September 2014 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: [part_fr] Podemos, assemblée citoyenne, intelligence collective et propositions
by Michel Bauwens 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Fro Sujet: [part_fr] Podemos, assemblée citoyenne, intelligence collective et propositions Date : Wed, 24 Sep 2014 18:16:43 +0200 (CEST) De : Francois Soulard <francois(a)rio20.net> <francois(a)rio20.net> Répondre à : part_fr(a)forums.coredem.info Pour : part fr <part_fr(a)forums.coredem.info> <part_fr(a)forums.coredem.info> Bonjour, Voici un exemple inspirant d'articulation entre logique d'assemblée citoyenne, d'intelligence distribuée, de financement citoyen et de propositions programmatiques mis en œuvre par le mouvement/parti Podemos en Espagne (3ème force électorale après le PP et le PSOE, ayant eu une croissance très rapide depuis ce début d'année; les enquêtes actuelles donnent 29% au PP, 20% au PSOE et 18% a Podemos selon notre fidèle camarade catalan Germà Pelayo). http://plaza.podemos.info/http://asambleaciudadana.podemos.info/ Méthodologiquement, il s'agit d'une plate-forme montée sur Reddit (fondé à l'origine par l'Université de Virginia) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit, un outil de partage et valoration de liens, qui permet d'organiser la délibération et de commenter les entrées publiées. Podemos s'est appuyé sur ce mécanisme pour définir (en s'efforçant de limiter les intermédiations et de relier la base militante et citoyenne) toute une série de principes éthiques, organisationnels et politiques. D'autres parties du site sont montées sur l'outil WordPress et Question2Answer. L'un des avantages est que l'outil Reddit bénéficie d'une forte popularité. Son code est aussi disponible sur les serveurs de Github: https://github.com/reddit/reddit . Voilà qui embellit la gamme des outils de démocratie délibérative et directe aux côtés de Liquid Feedback, Deliberatorium, Assembl. A suivre de près... Très bonnes routes, Francois -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [Commoning] Ohne Commons keine Postwachstumsgesellschaft / No post-growth society without commons
by Michel Bauwens 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Silke Helfrich <silke.helfrich(a)gmx.de> Date: 2014-09-23 16:48 GMT+07:00 Subject: [Commoning] Ohne Commons keine Postwachstumsgesellschaft / No post-growth society without commons To: commoning <commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de>, commons(a)lists.riseup.net, Heike Loeschmann <Loeschmann(a)boell.de>, Lili Fuhr <fuhr(a)boell.de> Sorry, German only, Maybe sbd here with capacities to translate it into English? Pls. contact me. Hi commoners, Ich habe die kleine Rede, die ich zur Eröffnung der 4. Degrowth Konferenz gehalten habe, zu Papier gebracht und dabei etwas bearbeitet. Hier das Ergebnis, Thesen zu Commons und Degrowth auf dem Commonsblog, http://commonsblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/ohne-commons-keine- postwachstumsgesellschaft/ Die Thesen werden demnächst auf dem Seminar des DFG Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften (Uni Jena) diskutieren werden: http://www.kolleg-postwachstum.de/Veranstaltungen/Veranstaltungen/Workshop_+ Entw%C3%BCrfe+der+Postwachstumsgesellschaft.html Über Kommentare freut sich Silke _______________________________________________ Commoning mailing list Commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de http://lists.wissensallmende.de/mailman/listinfo/commoning -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: ZNet Commentary: Jack Rasmus: The Global Jobs Crisis, Inequality, & the ‘Ghost’ of Keynes
by Michel Bauwens 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ZCommunications <no-reply(a)zcomm.org> Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 7:27 PM Subject: ZNet Commentary: Jack Rasmus: The Global Jobs Crisis, Inequality, & the ‘Ghost’ of Keynes To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…>. Jack Rasmus: The Global Jobs Crisis, Inequality, & the ‘Ghost’ of KeynesZ Communications Daily Commentary Three global capitalist research institutes recently released reports documenting a growing ‘global jobs crisis’. The World Bank, the OECD, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) all came to the same conclusion. The Group of 20 nations’ employment ministers thereafter meeting in Australia issued a joint statement on the three institutes’ conclusion that “the world’s largest economies are failing to create enough jobs and too many of those that are being produced are of a low quality to generate a meaningful boost to global growth” (*The Financial Times*, September 