April 2011 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

travails of self-publishing
by Michel Bauwens 14 Apr '11

14 Apr '11

of import to the p2p coop venture: http://craphound.com/?p=3404 -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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exponential growth AND depletion
by Michel Bauwens 14 Apr '11

14 Apr '11

Dear paul, I'm hoping you can introduce this to our readers, see http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay10/exponential-growth05-10.html Michel -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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JOURNAL: The Education Bubble
by Kevin Carson 14 Apr '11

14 Apr '11

Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader: JOURNAL: The Education Bubble via Global Guerrillas by John Robb on 4/13/11 Peter Thiel (Paypal and other ventures) has been making some waves for his position that higher education in the US is the next bubble. In short, he's right. Given what we now have available in terms of tools, it should be possible to get an Ivy league education for $20 a month. Instead we are getting a stagnant product that is so out of date that it doesn't deliver much social and economic value. Even worse: it's undergoing hyper-inflationary price increases. So, what should you do? Thiel says you should refuse to participate and drop out. Unfortunately, that's not a solution. Just because something is vastly overpriced (like houses or stocks), it doesn't mean that it is worthless. A degree is still valuable because it's valued in the workplace (even though it's not the golden ticket to employment anymore). The solution to this problem is to help create employment opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don't use a degree as a gating mechanism. A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global econonomic and social sprawl. Create the pull (the opportunity) and the rest will follow. Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to Global Guerrillas using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

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Fwd: david harvey - video-speaking-on-the-enigma-of-capital-at-mit
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

thanks dante, for the info on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Harvey_(geographer) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 1:28 AM Subject: david harvey - video-speaking-on-the-enigma-of-capital-at-mit To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> http://davidharvey.org/2011/03/video-speaking-on-the-enigma-of-capital-at-m… <http://davidharvey.org/2011/03/video-speaking-on-the-enigma-of-capital-at-m…>@ around 42min30 seconds - excerpts : "not many people teaching alternatives in universities. they want to teach "neo-liberal ethics" - thats a contradiction in terms" "anti-poverty initiatives ? you are in the wrong group, should join "anti wealth" movements..." "... society that does not depend on 3 percent compound growth, but on the development of human potential ..." "development of human capacities, there is infinite possibilities, growth, there is not" book - The Enigma of Capital, and the crises of capitalism, by David Harvey http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Capital-David-Harvey/dp/1846683084 book review : http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-enigma-of… -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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a new approach to protect local nature from corporate destruction
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/drafting-natures-constitution Dear Eli, this is very important, though I'm not sure if this legal strategy would work outside the US? Would you have time to present this to our audience, thanks for telling me if not, Michel -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Re: [P2P-F] Segundo Evento Software Libre y Economía Social
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

Hi Pablo, this is great news but I really can't make it without financing, but I can help promote, via franco for the spanish material, and me for the english, if you have the latter available, also, I'm putting you in touch with our p2p labour friends, see in cc, could you perhaps update http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Software_Cooperatives? Michel (orsan, thanks for forwarding to stephen, can't find his email right now) 2011/4/12 Pablo Vannini <pablo(a)gcoop.com.ar> > Hi Michel, Pablo from gcoop here. I'm glad to announce you that we will > organize the Second Event of Free Software an Social Economy ( > http://www.gcoop.coop/sles-2011) . > > In this opportunity we will pay the tickets for some Coops of free software > of Brazil, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay, this is the first step to try to > have some organization between coops. I don't know where you will be in May > but it would be great to have your support and maybe your presence if you > can effort that. please keep in contact. > best regards > > -- > > Lic. Pablo A. Vannini > gcoop - Cooperativa de Software Libre > Velasco 508 Depto A > www.gcoop.coop 005411-4855-4390 > Buenos Aires - Argentina > > -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: [gang8] Why Iceland voted NO
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

