imput

Related: citizen owned, co-own, GNUrho, interest list, insurance

                Imputing Production

. Fund/Invest: Cross-Commit Sources or Skills
.. Sources: Land and Capital - Crowd Funded
.. Skills: Labor - Crowd Sourced

. Product as Investor Return
.. Profit is undefined when Product is ROI
.. Products are Pre-Distributed when Owners are Consumers

. Profit as Payer Investment

. Schedule

. Exchange

. Insurance

. Currency

. Work is Pre-Scheduled

. Maximize Utilization

Production requires Sources and Skills
1.) Property ownership in land and water rights.
2.) Heirloom plants and animals for food, medicine, soap, cloth, building materials.
3.) Tools, and eventually the tools to make tools.
4.) Skills applied to these Sources to create Products.

Swapping Skills happens *before* production begins, while Bartering Products happens at the point-of-sale - long after production is completed.

Bartering Products suffers from the "simultaneous coincidence of wants" problem because it occurs far too late, and so there is not enough time to resolve the "chain of exchange".

By "chain of exchange" I mean the list of people required to 'connect' the work-commitments of one person to the work-commitments of some other person.

When Swapping Skills, workers commit to work in the *future* for others (say picking apples) in exchange for someone else committing to work in the *future* for them (say picking oranges).

This gives us time to resolve the "chain of exchange" needed for that trade to occur and so do not need to pass tokens (receive Wages) - though we will need to track whether workers fulfill those commitments.

Profit is a growth-vector we can 'reflect' toward the payer as his investment in even more Means of Production - so the growth of the organization is continuously redistributed to those willing to pay for the growth and then continuation of that production.

We can change the system from within by regaining control of production.
This is an ancient and continuing struggle for our planet.

Production is already taking place, but it is controlled by those who seek profit.
But to seek profit is to seek scarcity, because profit *requires* scarcity.

As a farm-boy in Idaho, my dad told me about a US government program that pays farmers to keep land out of production to increase scarcity so price remains above costs.

Those farmers, and most all entrepreneurs are in such debt that most of the profits are passed along to bankers.

To seek Profit is to seek scarcity.

We must buy, co-own and occupy the property required to host the production of our continuing needs.

. Needs: Food, Housing, Health-Care, Child-Care/Education, Transportation, Communication

Consumers already pay all the costs of production, and they also pay profit because of our lack of ownership.

This proves we could afford to buy or build our own net work if we could learn to cooperate - since we already pay all those bills and more!

So those who are willing and able to prepay can be co-owners and receive at-cost access under our collective control.

That solves the 'static' case.

The 'dynamic' case is the difficult part, but I think I have discovered a solution.

So, to allow us to grow without suffering the usual problems of over accumulation and concentration of power, let's try the following:

Let's allow all all late-comers who have not yet paid enough to purchase access from us as they already do from the current corporations - and even pay profit when the "market will bear", *but* under the strict condition that we treat that profit as an investment from the user who paid it - so they too can gain the ownership needed to protect themselves from the collective we.

Handling profit as payer investment creates a negative-feedback loop that auto-distributes control into the hands of those willing to pay for it.

Let's re-examine our assumptions about who should Fund and therefore Own the Means of Production.

Let's look at the most trivial case of a single person owning a fruit tree for his own benefit.

He must pay all the Costs of ownership, including Wages if he does not do the work himself.

But he cannot pay *more* than Cost, for who would he pay it to?

Profit is defined as Price above Cost but if he does not sell the product, Profit is undefined.

So he Funded that production and Owns those means for the expected return of Product instead of Profit.  This was "Use Value" production instead of "Exchange Value".  It does not benefit this owner when other orchards fail in the area unless he resorts to selling that which he would have eaten.

...

This is all very obvious and might seem unimportant, but let's push the idea a bit further and see what happens:

Imagine now, instead of a single Funder-Owner-User, we have thousands of such investors pooling Funds toward an orchard.

By attracting potential Users to pre-pay for the goods they predict they will need, we can use those Funds to buy the means necessary for that production.

The Users and Owners will then be the very same set.  The product will not be sold because the ROI for the Risk is Product itself which they attain at Cost.

...

This solves the 'static' case where the number of Users matches exactly the output of that production.

But many of these consuming investors will want to over-own by some percentage to guarantee they have enough product at the round of each production.

We must do something with that surplus or it will rot.

We can sell those products for Price above Cost - as much as the market will bear - but to keep the organization owned by the Users of those products, we must treat the payment of Profit as an investment from the User who paid it so they also gain ownership in the Physical Sources of production.

....

