Money as Debt", "Secret of Oz".
> If currency is put into circulation on a debt-free basis
> by the sovereign government, the the private investors,
> including banks will not acquire the huge returns
> achieved for private interests by way of the debt basis
> of the issuance of currency.
In System terms, debt is a "resource leak", that draws
value out of the local economy to external entities.
> sustainability will be vastly better served by a fiat,
> asset based(aka debt/credit free) currency issued
> by a sovereign government.
Yes, while I imagine we purchase land and tools to
create small-scale Villages which are then sovereign
governments in their own right.
Here's a sketch of my thinking for a currency that is
backed by the Means of Production and Promises to
Labor from Workers or from guilds or unions of sorts.
----
Groups could issue what I've been calling the IOTA -
the Intra-Owner Trade Agreement which is backed by:
- Commitments of Sources: These is the physical assets
needed to produce food and shelter for those Villagers.
- Commitments of Skills: These are the various kinds
of goals that need to be accomplished within the Village.
The IOTA is invalid Unless both of these conditions are met.
--
The IOTA enforces the following constraints on the Sources:
- Product is Investor's Return: The Product is not sold*,
because each Villager already owns the exact** amount
of Product from their ownership in Sources.
* Surplus can be sold to those who own insufficient Sources.
** Predictions are never exact, but we can 'hover' nearby.
Most Villagers will 'overcommit' as Insurance against low
production seasons.
- Profit is Payer Investment: When Surplus is sold, to non-
owners, the Profit must be treated as an Investment from
that Payer - so that latecomers gain as much control as
they are willing to Pay, and ultimately Work for.
----
Sep-21-2011: NewAmerica.net/publications/policy/whither_command_of_the_commons >> Under a security of the commons approach, the United States would maintain sufficient command of the commons to defeat military threats to U.S. interests and ensure the provision of global public goods such as trade and commerce.
Sep-20-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Poor Richard wrote:
> Tokens with some degree of fungibility
> have even proved useful within families.
I agree we can design a better currency,
for as much as such a tool is needed.
I only meant to show we can minimize
much of trade by committing *before*
production begins.
Committing Skills before production is
a way to barter the trade of jobs with
compensation being co-ownership in the
'Cluster', and the ROI for that risk is
Product itself.
Committing Sources before production
secures the Land and Tools needed to
begin. Compensation is co-ownership,
just the same as Skill Commitments.
We must separate Trade from Production.
Production MUST occur, but Trading Products
is only needed if the Sources of Production are
not owned by those who Consume the Product.
Imagine 10,000 people co-own the land, tools,
buildings, etc. needed to accomplish some goal.
These investors and now co-owners are at the
same time the Consumers of that goal.
They must pay all the Costs of production.
But they do not need to Buy the goal back from
themselves, they own it *already*, as a side-
effect of their owning the Sources of that Product.
This has similar purposes to the concept of
'precaching' in Computer Science - where you
try to structure the system so the result is in
it's final location even before it is needed.
When the Consumer Owns the Sources,
he Owns the Product also, in the same %.
----
Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
> Patrick Anderson wrote:
>> This is 'solved' for Physical Sources by treating
>> Profit as Payer Investment - for the User then
>> gains co-Ownership in the Sources of Production
>>
>> [snip]
>
> *** I definitely cannot understand your position. From my point of view,
> the GPL is a way to change the power relationship between private interest
> and public interest, congruent with the commodification of everything in
> late capitalist society, and especially knowledge, as embedded in computer
> programs. By forcing all players to keep the source code public (I don't
> want to use "open"), the GPL prevents any single player from appropriating
> it at the expense of the "community", e.g. to fulfill its "drive to keep
> Price above Cost."
I'm trying to express the same Pattern as the GNU GPL,
but in the material world, where the Sources are all
the Physical things required for Production such as
Land, Plants, Animals, Tools, Applied_Skill (Labor).
>> ==Vertically Integrated Production Mosaic (VIPM)
>>
> *** Anarchist cooperative? Soviet?
The VIPM is distinct in the way Property flows to the Payer of Profit,
causing control over the growth of the organism to be auto-distributed
to those willing to Pay to grow and then maintain (stasis) that scale
through continued 'Payment' back to the VIPM, usually by Swapping Skills.
>> ===Revenue Sharing
>
> *** What are you selling? Social capital is not a commodity.