Dante, is there a way to subscribe to Michael Hudson's editorials? Michel ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 9:20 PM Subject: Fwd: [gang8] Why Iceland voted NO To: econowmix(a)googlegroups.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Hudson <michael.hudson(a)earthlink.net> Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 4:03 PM Subject: [gang8] Why Iceland voted NO To: GANG8 <gang8(a)yahoogroups.com> Dear Gang, Here’s my commentary on Iceland’s NO vote. I look forward to the country’s countersuit against Britain for damages caused by Brown’s peremptory action. Michael *Why Iceland Voted ‘No” * Michael Hudson About 75% of Iceland’s voters turned out on Saturday to reject the Social Democratic-Green government’s proposal to pay $5.2 billion to the British and Dutch bank insurance agencies for the Landsbanki-Icesave collapse. Every one of Iceland’s six electoral districts voted in the “No” column – by a national margin of 60% (down from 93% in January 2010). The vote reflected widespread belief that government negotiators had not been vigorous in pleading Iceland’s legal case. The situation is reminiscent of World War I’s Inter-Ally war debt tangle. Lloyd George described the negotiations between U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Stanley Baldwin regarding Britain’s arms debt as “a negotiation between a weasel and its quarry. The result was a bargain which has brought international debt collection into disrepute … the Treasury officials were not exactly bluffing, but they put forward their full demand as a start in the conversations, and to their surprise Dr. Baldwin said he thought the terms were fair, and accepted them. … this crude job, jocularly called a ‘settlement,’ was to have a disastrous effect upon the whole further course of negotiations …” And so it was with Iceland’s negotiation with Britain. True, they got a longer payment period for the Icesave payout. But how is Iceland to obtain the pounds sterling and Euros in the face of its shrinking economy. This is the major payment risk that is still unaddressed. It threatens to plunge the krona’s exchange rate. The settlement proposal did lower the interest rates from 5.5% to 3.2%, but it included running interest charges on the bailout since 2008. It even included the extra-high interest charges that led depositors to put their funds in Icesave in the first place. Icelanders viewed these interest premiums as compensation for risks – that were taken and should be lost by the high-interest Internet depositors. So the Icesave problem will now go to the courts. The relevant EU directive states that “that the cost of financing such schemes must be borne, in principle, by credit institutions themselves.” As priority claimants Britain and the Netherlands will indeed get the lion’s share of what is left from the Landsbanki corpse. That was not the issue before Iceland’s voters. They simply aimed at saving Iceland from an open-ended obligation to take the bank’s losses onto the public balance sheet without a clear plan of just how Iceland is to get the money to pay. Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/johanna_sigurd…><http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/johanna_sigurd…> warns that the vote may trigger “political and economic chaos.” But trying to pay also threatens this. The past year has seen the disastrous experience of Greece, Ireland and now Portugal in taking reckless private sector bank debts onto the public balance sheet. It is hard to expect any sovereign nation to impose a decade or more of deep depression on its economy inasmuch as international law permits every nation to act in its own vital interests. Attempts by creditors to persuade nations to bail out their banks at public expense thus is ultimately an exercise in public relations. Icelanders have seen how successful Argentina has been since it imposed a crew haircut on its creditors. They also have seen the economic and political disruption in Ireland and Greece resulting from trying to pay beyond their means. Creditors did not give accurate advice when they told Ireland that it could pay for its bank failures without plunging the economy into depression. Ireland’s experience stands as a warning to other countries about trusting overly optimistic forecasts by central bankers. In Iceland’s case, in November 2008 the IMF staff projected yearend-2009 gross external public and private debt at 160% of GDP – but observed that an exchange rate depreciation of 30% would push the ratio to 240% of GDP, which would be “clearly unsustainable.” But the most recent IMF staff report (January 14, 2011) shows end-2009 gross external debt at 308% of GDP, and estimates end-2010 gross external debt at 333% – even *before* taking the Icesave and other debts into account! The main problem with Iceland’s obligation to Britain and the Netherlands is that foreign debt is not paid out of GDP. Apart from what is recovered from Landsbanki (now with the help of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office), the money must be paid in exports. But there has been no negotiation