In the attached picture "Capitalism.png" we see investors in the upper-left corner funding production and receiving Title to those Physical Sources.

All Costs, including Worker wages, are initially paid from that pool of funding.

The Consumer (in blue) begins to paying for those Costs in his (late) quest to buy Objects.

Over time, if the business is successful, the investors receive all they had initially put forward and then begin receiving the special value called Profit.

The Consumer never gains any ownership in his own Physical Sources under this arrangement.

In the attached picture "Patched-Capitalism.png" we see again see investors in the upper-left corner funding production and receiving Title to those Physical Sources, but this time the investors are *also* Consumers of the future product.  They are taking risk for the purpose of receiving at-cost Product under their full control.

After each round of Production, the Objects are not sold (except in cases of surplus), because they are already the property of those who will consume them.

The heavy line indicates there is no transfer of ownership, but shows the funders are already the owners without any need to purchase since they paid all the Costs of production and are the owners as a side-effect of their owning the Physical Sources.

The bottom of the picture shows a Consumer with insufficient ownership buying Objects late and probably paying Price above Cost.

But in this case, that overpayment is treated as an investment from the Consumer who paid it - causing him to unwittingly Fund the purchase and care of even *more* Physical Sources that will eventually begin producing and therefore provide him with that which he needs.

This allows the organization to grow and yet remain distributed as all new ownership is 'reflected' back to those willing to pay for that growth.

In systems theory this is known as a negative-feedback loop.

why
control and price

how
prepay

what
scheduling

Minimizing the Trade of Objects through Predictive Scheduling of Physical Sources

Imagine an 'auction' setting where non-owning users bid to rent the machine at different time slots.

In the case where only one person wants the time slot, the machine is rented "at cost".

When more than one user wants a specific time slot, the auction begins.  The winning bidder will have paid Profit (Price above Cost), which proves the current amount of hardware is insufficient to meet peak demand and also proves the payer is willing to make that investment.

So when a non-owning user rents the MakerBot for a Price above Cost, the group should allow that payment, but should then queue that money toward being invested in yet *another* MakerBot instance that the Payer will eventually co-own with other non-owners who also pay Price above Cost.

This creates a sort of 'conduit' structure where the original Group can safely rent their equipment to others because they charge enough to cover costs, while any further Profit collected during auction is used to grow yet *another* Group that, when finally formed, can safely 'fork' from the other Group and make their own choices about how to treat *their* new equipment.

==Repurposing Property Ownership
WE must be the change we seek, and we can do it through -
hold onto your hat ... we can do it through Property Ownership!

"What!?" you say, "How can you possibly use something as vicious and
terrible as Private Property in a 'good' manner?".

The secret lies in how the GNU GPL uses Copyright against itself as Copyleft.
We can use the same pattern in the physical realm as, well, as "Property Left".

"Property Left" will be a legally-binding document enforcing Social Standards we seek.
We then organize to co-purchase Land and Tools that we will place under this compact.

==Origin and Purpose of Growth
By doing this we give ourselves the opportunity to "do the right
thing" with ownership.

But before we can write such a Private Law we will need to understand how groups
gain property (how they grow), and *WHO* should control that new ownership.

Growth occurs when Price is kept above Cost.
So Profit is a very important source of Growth.

But what is Profit?  Where does it come from?

==Origin and Purpose of Profit
Profit indicates a Payer's lack of property ownership in Sources.

When he who eats the fruit is the Owner of the tree, then only Costs are paid.
There is no Profit because there is no Purchase, for the eater owns it already.

This collapses the complexity of exchange down to trading only skills. Customers pre-pay for Goods and Services to become Source Owners.

Those with Skill can pay with Work if what they offer is wanted in the net work. While any Profit occurring naturally is treated as Payer Investment in more Sources.

So growth and clustering is possible, but occurs in an auto-distributed manner. Those *new* property holdings are then under the co-command of he who paid.

==Implementation
Owners Rule.  They can add any arbitrary laws (rules) to their property.

We can use this to our advantage similar to how the GNU GPL protects our 'virtual' property. So let us buy together and co-own the Sources of Production needed for our sovereignty.

And then apply a Terms Of Operation as a legally binding Social Compact that defines the negative-feedback loops needed by any Hypervisor when dividing computing resources among otherwise destructively greedy Operating Systems.

We will design a system of interaction that describes constraints on Exchange. It can be thought of a Free as in Freedom Trade Agreement (FaiFTA).

Through this binding agent we can enforce a bare-minimum set of requirements for Allocation and Scheduling of resources we hold in 'common'.

It will be a sort of 'Simulated Commons' in that we are explicitly using Property Ownership to partition the earth into small chunks that we collectively purchase for our own benefit.