We *must* own the Sources of all our food, medicine, soap, cloth,
building materials, technology.
By Sources I mean both the so-called "Intellectual Property" and
also all the Physical Means of Production required for any and all
production.
> the only revenue you get comes from donations and contributions.
The revenue I imagine will come from selling Surplus of any
of the Products within the VIPM, whether extra Bandwidth or
extra Avocados or extra Bus rides, etc.
> It's not apples and oranges, or did I miss something?
It *is* apples and oranges because we must *eat*,
and the Feudalists will make that food more and
more expensive unless we co-buy control for as
real property ownership which we can use to supply
ourselves, for our own, mutual benefit, the needs
we all have, and eventually some of the wants.
Co-owning trees and bushes needed for fruit and nuts
within a VIPM gives food security at little real cost.
We don't need to buy or sell those Products, they are
the Reward for our careful applied Skills in the VIPM.
>> If those co-owners accepted Product as the Return
>> for that Risk, they would still be required to pay
>> all the Costs, but Profit would not even appear
>> since that transaction (monthly purchase) does
>> not happen. In it's place is a bill for the real
>> Costs for that co-owner according to his % of
>> ownership and any other extra Costs he/she
>> inflicted upon the other co-owners.
>>
> *** There we agree: there's no profit. Only investment
> (in acquisition, operation, and maintenance.)
>
> So, is it still capitalist?
It is a hybrid I call "Burn Ring" because:
Any co-owner with sufficient ownership in Sources
does not buy those Products, but owns them already.
For example, co-owning an ISP means you would pay
all the Costs of operation, but you would not buy
Bandwidth from the others when you already own it.
But when someone has insufficient Sources, they
will need to buy those Products from someone else,
and so we can sell Surplus (whatever we don't use
with the VIPM) for a Price above Cost to outsiders.
We can collect Profit from those non-owners, but
to inhibit control concentration, we enforce a
Terms of Operation over the VIPM that requires
all Profit to be treated as Payer Investment.
Sep-19-2011: Leipzig : Post-Industrial redevelopment "package" / "support fund" ?
Steve Bosserman wrote:
> SENSORICA value network website created by
> Tiberius Brastaviceanu (Tibi) co-founder of
> the Multitude Project for ideas.
Hey, I know Tiberius! He's one of 9 people I
'follow' on Google Buzz..
> time in return for basic needs.
The value I hope to bring to this group
is a reconsideration of:
- Why we must Sell the products we Create.
- What we should do with Profit from Sales.
- How these relate to the Proper(ty) Owner.
----
Owner_Profit == 1/Payer_Property_in_Sources : This is saying that
Profit is 0 (actually undefined) when the Consumers Own the Sources
and treat Product as the Return on those Investments.
Investment => Product : If the Investors are Consumers and Product is
ROI, then Profit is undefined because the Product is not even sold,
except when there is Surplus.
Profit => Payer_Property_in_Sources : When there is Surplus, we must
invest the Profit we will likely gain *for* the Payer, and finally
Vest that Property to them as real co-ownership ... maybe just
Use_Shares at first ... this may be specific to the various types of
Sources, and the real Vesting of something such as a Grape Vine or a
Milk Cow, and also the projected lifetime of those specific instances
... this needs to be more like a fungible bond where the property
ownership 'flows' across time through other plants and animals and
machines, etc. that specific human (the Payer) needs.
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-19-2011: Community Investment Portfolio Structure
From Steve Bosserman: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0ARdGRSb8tFu1ZGc3M2szZHpfMTI2Njg3OXc1ZzZr&hl=en_US&pli=1
Sep-17-2011: [econowmix] Leipzig : Post-Industrial redevelopment "package" / "support fund" ?
> of cooperatives of artists, young people, engineers, etc
We might be able to support the daily needs of these developers
from within a Cluster of Cooperatives if we include agricultural
nodes and other industry needed to provide food and housing
and some other health services I call a "Basic Outcome".
But it is still a bit unclear to me how we 'account' for the amount
and difficulty (quality and quantity) of Work done by someone
from within the Cluster compared to how much value that same
Actor wants to Consume from that Cluster.
Currently brain-storming the use of ripple-project.org concepts
toward Sharing Sources and Swapping Skills.
Sep-17-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Koen Martens wrote:
> You can't, as a single person
Yes, we must gather together.
> Asia for the electronic parts.
This is currently true, but must not remain.