with Britain and Holland over just what Icelandic goods and services these countries would be willing to take in payment. Already in the 1920s, John Maynard Keynes pointed out that the Allied creditor nation had to take some responsibility just how Germany could pay its reparations, if not by exporting more to these countries. In practice, German cities borrowed in New York, turned the dollars over to the Reichsbank, which paid Britain and France, which paid the money back to the U.S. Government for their Inter-Ally Arms debts. In other words, Germany tried to “borrow its way out of debt.” It never works over time. The normal practice would be for Iceland to appoint a Group of Experts to lay out the strongest possible case. No sovereign nation can be expected to acquiesce in imposing a generation of financial austerity, economic shrinkage and forced emigration of labor to pay for the failed neoliberal experiment that has dragged down so many other European economies. 875 words __._,_.___ Reply to sender<michael.hudson(a)earthlink.net?subject=Re%3A%20Why%20Iceland%20voted%20NO>| Reply to group <gang8(a)yahoogroups.com?subject=Re%3A%20Why%20Iceland%20voted%20NO>| Reply via web post<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxbWR0NzRqBF9TAzk3MzU5N…>| Start a New Topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlZ2htYzNlBF9TAzk3MzU5N…> Messages in this topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/message/15739;_ylc=X3oDMTM2YjNwMHRmBF9T…>( 1) Recent Activity: - New Members<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/members;_ylc=X3oDMTJmZmozdTJnBF9TAzk3Mz…> 1 Visit Your Group<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8;_ylc=X3oDMTJlNHBxc3JuBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BG…> The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics. To unsubscribe, email: gang8-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com [image: Yahoo! Groups]<http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkcGJuc2Q2BF9TAzk3NDc2NTkwBGdycElkAzEyM…> Switch to: Text-Only<[email protected]?subject=Change+Delivery+Format:+Traditional>, Daily Digest <[email protected]?subject=Email+Delivery:+Digest> • Unsubscribe <gang8-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe> • Terms of Use <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> . __,_._,___ -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Fwd: [gang8] Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism column from today
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 7:20 PM Subject: Fwd: [gang8] Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism column from today To: econowmix(a)googlegroups.com *excerpted from article below :* * * * http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/03/omg-greenspan-claims-financial-rent-… * * * *"the defective growth model of the last 30 years, one that rested on stagnant worker wages and relied on rising levels of debt which fueled bigger and bigger asset bubbles, is now presented as a virtue."* * * ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Hudson <michael.hudson(a)earthlink.net> Date: Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 3:19 PM Subject: [gang8] Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism column from today To: GANG8 <gang8(a)yahoogroups.com> *This column is so good that I must share it with you. Michael ** WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 2011 **OMG, Greenspan Claims Financial Rent Seeking Promotes Prosperity! *I was already mundo unhappy with an Alan Greenspan op-ed in the Financial Times, which takes issue with Dodd Frank for ultimately one and only one disingenuous and boneheaded reason: interfering with the rent seeking of the financial sector is a Bad Idea. It might lead those wonderful financial firms to go overseas! US companies and investors might not be able to get their debt fix as regularly or in an many convenient colors and flavors as they’ve become accustomed to! But the Maestro managed to outdo himself in the category of tarting up the destructive behaviors of our new financial overlords. What about those regulators? Never never can they keep up with those clever bankers. Greenspan airbrushes out the fact that he is the single person most responsible for the need for massive catch-up. Not only due was he actively hostile to supervision (and if you breed for incompetence, you are certain to get it), but he also gave banks a green light to go hog wild in derivatives land. And on top of that, he allowed banks to develop their ownrisk models and metrics, which also insured the regulators would not be able to oversee effectively (there would be a completely different attitude and level of understanding if the regulators had adopted the posture that they weren’t going to approve new products unless they understood them and could also model the exposures). And the most important omission is that the we just had a global economic near-death experience thanks to the recklessness of the financial best and brightest. You’d never know that if you read the Greenspan piece, which merely argues against the