====Example
1.) A large group co-buys (crowd-funds) a parcel of land.

2.) The land is held in perpetuity by a Trust or non-profit corporation, or whatever (I don't know all the different instruments that can be chosen from).

3.) The Trust should try to qualify as a non-profit entity to escape property taxes that will otherwise punish all improvements.

4.) Doing this will 'virtualize' access to the Land - allowing individuals and corporations to Lease parts of the whole, but never able to sell any part.

5.) The most important point of this is the structure of those Leases - which can be thought-of as a sort of internal property tax - and how they must weigh against *holdings* instead of weighing against improvements.

The concept of "Profit is Payer Investment" still applies, and means "Whenever the amount of a Lease is more than needed to cover Costs, that overpayment becomes the Payer's co-ownership in the Trust.

6.) I'm still uncertain if this is sufficient.  I've always imagined whatever Social Compact we design must also apply to movable co-owned Capital (tools and such), but am trying to get away from that approach, mostly because it is so hard to 'police' and 'enforce'.

==Deposits instead of Debts
The banks have fooled us out of the Trust between ourselves.

Any Skilled Artisan can issue his own currency as a Promise to Work.

The "other half" of the currency is the Physical Sources (Land and Tools).

These two parts complete the backing of an Insuring, Deposit Based Money.

What is Medical Insurance?  It is Ownership in the Land, Buildings and Tools And the 'support' Skilled Aritsans needed for that Work.

So we, as groups of groups, can avoid using debt-based currency within that net work through *commitments* to each other.

For example, I could *commit* to shovel manure and then use that *commitment* to pay for breakfast.

The time it takes for me carry-out that *commitment* increases the 'Interest' against me...

I'm not sure what 'Interest' is in this scenario...

Related idea: Groups of Workers will reconnect Credibility with Credit in ... Accreditation Unions.

For example, if I co-buy a roto-tiller with some other guys, and supplied 21% of the funds, then I have 21% of the 'say' when we decide things like "How often should we change the oil?".

For example, We, the Users, will need collectively purchase and/or build and then co-own the material infrastructure that our ISPs and Cell-Phone providers hold against us before we can finally have any real say in how those net works are governed.

Once we see that Property Ownership can be used as a force for good, we can then begin to co-buy our way out of subjection.

But such an organization will be very unstable unless we are able to admit the true origin and purpose of Profit, for otherwise the originators of such a facility will surely treat that Price above Cost as a reward for themselves - which will concentrate power and eventually cause the group to be no different from any other Capitalist endeavor.

For example, imagine a neighborhood of say 1000 people rent a Business-Class internet connection from an ISP in the area.

Let's say the Price the ISP charges is $500/month.

Suddenly all these co-payers have high-speed internet in the US for just $2/month!

We can do this with any and all industry.  Imagine a Consumer Owned cell-phone net work.

We would only charge ourselves *exactly* what it Costs to send a txt message or a photograph, etc.

We, the users, already pay all the costs of the physical layer *and* we also pay profit because of our lack of ownership.

This proves we could afford to buy or build our own net work if we could learn to cooperate - since we already pay all those bills and more!

So those who are willing and able to prepay can be co-owners and receive at-cost access under our collective control.

For example, say a group of customers of raw-milk pool their $ and/or labor to purchase and/or build a dairy.

Each person invests (whether with money or with labor) the amount required for them to receive the amount of Product they intend to consume.

The Product is never sold since it already belongs to those who will use it.

When each consumer/owner arrives at the dairy to get milk, they do not buy it from the group, but are simply receiving the % that they already own as a result of their ownership in those Physical Sources (the Physical Sources in this case is the Land, Water-rights, Cattle, feedlot, milking machines, etc.).

As another example: imagine co-owing the material assets of a cell-phone net work.

Attract 1/2 million potential phone/internet customers to pre-pay for such services.

Use those funds to buy, build and operate those Physical Sources.

The payoff is that we "avoid paying profit" instead of trying to collect profit from others.

That solves the 'static' case.

The 'dynamic' case is the difficult part, but I think I have discovered a solution.

So, to allow us to grow without suffering the usual problems of over accumulation and concentration of power, let's try the following:

Let's allow all all late-comers who have not yet paid enough to purchase access from us as they already do from the current corporations - and even pay profit when the "market will bear", *but* under the strict condition that we treat that profit as an investment from the user who paid it - so they too can gain the ownership needed to protect themselves from the collective we.

Handling profit as payer investment creates a negative-feedback loop that auto-distributes control into the hands of those willing to pay for it.