>You can't grab some sand and make your own microchip.
Groups of humans *already* co-own those factories, so
obviously it is not impossible.
And since Profit is the difference between Price and Cost,
and since we, the Consumers, are the final payer of Price,
there is no question that we can afford to own the factories,
since we are already paying all the Costs of production AND
we are paying Profit as well!
We will not co-own such things at first. We'll just buy things
like computers and wire, etc. "off the shelf" as we begin.
I wasn't trying to say we must be purists. It is a transitional
process that has distinct phases, very much like booting a
computer - where many services and extended features are
not yet available during BOOT.
> you cannot avoid relying on specialization
Yes, this is promoted in two ways:
1.) Sharing Sources: Tools and space will usually available for rent
within each Group, and sometimes offered for rent outside of the
Group. Each Group will have it's own rules and limitations and
requirements, etc.
2.) Swapping Skills: By committing to apply specialized labor to some
goals advertised within the Vertically Integrated Permaculture Mosaic,
you implicitly trade with others offering their Skills toward
production for which you need the Products.
> Money needs to be set aside for maintenance
Yes, we must use money to buy Products when we do not yet own the Sources.
On a more complicated note, we can avoid using money within a VIPM while
still compensating labor by Swapping Skills *before* production begins.
> Anyway, to sum up. Buying a router doesn't mean you own it in the sense
> of Patrick's definition of owning (if I got that right). You may use it,
> as long as it doesn't break. At which point you send it back, and if your
> warranty hasn't expired, you might get a new one. But once it's expired and
> broken, you can only throw it away and buy a new one
We will just buy "off the shelf" equipment from Chinese slave-labor factories
at first, but will simultaneously yet slowly, and incrementally be
working toward
co-owning every link in every chain of production for all the things we use,
The most important work is agriculture, since we cannot be non-dead without it.
Sep-16-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Isaac Wilder wrote:
> ROI as investment
I'm not sure if this is right, but maybe
I misunderstand what you mean.
What I see is a problem with respect to Time:
0.) Investments are commitments of either Sources or Skills.
1.) Product as Investor's Return: Users buy the Physical Sources of
production *early* for the purpose of consuming those Products. They
must pay all the Costs of production, but do not buy/sell the product
to/from themselves, and so cannot pay Profit nor external Taxes - for
that transaction does not exist. [see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_rent for some legal notes.]
1a.) Property as Investor's Return: This might be a better title for
#1 because it is the ownership in Physical Sources that causes the
Product to not be sold.
2.) Profit as Payer Investment: We collect Profit from non-owners
when we have Surplus and they buy those Products *late*. We use those
funds to purchase even more infrastructure, BUT the ownership of those
new Physical Sources slowly (I don't yet know at what rate) vest to
the original Payer as real co-ownership.
...
Is debt anything different from each of us being 'behind' in our finances?
We pay 'late' for all of what we need, even easily predictable problems.
Sharing Sources and Swapping Skills will give us real insurance across
all of our needs: food, housing, health care, transport, communication.
Sep-16-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Miles Fidelman wrote:
> "think piece," or are you putting some
> of the ideas into practice, or what?
Many people try to co-own the Sources of
production for their mutual benefit.
It is a very old problem with nearly as
many approaches as attempts.
My goal here is to expose the 'bugs' in
the various ways we try to achive this
so we might finally understand *why* and
*how* our systems of production tend to
grow out of our control and even finally
turn against us in their quest to keep
Price above Cost.
This analysis is meant to be a mechanical,
emotionless disection of our systems of
production and trade with the intent to
derive the 'algorithm' needed to stop
individuals or sub-groups from capturing
excessive portions of the available re-
sources - very much the same goal as an
Operating System kernel attempting to
allocate and schedule the components of
a computer among competing processes.
> On a more general level, isn't what you're describing
> simply the next step beyond owning, living on, and
> operating a self-sufficient farm (be that as a family
> or a communal group)?
Yes, I am trying to devise a better way
for willing participants to share the
Sources of those Objectives they need.
A scenario that repeats again and again
is that of the family or communal group
that tries to create a self-sufficient
farm only to realize too late that the
growth of that group is not controlled
by those who use it, but by those who
originated and/or now currently *own*
those Physical Sources.