idea of restricting financial activity under the guise of objecting to certain provisions of Dodd Frank. I keep referring to this passage of a 2010 paper by Andrew Haldane, the Executive Director of Financial Stability for the Bank of England because Greenspan, the Administration, and other banking industry cheerleaders keep pretending that the crisis was a mere blip and their ongoing propagandizing needs to be countered: Table 1 looks at the present value of output losses for the world and the UK assuming different fractions of the 2009 loss are permanent…. As Table 1 shows, these losses are multiples of the static costs, lying anywhere between one and five times annual GDP. Put in money terms, that is an output loss equivalent to between $60 trillion and $200 trillion for the world economy and between £1.8 trillion and £7.4 trillion for the UK. As Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed, to call these numbers “astronomical” would be to do astronomy a disservice: there are only hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. “Economical” might be a better description. It is clear that banks would not have deep enough pockets to foot this bill. Assuming that a crisis occurs every 20 years, the systemic levy needed to recoup these crisis costs would be in excess of $1.5 trillion per year. The total market capitalisation of the largest global banks is currently only around $1.2 trillion. Fully internalising the output costs of financial crises would risk putting banks on the same trajectory as the dinosaurs, with the levy playing the role of the meteorite. In other words, the financial system as it is presently constituted is so destructive to society at large that very radical interventions are warranted to reduce the costs it imposes on others. To put it another way, it is an extraordinarily inefficient at looting. And Haldane’s core observation, that severe financial crises result in permanent output losses (more colloquially, a permanent reduction in the standard of living) is not controversial. And I’ve recently corresponded with Haldane and he stands by this rough and ready estimate. Yet as horrific as the Greenspan piece is, he manages to sink to unimaginable new lows with the Big Lie he offers at its close: The vexing question confronting regulators is whether this rising share of finance has been a necessary condition of growth in the past half century, or coincidence. In moving forward with regulatory repair, we may have to address the as yet unproved tie between the degree of financial complexity and higher standards of living. In other words, the defective growth model of the last 30 years, one that rested on stagnant worker wages and relied on rising levels of debt which fueled bigger and bigger asset bubbles, is now presented as a virtue. Consider this alternative formulation from ECONNED: Let’s use a different metaphor to illustrate the problem. Say a biotech firm creates a wonder crop, the most amazing creation in the history of agriculture. It yields far more calories per acre than anything else, is nutritionally extremely complete, and can be planted and harvested with far less machinery and equipment than any other plant. It is tasty and can be prepared in a wide variety of ways. It is sweet too, so it can be used in place of sugar and high fructose corn syrup at lower cost. We’ll call this XCrop. XCrop is added as a new element in the food pyramid and endorsed by nutritionists and public health officials all over the globe. It turns out that XCrop also is an aphrodisiac and a stimulant (hmm, wonder how they engineered that in) and between enhanced libido and more abundant food supplies, the world population rises at a faster rate. Sales of XCrop boom, displacing traditional agriculture. A large amount of farmland is turned over from growing other types of produce to XCrop. XCrop is so efficient that agricultural land is taken out of production and turned to other uses, such as housing, malls, and parks. While some old-fashioned farms still exist, they are on a much smaller scale and a lot of the providers of equipment to traditional farms have gone out of business. Twenty years into the widespread use of XCrop, doctors discover that diabetes and some peculiar new hormonal ailments are growing at an explosive rate. It turns out they are highly correlated with the level of XCrop consumption in an individual’s diet. Long-term consumption of high levels of XCrop interferes with the pituitary gland, which controls almost all the other endocrine glands in the body and the pancreas. The public faces a health crisis and no way back. It would be very difficult and costly to put the repurposed farmland back into production. Some of the types of equipment needed for old-fashioned farming are no longer made. And with the population so much larger than before, you’d need even more farmland than before. The world population has become dependent on the calories produced by XCrop, so going off it quickly means starvation for some. But staying on it is toxic too. And expecting users simply to restrain themselves will likely prove