An alternate funding scheme would have some % of the startup costs come from potential End-Users "prepaying" for those results.

These User-Investors would receive a payout of Product instead of Profit.

They would not buy the outputs, but would own them already as a side-effect of their co-owning the Physical Sources.

Attract middle-to-high income households to *prepay* for organic foods.

These prepayments will be treated as real investments so those End-Users become real co-owners.

And the ROI for their risk is paid to them as at-cost Product instead of trying to sell the outputs at the market with the hope of keeping Price above Cost (which requires scarcity).

Not just Crowd funded, but Crowd *OWNED* so each sub-venture can concentrate on use-value, since the Product will no longer need to be sold - the Product will be the direct ROI.

Communities can simply *buy* the infrastructure away from these corporations - since those communities eventually pay for all those costs anyway *and* pay profit.

Community-Owned buses and/or cabs where the potential customers are also the sole co-owners means the rides are not sold for exchange-value, but are already under the control of those who need those services as a result of their paying those costs early.

We must organize "Community Owned Agriculture" (COA) where those that can prepay for their food will commit funds to purchase the Land, Water rights, Tools, Seeds, etc. - and those that are in need of employment can prepay by committing their labor to that endeavor.

A COA would not sell the results at the end of the season, but divides it among those co-owners in accordance with the amount each had invested.

Let's look at the most trivial case of a single person owning a fruit tree for his own benefit.

He must pay all the Costs of ownership, including Wages if he does not do the work himself.

But he cannot pay *more* than Cost, for who would he pay it to?

Profit is defined as Price above Cost but if he does not sell the product, Profit is undefined.

So he Funded that production and Owns those means for the expected return of Product instead of Profit.  This was "Use Value" production instead of "Exchange Value".  It does not benefit this owner when other orchards fail in the area unless he resorts to selling that which he would have eaten.

...

This is all very obvious and might seem unimportant, but let's push the idea a bit further and see what happens:

Imagine now, instead of a single Funder-Owner-User, we have thousands of such investors pooling Funds toward an orchard.

By attracting potential Users to pre-pay for the goods they predict they will need, we can use those Funds to buy the means necessary for that production.

The Users and Owners will then be the very same set.  The product will not be sold because the ROI for the Risk is Product itself which they attain at Cost.

...

This solves the 'static' case where the number of Users matches exactly the output of that production.

But many of these consuming investors will want to over-own by some percentage to guarantee they have enough product at the round of each production.

We must do something with that surplus or it will rot.

We can sell those products for Price above Cost - as much as the market will bear - but to keep the organization owned by the Users of those products, we must treat the payment of Profit as an investment from the User who paid it so they also gain ownership in the Physical Sources of production.

....

In the attached picture "Capitalism.png" we see investors in the upper-left corner funding production and receiving Title to those Physical Sources.

All Costs, including Worker wages, are initially paid from that pool of funding.

The Consumer (in blue) begins to paying for those Costs in his (late) quest to buy Objects.

Over time, if the business is successful, the investors receive all they had initially put forward and then begin receiving the special value called Profit.

The Consumer never gains any ownership in his own Physical Sources under this arrangement.

In the attached picture "Patched-Capitalism.png" we see again see investors in the upper-left corner funding production and receiving Title to those Physical Sources, but this time the investors are *also* Consumers of the future product.  They are taking risk for the purpose of receiving at-cost Product under their full control.

After each round of Production, the Objects are not sold (except in cases of surplus), because they are already the property of those who will consume them.

The heavy line indicates there is no transfer of ownership, but shows the funders are already the owners without any need to purchase since they paid all the Costs of production and are the owners as a side-effect of their owning the Physical Sources.

The bottom of the picture shows a Consumer with insufficient ownership buying Objects late and probably paying Price above Cost.

But in this case, that overpayment is treated as an investment from the Consumer who paid it - causing him to unwittingly Fund the purchase and care of even *more* Physical Sources that will eventually begin producing and therefore provide him with that which he needs.

This allows the organization to grow and yet remain distributed as all new ownership is 'reflected' back to those willing to pay for that growth.

Investment creates risk.

Seeking profit incents scarcity.

When consumers own sources, objects are not sold.
When objects are not sold, profit does not occur.

There is no need to sell objects when they are already the property of those who will use them.

Overaccumulation is the result of treating Profit as a reward for those who are already organized.

Ownership can be automatically distributed to those willing to pay for it by treating that overpayment as an investment from the consumer who paid it so they also gain ownership in some Physical Sources of Production.

Growth must be 'reflected' back to those willing who pay for that growth.

1.) The users themselves must have real ownership, and so must be the initial and ideally the only investors.