I hope to convince people like Marcin
Jakubowski that it will take more than
biology and technology to compete with
Capitalism: we are going to need another
way to allocate Property that solves
the long-standing issue of Capital
Overaccumulation so Villages can grow
and even become growth 'conduits' that
allow others to grow their own Villages
in an incremental fashion as they buy
surplus from established Villages and
pay Profit which funds the purchase of
even more land and more construction
needed to finally house all of humanity.
This can be done through a legally binding
Social Contract analogous to the goals
of the GNU GPL, but applied by Contract
or Terms of Operation or some such thing
to Private Property (probably in a Trust)
which enforces the constraints we are now
discovering about how to create Freedom
within the Physical realm - and from that,
real Freedom within the Virtual realm -
for no Virtual thing can exist without the
Physical Sources needed to *host* it.
Sep-16-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Poor Richard wrote:
> VIPM approach, which to some extent is embodied
> in many consumer and producer cooperatives.
They may appear similar on the surface, but the
internal differences cause cooperatives to slowly
suffer nearly the same fate as most every for-
profit organization, governments of every size,
and really even any club or church or commune or
community or whatever title you give co-ownership.
The problem of Capital Accumulation occurs in a
incremental and stepwise fashion that is easy for
us to lose track where the problem originates.
But if we "step-through" (as a programmer debugging
a resource allocation routine) the problem at a
slower pace to fully analyze each transaction, we
can see it is the Payer of Profit that causes Growth
to be "worth it" (the Payer covers all previously
paid Costs AND usually pays Profit (Price above
Costs).
And so treating Profit as an investment from that
Payer causes control, through co-ownership, to be
autodistributed to those willing to pay for it.
Whereas, in a typical organization, the current
owners treat Profit many other ways that do not
solve the problem from a 'Systems' perspective.
Treating Profit as Payer Investment is very much
like directing some amount of steam from a steam-
engine toward a 'governor' (a sensor and valve)
so that pressure cannot grow beyond safety.
Probably the most important difference is that
Imputed Production *eliminates* the need to
trade objects and in doing so, *eliminates* Profit.
Eliminating the trade of Objects also eliminates
one of our reasons we believe we must pass tokens.
Eliminating Wages is accomplished when Workers
commit to trade labor in the future for the return
of other people committing other skills toward
the many types of production we need.
Sep-16-2011: [building-a-dis] Reflecting Profit to the Payer Auto-Distributes Growth
Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
> In Free Software, when someone starts a project,
> nobody questions her or his will to control it.
The question of control is an ongoing battle.
Richard Stallman created the GNU GPL to protect
against those who would control it to the detriment
of the community (think Facebook, Ning, Google) in
their drive to keep Price above Cost.
This is done by insuring Users receive at-cost
access to the Sources of Production.
This is 'solved' for Physical Sources by treating
Profit as Payer Investment - for the User then
gains co-Ownership in the Sources of Production
The eater of Bread receives shares in the fields,
Mill, Ovens, Kitchen, etc. needed to bring more
Bread into existence in the future, and because
of this ownership, will own that future Product
as a consequence of owning the Sources - assuming
all Costs, including any Wages, are being paid
by those co-Owning Users.
Just as with Software, the User will often not
know how to build, maintain, or maybe even to
operate those Sources to produce the Objectives
that User needs.
> nobody will care that somebody took control,
It is very disruptive when somebody takes control.
We can plan for this possibility using a technique
similar to the way the GNU GPL uses CopyRight to
enforce CopyLeft, we can use Property Rights to
enforce Property Left - so that groups of co-owners
can build sovereignty through real property that
they can operate exactly the way they want except
if they want to apply this Social Contract they
will be required to allow and disallow some set
of constraints used to solidfy community.
==Vertically Integrated Production Mosaic (VIPM)
0.) The VIPM uses on-site agriculture to generate
raw materials for all the solutions the workers
will need (food, shelter, medicine, soap, etc.)
1.) Workers commit labor (promise to apply skills)
toward some goals needed within the VIPM.
2.) Skills required by the VIPM include:
. Farming: Soil, Plant, Animal knowledge and experince.
. Construction: Builder/Framer
. Health: Basic Doctor, Dentist, Optical
===Revenue Sharing
.) Any* Price above Cost (Profit) must be treated
as an Investment from that Payer to grow the
scale of the production - with co-ownership
finally vesting to that Payer.
*For hybrid-funding endeavours, this may be
some % of the Profit, with other % to pay
the traditional investors/financeers.