difficult. The aphrodisiac and stimulant effects of XCrop make it addictive. Advanced economies have become hooked on debt technology, which, like XCrop, is habit forming and hard to wean oneself off of due to its lower cost and the fact that other approaches have fallen into partial disuse (for instance, use of FICO-based credit scoring has displaced evaluations that include an assessment of the borrower’s character and knowledge of the community, such as stability of his employer). In fact, the current debt technology results in information loss, via disincentives to do a thorough job of borrower due diligence (why bother if you are reselling the paper?) and monitoring of the credit over the life of the loan. And the proposed fixes are not workable. The Obama proposal, that the originator retain 5% of the deal and take correspondingly lower fees, is not high enough to change behavior. And a level that would be high enough to make the originator feel the impact of a bad decision would undercut the cost efficiencies that made securitization popular in the first place. You’d have better decisions, but less lending, and higher interest rates. That’s ultimately a desirable outcome, but as in the XCrop situation, no one seems prepar*ed to accept that a move to healthier practices will result in much more costly and less readil*y available debt. The authorities want to believe they can somehow have their cake and eat it too. And in case you think this reading is a tad too downbeat, a very good piece in the National Journal by Michael Hirsh, The Resurrection, demonstrates not merely that perilous little has changed in the wake of the financial crisis, but that in many respects, the pathology has gotten even worse: Government data indicate that lending abroad is up even as investment in plants and equipment at home continues to decline or remain flat as a percentage of GDP. FDIC-insured banks loaned nearly twice as much, $62.7 billion, to banks in other countries as of the end of 2010 as they did the year before… Regulators in Washington, in Basel, Switzerland, and elsewhere have failed to agree on rules for the much-touted “resolution authority” in the new law. Theoretically, this rule is supposed to give the United States the right to liquidate or unwind a failing firm, no matter how big, without the systemic crash that nearly followed the Lehman bankruptcy of September 2008. The rule is still just a draft, however, and so far it doesn’t look very workable internationally. That’s because countries are addressing the same issue in very different ways….Straddling all these fractured lines are Citi and the other big global banks. “Citibank is a $1.8 trillion company, in 171 countries with 550 clearance and settlement systems,” says one senior Federal Reserve Board regulator who would speak frankly only on condition of anonymity. “We think we’re going to effectively resolve that using Dodd-Frank? Good luck!”….Bove, a widely followed banking analyst on Wall Street, calls Dodd-Frank “the dumbest piece of legislation ever created by the U.S. Congress. They wanted the big banks to have less control, yet they built in rules that ensure the increased control of the financial sector by big banks…..“And there is nothing in Dodd-Frank that will do anything to stop a meltdown from occurring.” We’ve been critical of the phony resolution authority as well as other features of Dodd Frank. But the reason is, as the critics Hirsh cites remind us, that the legislation failed to accomplish its stated aims and may be increasing big bank power. Greenspan, by contrast, clearly object to the basic premise of Dodd Frank, that governments should have any meaningful say over the operation of financial financial firms. Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But the true madness isn’t that Greenspan’s remarks border on deranged; he’s merely a useful and highly paid idiot. It’s that anything he says is still listened to after the huge cost his misguided policies have inflicted on all of us. __._,_.___ Reply to sender<[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Yves%20Smith%27s%20Naked%20Capitalism%20column%20from%20today>| Reply to group<[email protected]?subject=Re%3A%20Yves%20Smith%27s%20Naked%20Capitalism%20column%20from%20today>| Reply via web post<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxaXNrZDRmBF9TAzk3MzU5N…>| Start a New Topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaDk5N2s3BF9TAzk3MzU5N…> Messages in this topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8/message/15709;_ylc=X3oDMTM2ZXE3NjVlBF9T…>( 1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gang8;_ylc=X3oDMTJlbmlrYmo3BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BG…> The gang8 list is devoted to Creditary Economics. To unsubscribe, email: gang8-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com MARKETPLACE Find useful articles and helpful tips on living with Fibromyalgia. 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Re: [P2P-F] is p2p akin to anarchism (does basic income require a centralized state?)
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