2.) The 'return' the users will receive for this investment is at-cost access to the outputs of that production - in this case, internet connectivity.

3.) For late-coming users who want to buy any surplus product (net work bandwidth, data storage, CPU cycles), we should charge price above cost (profit) for as much as "the market will bear".

4.) All profit collected from non-owners must be treated as that payer's investment in more physical sources - so that each and every user incrementally becomes a co-owner in the material assets required to host that production.

When any user pre-pays (whether as an up-front investment, or when
paying price above cost (profit)), they receive two items:

A.) A title of ownership over those co-owned physical assets.

B.) A book of "Scheduling Tickets" or "Allocation Tokens" that the
owner would use to prove ownership of and therefore collect the
outputs of that production.

Imagine some agents are attempting to share the physical sources required for storage.

Whether they are attempting to store bytes or bread doesn't make much difference, in both cases the product being stored is subject to decay and destruction.

One question I have is: Who, ideally, should be in control of those physical assets?  (I would say "who should own", but if I remember right, you are reluctant to use property ownership in our quest to secure the Means of Production?)

Another question comes as a result of accepting outsiders.

Imagine they want to increase the size of the operation for even more benefits associated with economy of scale.

Should they charge Profit (Price above Cost) against those latecomers?  And if so, what should be done with that value?  Notice, if you do not charge Profit, then it is likely someone will 'scalp' the product by buying a large amount and then reselling it closer to what the "market will bear".

Profit is commonly used as a return for investors who took risk.

It may seem there is nothing else we can do, for what else would investors accept?

There is a special case we seemed to have overlooked, where we can use product to reward those who are willing to pay early.

This special case only applies to investors who are simultaneously potential consumers of that product - and who invest only as much as it will take to produce what they, personally, will consume.

So the answer is similar to "Crowd Funded", but more like "Consumer Owned" - where those funders are property owners in the Means of Production for the sole purpose of thereby having ownership in the outputs of that production as a sort of "side effect".

Notice the product is not sold (for it is already the property of those who will use it). This causes profit to be undefined - for the Price of the finished product is exactly the Costs which were paid for that production.

So the answer is to attract Customers to pre-pay for Product - while using those pre-payments as actual investments which are then property co-owned by those Customers who benefit from the use-value of that production, and never need strive for Scarcity, for the product will usually never be sold.

In the case where a Customer-Owner has too much product: the solution is to sell that product to non-owners, and even to charge Price above Cost (Profit) against those late comers *BUT* - here is the trick - the Profit received must be treated as though that Customer had just made an investment toward even more Physical Sources.

Treating Profit as that payer's investment will allow the collective to include others while simultaneously avoiding the typical problems of overaccumulation and excessive concentration of control that cause even the most well-intentioned organizations to finally fail to meet the needs of those they were initially formed to serve (the customers of course!).

But if we could organize to pay early - to collectively purchase the Physical Sources of products and services we need - then, we would still need to pay all costs.

But since we would own the objective as a side-effect of our owning the Sources, we would no be 'buying' from ourselves, and so COULD NOT pay Profit, for that final transaction would not even occur!

Profit is UNDEFINED when the Customers are the Owners of the Means of Production.

The customers *already* pay all the Costs of production.

We, the consumers, foot the entire bill.

And we *also* pay Profit because we choose to pay late.

Profit is the difference between the Price a consumer
pays for a finshed good or service, and the real Costs
incurred during production.

If you own an Apple tree, you do not *buy* the apples from yourself.

If you and your neighbor co-own an Apple, you need not *buy* the apples from your collective 'self'.

If you 999 other people co-own an Apple orchard, you need not *buy* the apples from your collective 'self'.

1,) Consumer Cooperatives *sell* the product back to the co-owners and collect a profit during that transaction that a committee then doles out in a Tyranny of the Majority fashion.

1a.) Imputed Production only sells product to non-owners, and only when there is surplus, and treats that profit as an investment from that payer - causing ownership and control to be automatically distributed at the point of sale back to the actor who was willing to pay for it.  This system minimizes and nearly eliminates the trading of goods since the owner of Sources does not buy the Objective, but owns it already as a result of his owning the Sources.  The trading of goods will tend toward zero but does not reach stasis because of newcomers into the system (even just babies being born), and because people's interests change across time.

2.) Consumer Cooperatives are "Democratically Controlled" with one-member/one-vote.

2a.) Imputed Production is far more autarchic- where any member can 'fork' his portion of the Sources and secede from the union or sell those shares if a split is attempted that is finer than reasonable divisibility (you can't both feed a single milk-cow grain and NOT feed that cow grain, but can divide a herd).