.) Any sub-group must be allowed to split from
the rest within reasonable divisibility.
When divisibility is not reasonable, the user
must allowed to sell those shares.
> there's no profit to be made in
> building-a-distributed-and-decentralized-internet
> without it.
Profit is Consumer_Price - Owners_Costs.
But what if the Consumers ARE the Owners?
Profit is UNDEFINED
when Product is ROI.
Product is payment for risk of owning sources.
You don't buy network service each month from
yourself for a wire or wireless network which
you fully own - for example within your house.
You must pay all the initial Costs to purchase
and install the Physical Sources - electricity
to power them and any maintenance needed.
But of course you don't pay Profit, for who
would you pay it to?
Stupid question huh? Maybe not.
What if 1,000,000 people pre-paid for cell-phone
service into a special fund that was used to buy
the material assets needed (towers, etc.) for
that production?
If those co-owners accepted Product as the Return
for that Risk, they would still be required to pay
all the Costs, but Profit would not even appear
since that transaction (monthly purchase) does
not happen. In it's place is a bill for the real
Costs for that co-owner according to his % of
ownership and any other extra Costs he/she
inflicted upon the other co-owners.
It is easy to see this would save us Billions -
just read the reported 'Earnings' of the current
owners combined with most of the advertising
and general extra Costs for marketing trickery.
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-16-2011: Use-Value Investments Reduce Token-Passing
Sep-16-2011: Auto-Governance through Negative-Feedback Loop Social Contract
Tadit Anderson wrote:
> Taxation as a fiscal policy is used to
> control the concentration of wealth.
Concentration of wealth occurs because
Profit is treated as Investor's Return.
Imagine another Mode of Production
where the Product itself is the ROI.
This is only realistic if the people
needing the Product are co-Owners of
the Sources of that Product.
For example, if 1,000 drinkers of milk
were to buy and co-own a dairy for
their mutual benefit, and if they were
to use the Product (milk, cheese, etc.),
as payment for covering the Costs of
production, then there would be no
Sale of the Product, and so there would
be neither Profit nor Tax.
This proposal is incomplete unless we
consider what should be done with any
surplus, and the Profit we will likely
collect from Sales to non-owners.
If we treat that Profit as an Investment
from the person who Paid it, then that
person will slowly gain co-ownership of
the dairy's *growth*.
Reflecting some % of Profit back to the
Payer is a negative-feedback loop in the
same way a steam engine needs a governor
to control runaway pressure, business
needs a governor (not government) to
constrain runaway growth.
See http://ImputedProduction.Blog.com/2011/05/20/longer-explanation for more details.
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-16-2011: [open-development] Hosting Open Development
Tobias Eigen wrote:
> it doesn't necessarily cost alot to host open data.
I doesn't seem expensive, but many people just do
not know how to administer a web-site, and could
hardly be expected to deal with complexities and/or
extra expense of exposing their IP to others...
I'm also, in the end, talking about ownership of the
ISP and wires and cables and fiber and satellites,
and ALL the Physical Sources required to host our
GNU Free Culture.
We pay more than cost when we do not co-own the
Physical Sources (the material assets) needed to
host any and all types of production.
Many people (including my parents) cannot afford
the expense of connecting to the internet or the
excessive fees of the cell-phone industry.
Imagine a village deploys a simple 802.11n phone
network for it's own purposes - where the members
pay all the costs but do not pay Profit because they
do not even buy the Product - they own it already!
But more immediately we can collectively co-own
the computers of a datacenter to make file-sharing
and things like email available for 'Freedom' ...
But first we will need to develop a legally binding
Social Contract that we can apply to those assets
to constrain ourselves in a manner similar to the
goals of the GNU GPL - but instead of using
Copyright to enforce Copyleft, we will be using
Property Rights to enforce Property Left.
Patrick Anderson
http://ImputedProduction.Blog.com
Jose M. Alonso wrote:
> It's not as easy nor cheap as one could think.
Yes, the owners of Amazon agree.
And yet Amazon charges more than
it really Costs (they collect Profit)
from us, the Users.
And so, at first, until we grow in size,
our "economy of scale" will be low.
But the PropertyLeft approach has an
advantage because we only need to
cover the real Costs of production to
remain a viable business (because we
will be paying ourselves with Product
instead of Profit), whereas a 'normal'
business must continually collect
MORE than the Costs of production
since they use that special value
(Profit) to pay their Investors.