(michael, I'm hoping you have an opinion on the basic income query formulated in the subject line) Dear Sy: yes, that was it, speenhamland, and indeed not a basic income scheme as we envisage it today, but enough to keep labour out of the productive system and hence inacceptable to the rising industrial class ... if I remember Polanyi, it's the abolition of Speenhamland, and thus the full commodification of labour, which made the first capitalist boom of the 19th cy possible I don't have an answer to your question, but if the basic income is unconditional, as it should be, it would require rather minimal bureaucratic involvement; it could say, be managed by a number of territitorial trusts: so far, it' just a hunch that there is more than one way to organize such a scheme, and that we should not automatically equate it with a central disbursing mechanism. I copy Michael Opielka, a basic income advocate and expert in Germany. as for the broad p2p vs anarchism debate; I formulate it as follows: p2p theory is a new emancipatory theory emerging within the era of digital networks and in the context of the emergence of a cognitive working class (knowledge workers) that tries to reformulate emancipatory possibilities; it does so in an 'integral' fashion, not a 'ideological' fashion, i.e. it sources in many previous emancipatory traditions, to see what is still applicable today; this brings into contact with the traditions of anarchism, socialism, marxism, and other traditions which can be useful to reformulate emancipatory possibilities; however, it does not feel compelled to consider itself as a continuation of such traditions and to move within the confines of these earlier ideologies I want to stress a few points regarding the state; first, that I think change requires working both outside and inside institutions, that are traversed by the same contradictions as society in general; second, that these institutions must be profoundly transformed rom within and without; third, that the current state forms would be fundamentally incompatible with a commons and p2p centered society; fourth that a lot of them may become unnecessary and obsolete if we can find p2p alternatives for them; however, I would insist that there is something like society and a collective interest, which is not simply the cumulation of private or civil or p2p interests; and that this collective field requires common institutions, something like 'public authorities'; however, these may be quite unrecognizable with what we today see as 'the state', once they are full democratic and participatory; sixth, that 'withering away' is a hypothesis but not a full certainty. I cannot see realistic visions of society as consisting exclusively from bottom up aggregations or private or collective contracts and associations Michel On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Sy <sytaffel(a)riseup.net> wrote: > I think you're referring to the Speenhamland system - which wasn't a > universal system (it was mainly limited to southern counties in England), > was mandated by judges - part of a centralised and hierarchical system of > lawmaking - and was paid by local parishes - ie it was managed and > distributed local arm of another national, centralised and hierarchical > structure, the Church of England. > > I'm intrigued to hear of how you envisage a basic income system without > some for of centralised apparatus to ensure that the income is universally > available and equitably distributed. > > I'm less convinced that a substantive difference exists between P2P theory > and anarchism in that there needs to be reform (particularly in the > formation of voluntary networks of self-aggregation which can fulfil roles > currently undertaken by the state/market) before revolution. While there are > currents of anarchist thought which call for the immediate destruction of > the state, there are others which contend that networks based on mutual aid > need to be created beforehand (Chomsky for example has regularly ridiculed > anarchists who argue that we could transition into a stateless society > today). > > Sy > > > On 12/04/2011 18:28, Michel Bauwens wrote: > > thanks Sy, and for the comment by Kevin as well, > > I think that it is indeed the case that at least some of us believe in the > necessity of taking care of the collective field (for which the name state > would be a misnomer), but also that the existing state apparatus needs to be > transformed before it can 'wither' away, and that may be taken as an > essential difference with the anarchist tradition, > > however, I am not sure that a basic income does require a centralized > apparatus (it could be, it is not something I have thought true myself), > > while I personally support the basic income, it is not a central concern > because I see it as too serious a threat to the current relations of > production to see it as acceptable under current circumstances .. if you > read polanyi's history of capitalism, he shows how the existing basic income > of the late 18th cy, had to be destroyed to make capitalism possible, (book, > Great Transformation, but I have forgotten the name of the basic income like > support scheme that existed in the UK at that period) > > Michel > > On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Sy <sytaffel(a)riseup.net> wrote: > >> While there are some productive similarities between anarcho-syndicalism >> and P2P theory to say they are the same thing goes too far... While the >> notions of voluntary self-aggregation are central to both, and both may >> agree upon Bakhtin's claim that 'Freedom without socialism is privilege >> and injustice, and socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality' there >> are also substantive differences between the two systems (or the two >> categories, as within each there exist multiple related and overlapping >> proposals and ideals). >> >> As Marcos suggests the specific social and cultural context of late >> capitalism, with not just the Internet, but also a globalised economic >> system present a different set of affordances for modes of production, some >> of the liberal capitalist takes on peer production from people like Yochai >> Benkler's Wealth of Networks cover this stuff very well and explain why >> these socio-technical