2b.) Each member has exactly as much vote power as he has ownership. If you own 11% of a roto-tiller and your neighbor owns 22%, then you have only half as much vote power in decisions such as "how often should we change the oil".

3.) Every Consumer Cooperative I know of is only concerned with buying products that were made by Capitalists.

3a.) Imputed Production is primarily about ownership and control of the entire tree of production - recursively, and works toward a Vertically Integrated Commons where we, the people, own the farms and factories and land and water rights and all the other Sources and supporting Sources required to reproduce those things.

(*)In cases where an agent has invested more than he can use directly, he can sell that product to agents who do not yet have sufficient ownership, but under the strict condition (enforced by a Terms of Operation over that organization) that any profit collected during that sale be treated as an investment from that payer - so the organization can grow in size while avoiding the troubles of centralization and overaccumulation that plague nearly every other endeavor that even begins to succeed.

We can write a Terms-of-Operation that we can then apply to Property Rights ... a sort of Property Left if you will, that will allow us to use regular ownership as the basis of a new approach to protecting physical assets that we might more efficiently hold in common.

I think of it as a "simulated commons" that is constructed somewhat artificially - in that we do not wait for a government or corporation to finally do the "right thing", but instead make that action ourselves, in a collective manner.

Part of the difficulty comes in discovering what 'rules' or 'laws' must be included in the Terms-of-Operation.

I believe I have found 2 of those rules:

1.) Consumers are the investors who are the *real* co-owners of those Means of Production and the 'return' is the product itself which they *already own* as a side-effect of their owning the Sources of those products.  This creates a truly use-value endeavor.

2.) Profit is treated as Payer Investment. This means late-comers pay Price above cost, but that overpayment is invested *for them* in even more Means of Production - so that each Users incrementally gains the property they need to protect them from paying profit in the future.  It is a negative-feedback loop.

1.) Organize Users to fund and therefore co-own the physical layer for their own benefit.  This will allow us to pay only Costs since Profit is undefined when we do not buy the product but own it *already* as a side-effect of owning the Physical Sources.

2.) When surplus product (bandwidth or storage in this case) is sold to Users who have insufficient ownership, we should collect Profit from them*, but must treat that overpayment as Payer Investment - growing the net work while simultaneously and continuously distributing the co-ownership of that net work to those who are willing to pay for it.

(*) It may sound hypocritical to say we should collect Profit (charge Price above Cost), but if we do not, the Product will be resold for a Profit anyway, and yet will not be under our collective control, and so will not be able to apply the Negative-Feedback loop (treating Profit as Payer investment) needed to insure every User gains the Ownership needed to help them STOP paying Profit - for the co-owner of Physical Sources must pay costs, but does not BUY the Product since he owns it already as a result of his owning the Sources.
Real property to invest and hold some physical property for their own benefit.

Investment from Object Users (price above cost or 'profit') is high in the early stages of development, but approaches zero as each citizen (consumer) gains their own percentage of real ownership in the Physical Sources of production.

One way to approach this is through a legally binding Social Contract that Owners could apply a to collective Physical Sources so profit would always be interpreted as User Investment whenever the products were given, rented, shared, sold or traded.

This inter-owner Trade Agreement should allow maximum divisibility so any user may opt-out or 'fork' their portion to treat it differently without needing the approval of all other owners.  For instance, let's say you have gained ownership in beef cattle because you paid PriceAboveCost for hamburgers.  You may vote (weighted by your % of ownership) on how ALL those animals are treated as a group, but if you have some special goals that few other owners would agree on, you can also *DIVIDE* out a realistic portion  from the whole if your ownership is large enough to meet the minimum granularity.  So if you want your animals to be fed grass instead of grain, the granularity would be at ''one animal'', since it is impossible to feed part of an animal one diet, and the other portion another...  In another case, if you are only concerned about how the meat is packaged, then the granularity is much finer, and you should be able to meet those goals - though it would be your responsibility to organize that division and to pay any extra costs (such as wages) required to do any extra work.

Any group of co-owners will disagree on policy over shared property.

Some types of 'contiguous' things, such as roads, sewer, water, electricity, gas lines, etc. need more logistic restrictions in their divisibility.

Profit is an inverse measure of competition and a direct measure of monopoly.  Profit is the portion of Price, Rent, Tax or Interest that goes beyond real costs.  That profit becomes usury unless it is treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it.

Profit should be interpreted as a plea for development because it measures consumer dependence.  Usury gained against consumers disrespects their natural desire to grow, so hampers true progress.

Profit collected as a reward for the owners is secondarily troublesome because it inverts the goals of that corporation from abundance and freedom toward scarcity and power.