User-Owned production outperforms
regular 'Capitalistic' offerings through
a business model where:
- Investors are Product Users (like Mutual Funds, but for Use-Value).
- Product is Investor's Return (the ROI is simply the outputs of
production, such as data hosting.).
- Profit is Payer's Investment (this occurs when selling surplus to non-owners).
Patrick Anderson
http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com
Sep-15-2011: [open-development] SlashOpen.net now online
Hello Tobias,
I am very interested in a sub-part of this problem
for which I don't see much discussion, and so would
ask forgiveness if this is outside the scope of the
/open project...
The subject has to do with the costs of *hosting*
data that we want to make 'open'.
My thinking revolves around the idea that, while
corporations like Google and Facebook are able to
cover their Costs of hosting AND to also Profit,
while we, as purveyors of Freedom, cannot seem to
cover even the Costs of hosting - and so lack even
the most basic file storage or email services.
I have some ideas about why this is not yet done
and some partial approaches to solving the issue,
but will wait to be sure you are interested.
Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-13-2011: Profit as Payer Investment Safely Reduces Trade
Imagine crowds buy and co-own the Physical Sources used to create the goods and services they need.
They pay all the Costs of production, including wages to all workers and any managers.
But since the Product itself is the Return for their investment risk, there is no Sale.
And since there is no Sale, there is no Profit (which would usually be Consumer_Price - Owner_Costs).
There would also be no Tax since that final transaction does not even occur.
...
This is sufficient for the perfect case - where the Consumers own *exactly* enough Sources (for example a milk dairy) to create *exactly* enough Product (milk, butter, cheese, etc.).
When there is surplus, we could sell it to those outside the Crowd, and could likely sell it for more than the real Costs of production, meaning we would 'Profit'.
But we misunderstand the true purpose and therefore correct destination of Profit.
Profit measures Property mis-allocation, and is *eliminated* when the Consumers own the Sources of the things they need.
We should treat Profit as an Investment from late Payers so they incrementally become co-owners in *new* Sources the current owners would buy (land, water rights, etc.) to grow the corporation.
Sep-13-2011: <Coalition> Profit is Undefined when Product is ROI
Mark Roest wrote:
> shift capital from the bad to the good
> with the full leverage of the impact of
> the break-even point on profitability,
> and of expectations of profitability on
> the stock market value of a corporation.
The presence of Profit within an economic
system indicates Property mis-allocation.
This reasoning is based on the observation
that Profit is *undefined* when Product is
treated as ROI. In other words, if a group
of consumers co-own the Means of Production
for some Good or Service (say a nut orchard),
and if they accept the Product itself as the
Return for those Investments, then there is
no Sale (each co-owner of the Sources owns
the same % of the Outputs), and so there is
no chance for Profit because the Product is
not bought or Sold - it is already the Property
of those who will finally consume it.
This solves the 'static' case, where the
consumers co-own *exactly* as much Sources
needed to produce that which they need.
The 'dynamic' case (where surplus is sold
to non-owners) requires a negative-feedback
loop -- think of it as a Growth Thermostat
that auto-distributes property ownership to
those willing to pay (and ultimately work
for that growth).
Profit collected when selling surplus to
non-owners must be 'reflected' back to the
payer by treating it as an investment.
Treating Profit as Payer Investment in more
Sources causes those late-comers to gain
co-ownership in their own part of that
kind of production, and therefore slowly
buy less and less of that product - but
instead own it already, as a side-effect
of their co-ownership in Sources.
Sep-12-2011: Restraining the Size and Power of Corporations that We, the People Own and Control for our Mutual Benefit
Rick Casey wrote:
> legal change that places restraints on
> the size and power of corporations.
The legal change I propose is to create
corporations that we CHOOSE to restrain
through a Terms of Operation applied
to those material assets.
This is a kind of syndicalism - where we
buy and co-own productive property for
our own, mutual benefit so we finally have
the control we need at the Price of Cost.
Profit is UNDEFINED when Product is ROI.
Product is ROI when Users invest to co-own Sources.
Surplus sold to non-owners to cover Costs and usually Profit.
In this case, Profit must be treated as Payer Investment.
Treating Profit as Payer Investment will allow us to
scale in size while auto-distributing that growth to
the people who PAY for that growth.
In this way we restrain the size and power of that corporation.