structures are amenable to different types of economic >> production. Another key difference is the envisioned role of the state - >> many bits of P2P literature, not only some of Michel's writing, but also >> material from people like Bernard Stiegler and Antonio Negri propose forms >> of universal citizen's income which would enable actors to freely >> self-aggregate within P2P networks without having to worry about being >> unable to feed themselves, access medical care or send their kids to school. >> Any such form of universally distributed income would tend to require some >> form of centralised body or state apparatus to distribute this funding. The >> existence of this type of state structure presents a differentiation from >> most anarchist models where there exists no state. >> >> Its these types of difference which in my eyes make P2P theory a genuinely >> new and exciting set of ideas rather than simply rehashing centuries old >> ideas. >> >> Cheers >> >> Sy >> >> On 12/04/2011 06:38, p2p-foundation-request(a)lists.ourproject.org wrote: >> >> Re: [P2P-F] is p2p akin to anarchism >> >> >> Michel, I would offer a little counter-argument to Mr. Hardy's comment. >> Mainly that while syndicalism does indeed advocate a style of governance >> very much like that as hoped for in the P2pFoundation (as well as myself), >> the scale and diversity at which the Internet **enables** is something that is >> far beyond what could ever be managed or orchestrated by non-networked means >> (at least in the near term within scientific materialism). The desire for >> trade and diversity would otherwise make primitive syndicalism fail. Indeed >> both communism and capitalism arose from these failures. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Marcospangaia.sf.net >> >> On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 6:12 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com>wrote: >> >> >> > views very welcome,>> Michel>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------> From: Facebook <update+pjiidwm(a)facebookmail.com> <update+pjiidwm(a)facebookmail.com>> Date: Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 10:49 PM> Subject: Henry Edward Hardy commented on your link.> To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com>>> >> > facebook<http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…> <http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…>> Hi Michel,> Henry Edward Hardy commented on your link.> Henry wrote: "The article, "The Political Economy of Peer Production," by> Michael Bauwens, advocates a supposedly new form of economic organization> based on peer-to-peer networking. This social-network, flat,> non-hierarchical system of production is anticipated in the political and> economic philosophy of syndicalism, dating pack to 1895. Syndicalism is a> system of organization of the means of production which seeks to replace> free enterprise capitalism (US) and state capitalism (China) with> co-operative, voluntary federations of democratically-organized and> administered trade unions. Mutual aid, self-organization, and> self-administration are among the means and goals of syndicalism. In other> words, the first three "requirements"in this article, technological> infrastructure that operates on peer-to-peer processes, alternative> information and communication systems, software infrastructure, to the> degree that they are requirements at all, in no way require computers or> computer networks! The article attempts to graft the author's (perhaps> un-self-aware) syndicalist political views onto the development process of> the Internet and Free Software projects. In fact, the most successful of> these, such as the Internet under Jon Postel, the Free Software Foundation> under Richard Stallman, One Laptop per Child under Nicholas Negroponte, and> Linux kernel maintenance under Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton, have been> what might more accurately described as "benign dictatorships" than> syndicalist or peer-to-peer in nature. "An injury to one is an injury to> all." http://www.facebook.com/l/32423/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism> http://www.facebook.com/l/32423/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel> http://www.facebook.com/l/32423/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman> http://www.facebook.com/l/32423/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte> http://www.facebook.com/l/32423/www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus.html">> >> > See the comment thread<http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…> <http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…> >> >> > Reply to this email to comment on this link.> Thanks,> The Facebook Team >> > See Comment<http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…> <http://www.facebook.com/n/?mbauwens%2Fposts%2F201125386584394&mid=40bce9bG1…> The >> > message was sent to michelsub2004(a)gmail.com. If you don't want to receive> these emails from Facebook in the future or have your email address used for >> > friend suggestions, you can unsubscribe<http://www.facebook.com/o.php?k=c05bf5&u=528245547&mid=40bce9bG1f7c632bGe44…> <http://www.facebook.com/o.php?k=c05bf5&u=528245547&mid=40bce9bG1f7c632bGe44…>.> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> P2P Foundation - Mailing list >> http://www.p2pfoundation.net >> https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation >> >> > > > -- > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net > > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: > http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation > > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens > > > > > > > -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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Visiting Germany late June/early July, looking for p2p lecture opportunities
by Michel Bauwens 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

Dear friends, I have been inivted to keynote at OKCon, in Berlin June 30, July 1, The trip is funded, but I'm looking for extra lecturing opportunities before or after, in Germany, or close neighbours, Michel Bauwens -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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