If your are alone on the island and 20 more people suddenly arrive, how are 'we' going to decide how to collectively manage the available Physical Sources?

Collective ownership as a body - in-corp-oration is the original and only valid purpose of government.

Citizens and consumers are the same, and should be the owners for maximum performance, freedom and peace.

Whether you call it a church, a city, a club, commons, community, company, coop, corporation, county, cult... managing collective property is difficult.

Business and government are separated now only because we understanding that most businesses, especially the larger ones are somehow not fully aligned with the goals of the rest of society.  It is the mistreatment of profit that inverts our original goals of peace and abundance.

Owners may accidentally squander their inheritance.  1st-world nations are covered with barren and even poisonous plants and mostly worthless animals - no chickens in the yards and the bees are dying.

Originating Owners hold no special status; each consumer who pays more than cost becomes an investor in Physical Sources to insure their ownership of future Objects.

http://P2PFoundation.net/Category:User_Owned

....

Tenative proposal for a "Contract" or some kind of "Terms of Operation" for a business, organization, or even between just two property owners.

Wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeshare

==DEFINITIONS:

    * The term 'Physical Sources' denotes Capital or Land such as living organisms, tools, real estate.
    * The term 'Object' denotes a tangible or ephemeral product, output or purpose of a Source such as the harvest from a farm, a ride in a car, the shade of a tree.
    * Ther term 'Type' denotes the class or variety of some thing with infinite potential such as the genetics of an organism, a computer program, video or audio data, the design of a tool.
    * The term 'Instance' denotes a single copy of any Type of thing such as a living organism, a CD containing a computer program or video/audio data, a physical tool.
    * The term 'Recipient' denotes an entity which receives a good or service.

==TERMS OF OPERATION
As owner, you may use this Object Instance for any purpose.  If you trade, sell, give, lease, rent or otherwise make this Object available to a Receipient you must:

1. Accompany that Object Instance with a paper or digital copy of this agreement.
2. Invest the difference between selling price and production costs in more Physical Sources.
3. The investment made in #2 shall vest to the Recipient as fractional ownership after ??? (time or condition)?

* The Owners may charge Non-Owning Users a price above cost.  This may cause the Owners to seek scarcity of others (destroy all competitors) because reducing competition increases profit.  This is balanced by treating profit as an investment from the User who paid it.
*  Non-Owning Users do not have control.  This is balanced by treating profit as an investment from the User who paid it.  This causes every User to gain Co-Ownership in Physical Sources (he now owns a tiny % in some new trees being planted for him and other non-owning users that are paying price above cost).  The ability for current Owners to collect profit against this User in the future (after his investment starts producing) is then reduced because that User will own as many "at-cost" Objects (apples) as his % of Physical Sources (tiny slice of the apple orchard) produces.  This may seem insignificant, but it adds up, and 'balances' the system.  By understanding profit to be a User's investment, we see his 'investments' (profit) tapers toward zero as he gains Ownership in Physical Sources because that Source Ownership also automatically gives him Object Ownership, and those Objects are a replacement (competition) for some of what the current Owners were selling.  As this settles, competition approaches perfection and no Objects (apples) even need be sold because the Consumers that need them already Own them even before they are produced because of their sufficient Ownership in the Sources of those Objects.  Whew!
* Owner votes are weighted by their % of ownership in each indivisible Physical Source.
* Minor groups who lose a vote may split/fork/divide from the majority.  If 80% of the Owners want the orchard sprayed, the remaining 20% can opt-out by partitioning off a section of the farm from those chemicals.
* Solutions to voting, granularity and divisibility can be very complicated, and this needs further discussion, but is not specific to Object Users being Source Owners.

* Help consumers organize to invest and co-own Physical Sources of Production for the purpose of "at-cost" product under their full control.
* Issue GNUrho Product Futures as bonds to deliver goods or services within some window of time.
* Handle profit as a investment in more Physical Sources of production with the ownership of those shares vesting to the original PAYER.  Another way to say this is "profit is treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it".
* Protect the worker's (and every payer's) ability to consume.
* Do not protect or artificially extend prices, wages or employment.
* Use private property law to syndicate the growth of micro-states within whichever containing state you find yourself.
* Help consumers co-own Land and Capital to such a scale that those groups become citizens of cities that they literally and fully OWN for themselves without external control.
* These co-owners set policies between themselves with regard to those Physical Sources.
* Avoid the Tyranny of the Majority through "pre-emptive secession" implemented as voluntary funding that side-steps the coercive "slush-fund turn dragnet" trouble of traditional taxation.