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-11-2011: [SteadyStaters] Are jobs obsolete? Not saying they are. Just sharing ideas.
I've been thinking of a way for property to be auto-
distributed to those willing to 'pay' for the outputs.
It is just another Revenue Sharing scheme -
but with some strange results:
.) Customers collectively buy/build the Sources of Production for
their own benefit.
.) The Return for these Investments is the Product itself. Profit is
undefined because there is no Sale.
.) This allows them to receive Product "at cost" and without fearing automation.
.) In the 'advanced' scenario, they would also Swap Skills within a
Permaculture Mosaic to avoid paying Wages.
.) Profit is treated as Payer Investment. This causes the *ownership*
of growth of that org/business to be in the hands of the persons who
*pay* for that growth = the Customer.
Sep-08-2011: Noticed TStudio3D.sf.net, KGE3D.org, KRI.GoogleCode.com, Jet3D.com, OpenBlox.sf.net, MIIU.org/wiki/The_economic_stack
Sep-08-2011: Noticed OKWS.org, TameJS.org, docco.coffee, MoveLang.org, Coco, Socket.io, WaterBearLang.com
Sep-07-2011: [building-a-dis] facebook vs open internet for contactcon
Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
> The "social contract" is for people
> who cannot trust each other
The GNU GPL is for people
who want to trust each other,
but know *some* people will
try to play unfairly.
Remember when Google's
catchphrase was "Do no evil"?
Who knew Zuckerberg would
do wrong? Not even himself.
We would need a contract to
allow us, the users, to remain
in control of what *should* be
OUR network for our benefit,
but not to dominate latecomers.
> I don't see any need to delay action
I didn't mean to delay of current action,
but also strategize for our future needs.
> if you don't trust the host,
> host your own.
The technical difficulties prevent many
from participating in this way.
The other problem with not having real
ownership of the physical layer is that
of the Price being above Cost - which
prevents most of the population from
participating
When we, the end Users buy and swap
labor to install and maintain the wires
and cell-phone towers and farms and
dairies and community-kitchen gathering
centers, etc. we need to move away
from token-passing...
... with the Return for those investments
being the Product itself,
We must still pay all the Costs of that
Production, but we do not Buy service
from ourselves - we Own it already, as
a side-effect of our (co-)owing the
Physical Sources of those Objectives.
The other side of reducing the use of tokens
Swapping Skills before beginning production
using a "Jobs List Calendar" which would be
a prediction of the approximate nutritional
needs of all the Workers and Dependents
within the Permaculture Production Mosaic.
Patrick Anderson
http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
Sep-06-2011: [building-a-dis] facebook vs open internet for contactcon
ya knygar wrote:
> it is https://n-1.cc ofc.)
>
> http://status.net may be a right choice,
Should we trust these any more than FaceBook?
What is the guarantee that they will not Ning us?
Even if these happen to work for our current needs,
we still must find a way to understand *why* Owners
tend to turn against the Users.
We must design a legally-binding Social Contract
which we can then apply to the Physical Sources we
co-purchase for our needs of hosting simple services
such as a 'Freedom' email service and file storage;
so people can reach their data from any terminal.
We only delay our need to fully understand
*how* and even *why* owners turn against the
consumers as those organizations scale.
Co-ownership under a strategic Social Contract
will allow us to start immediately with current,
semi-centralized -- you might say 'clusters' of
users enjoying the benefits of shared property.
Sep-02-2011: Growth Ring Funding
.) VC investors supply Land and Capital in return
for some % of the Profits.
.) Workers supply skilled labor in return for:
..) Workers are never paid 'Wages' in the
traditional sense, but instead slowly
gain intradependence between themselves
and independence from the originators/VC.
..) Workers gain ownership in the Physical
Sources of the goods and services they
need whenever they achieve *more* than
that required to meet their own needs.
..) We must attract a sufficiently diverse
workforce to cover all the solutions
those Workers will need. For example,
we need people that know how to plant
and care for trees, and we also need
a Dentist to fix our teeth and a Doctor
to solve other problems, and a Mechanic
to fix and build certain things, etc.
..) The operation must use locally intense
permaculture to produce all the raw
materials for all the food, soap, cloth,
building, etc. needed for the health of
the Workers.
..) At first, during the 'bootstrap' stage,
Workers needs can be met through bulk-
purchase and rudimentary housing (maybe
even tents in some cases). The VC will
also supply these startup costs.
..) Housing could be built in stages - with
a shared, multi-unit apartment complex
being a good way to begin.
Sep-01-2011: Reading OSS-Watch.ac.uk/resources/governanceModels.xml
Sep-01-2011: To Vark.com
There is no sale when the Customers own the Means of Production (the co-owners of a dairy own the milk already), and so the Price they pay is simply the Costs of production ... but then what is the true origin of Profit - for in this case it is *undefined* (or you might say zero)?
Valor P. wrote >>The true origin of profit is hard work. =) (and welcome to Aardvark!)
Hmm... But then where is Profit hiding when there is no sale, as explained above?
For example, say 1,000 milk-drikers buy and co-own a dairy for the sole purpose of receiving the Product as their ROI.
They hire workers as normal, and must pay all those wages along with any other costs.
But they do not and even cannot pay Profit, for they do not buy the Product (milk) from themselves, but each owns a % already according to their ownership in the Means of Production (the diary).
Valor P. wrote >>Well, the profit is essentially the difference between the cost of production, and the market price for the product, as they, being the producer, do not have to purchase goods from the market (at the market price).
Valor P. wrote >> so more succinctly, while they aren't receiving monetary units for profit, the difference between the cost and market value is their profit.
Oooh, nice analysis. This helps me see more of the changes under this property arrangement.
But there still seems to be a problem with your original claim (the origin of profit is hard work) if we introduce further constraints:
For example, if ALL milk-drinkers in the region were the co-owners of dairies for their own benefit, then there wouldn't be a market value different from costs - and so all Profit would be missing for that particular product (nobody would ever buy milk again, but would instead only be paying the Costs of production).
This is true of any industry. Imagine we, the users, were to buy and co-own a cellular network for our own good.
We would have to pay all the costs of operation, but could not pay the amount called 'earnings' by the current owners - all of that value would be 'savings' for us as something we would not (and even could not) pay - for who would we pay it to?
Shawn H. >>Profit is defined as any surplus in revenu after expenses. If there's no revenue then, by definition, there is no profit. Likewise, if every penny of revenue goes to labor or reinvestment in the business then there's no profit either.
I agree.
Owner_Profits = Customer_Price - Owner_Costs
But I still don't understand *where* Profit comes from.
If the answer is "from hard work", then why does it disappear when the Customers own the Means of Production and treat Product as ROI?
Does this mean less work is being done under those property arrangements? That seems unlikely.
If those same Customers were NOT the owners of the Means of Production, then most likely they would have paid Profit to those owners. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with how much work is being done - for it is the same is both cases.
Valor P. >>That's when it becomes a "public good" and the cost of production is called a tax instead.
Interesting idea.
Are you saying gov jobs are not "hard work"?
When a corporation has few or no profits to report, does that mean the workers were lazy?
I don't think "hard work" is the origin of Profit.
Sep-01-2011: [FNF] Darknetplan and FreeNetworkFoundation
ya knygar wrote:
>> http://darknetplan.org
> is a scary naming.
Some ideas:
LightNet (aligns with 'Open' in that workings should be 'Visible' -
though this is delicate matter, where we, as users need visibility
into our parts of the operation, while also needing privacy from
others)
Lucent (oops, already taken)
TransLucent (sending light across the world)
> Federated Social Web instance - based on our new, awesome,
> let's say - FNF(because FBX is kind of in) Servers.
Hmm... Are you talking about *hosting* some of these applications
in a semi-centralized maybe even cloud-like fashion?
If so, then count me in! We MUST learn to share hardware to be
able to compete head-to-head against the current offerings.
In the end we, the users, must co-own all physical sources required
for this kind of production, including all copper wires, all fiber, all
poles, all ISPs, all cell-phone towers and supporting equipment, all
satellites, all under-sea communications, etc.
Until we have co-ownership, we cannot have full freedom.
Moritz Bartl wrote:
> I like www.osqa.net for Q&A.
http://meta.osqa.net shows an advertisement
for hosting this great software.
We must learn how to share hardware so we,
the users, can co-own and so co-host Free
software for no more than the real costs of
that production.
We can overcome our fear of property ownership
and then we must use it *against* the machine
just as the GNU GPL uses Copyright to enforce
CopyLeft, we must create some sort of legally-
binding document that can be applied to Physical
Sources - using Property Rights to enforce
PropertyLeft so that all users have Freedom.