The payers are the initial and recurring investors,
And so should be the full and finally only owners.

= Definition and Qualifications
Physical property has initial and recurring costs that must be covered to prevent organizational collapse.
Costs are gathered from consumers as normal, by charging them 'market' price.
This is held in place by treating Profit as User Investment.
An organization is Consumer Owned if the initial AND recurring Investors become the full and only Owners.

All Profit collected from the sale of any Product must be treated as an Investment from the Consumer who paid it - to vest as his real property within some window of time...

The Contract never requires an Owner to give or sell goods or services, only that Sources be made available "at cost" to those with which he does trade.

Each Physical Source must be treated as maximally divisible to allow pre-emptive secession.

Crowd-Funded organization where the only shareholders were the very consumers of that product.

Their ROI for taking risk would be to avoid paying profit - since the owner of an Apple tree does not *buy* the Apples from himself, but owns those Objectives already, as a side-effect of his owning the Sources.

milk-dairy does not purchase the milk from the collective others, but owns it ALREADY - as a result of his co-owning the cattle.

He doesn't buy the milk from the dairy, but the collective will need to track how much milk he has withdrawn so he is not able to cheat the other co-owners out of their share of the product.

One way to achieve this tracking could be through the issuance of "Scheduling Tickets" or "Allocation Tokens" that each co-owner would receive after pre-paying for the next round of production.

Each co-owner would have a Title of Ownership proving their shares of property in the Means of Production (such as the dairy), and they would also receive a booklet of tickets that they could tear-out and use to 'pay' for the product that they already own (they would not be buying the product, only proving that they are entitled to that amount).

A nice thing about this technique is that the tickets could be passed to others - making them more anonymous, and also allowing them to be used as a crude sort of currency.

Another way to do this would be for the collective to keep a 'register' that records whether or not the co-owner has collected his share of the product for that round.

Let's examine the "other side of the equation".

Let's try to protect the Worker's need to Consume by helping them organize to have ownership in the Means of Production from which they need the Outputs instead of trying to own the Means of Production for which they happen to have skills in operating.

So, instead of Workers trying to own the factory where they work, they instead direct-invest* in things like Milk Dairies, Chicken Farms, Avocado Orchards, etc. because those are the Sources of the things they actually need, and let the potential Consumers of what they produce own that factory.

(*) By 'direct-invest' I mean the Consumers would invest to co-own the Fields, Farms etc. and be 'paid' (their ROI) in Product instead of Profit - for the Product would never be sold since it would already be the property of those who intend to actually use it.

What I describe is a "short circuit" across the typical market.

Where the consumers do not buy the finished goods, but own them already - even before they are completed - as a side-effect of their ownership in the Physical Sources of those goods.

1.) Since the product is not sold, there is no chance for the government to collect sales tax.

2.) Since the product is not sold, there is no chance for the government to disallow that production (buying raw milk is illegal in many parts of the US).

The customers *already* pay all the Costs of production.
We, the consumers, foot the entire bill.
And we *also* pay Profit because we choose to pay late.

But if we could organize to pay early - to collectively purchase the Physical Sources of products and services we need - then, we would still need to pay all costs.

But since we would own the objective as a side-effect of our owning the Sources, we would no be 'buying' from ourselves, and so COULD NOT pay Profit, for that final transaction would not even occur!

Profit is UNDEFINED when the Customers are the Owners of the Means of Production.

Why are we so disorganized and/or terrified of ownership that we leave it up to those that intend to subjugate and dominate us?

And instead of taking a stance through property ownership, we beg and plead with the current owners to "please do the right thing" - even though the current owners have NO POSSIBLE CHANCE of "doing the right thing" for they owe investors who expect Price be kept above Cost.

And Price can only be kept above Cost during Scarcity.

So we see the drive for Scarcity is caused by choosing investors who expect Profit as a return.

The drive for Scarcity can be eliminated by choosing investors who expect Product as a return.

But only Customers can use Product as a return.

So the answer is to attract Customers to pre-pay for Product - while using those pre-payments as actual investments which are then property co-owned by those Customers who benefit from the use-value of that production, and never need strive for Scarcity, for the product will usually never be sold.

In the case where a Customer-Owner has too much product: the solution is to sell that product to non-owners, and even to charge Price above Cost (Profit) against those late comers *BUT* - here is the trick - the Profit received must be treated as though that Customer had just made an investment toward even more Physical Sources.

Treating Profit as that payer's investment will allow the collective to include others while simultaneously avoiding the typical problems of overaccumulation and excessive concentration of control that cause even the most well-intentioned organizations to finally fail to meet the needs of those they were initially formed to serve (the customers of course!).