10, 2014). As the World Bank’s senior director for jobs put it, “there is little doubt there is a global jobs crisis”. All three reports identify converging trends across all the advanced economies (AEs) of Europe, North America, and Japan. Not only is total unemployment rising long term, but the percentage of youth employment and the chronically long-term jobless are also growing. So too are part time and temp jobs rising sharply as a percent of the labor force in the AEs. *Dimensions of the Jobs Crisis Today* The percent of long-term jobless to total unemployment has risen from around one-fifth before the 2008 crash, to about one third today. Since the long term jobless tend to be concentrated among those older than 50 years, the AE economies’ job markets therefore appears to be deteriorating at ‘both ends’ of their labor force spectrum, the young and the older. Youth unemployment is rising to record high levels everywhere in the AEs. At the same time, those in the middle, 24 to 55 years old, are finding that jobs that are available are ’low quality’ part time, temporary, and contract ‘contingent’ jobs that provide far less pay, few benefits, broad exclusion from protective labor laws, and little security of continued employment. In the USA in particular, a still fourth major jobs problem is also taking place, a harbinger perhaps for the other AEs as well: about 8 million Americans have completely ‘dropped out’ of the US labor force since 2007. They aren’t even counted among the unemployed and underemployed in the USA, given the erroneous way the USA defines and calculates employment and unemployment. Rising youth unemployment, rising long term duration of unemployed, rising proportion of contingent labor for those even able to find employment, and millions altogether giving up on formal work means something is clearly wrong in AE labor markets and economies, is worsening, and increasingly appears structural and chronic—i.e. the ‘new normal’ as they now say, where the ‘new normal’ means, in effect, ‘we (capitalist policy makers) can’t or won’t do anything about it, so just learn to live with it’. It is important to note that the global jobs crisis now documented by the above three global reports is simultaneously a global wage crisis. *Capitalist 21st Century Wage Strategy* When one looks at today’s deterioration of wages in the AEs from a class perspective, and not just in the limited way governments report wages, the picture is indeed dire. Millions more jobless today mean zero wages for those millions that should be factored into the total wage decline data but isn’t reflected in government figures. Only wage trends for those still with jobs is reported, and even then only for those with full time jobs. Millions more partly employed, working in part time, temp and contract jobs receive lower pay, which further reduces total wages for the working classes. Millions more dropping out of the formal workforce, with some perhaps working in the ‘shadow economy’ at reduced and occasional pay, means still lower total wages for the class. Reducing retirement and healthcare benefits, and/or raising the cost for those benefits for those still employed, constitutes yet another form of ‘wage reduction’. Then there’s the growing trend of outright wage theft that is a growing problem, especially in service sector jobs in the USA where employers increasingly just cheat workers out of part of their wages by payroll accounting tricks. Then there are policies that allow inflation to undermine the purchasing power of minimum wage laws. Minimum wage law adjustments become more infrequent and less generous. But all that is still not the entire story. Allowing workers’ pension plans to collapse altogether, into which they diverted part of their wages for years as a contribution to their pensions, means all those wage contributions are wiped out. That represents a form of ‘deferred’ wage reduction. And it doesn’t stop there either. With less wages and income, workers are forced to turn to more credit and debt in order to finance their basic expenses. That too leads to a wage decline, as rising debt and interest payments lay claim in the present to workers ‘future’ wages not yet paid. Banks and credit card companies thus steal wages that haven’t even been paid yet by overloading workers with debt and credit, for which workers have little alternative given their lack of other forms of wage reduction. 21st century global capital has thus evolved multiple ways to reduce wages today. But the biggest contribution to wage-earnings reduction for working households, the biggest impact, derives from the chronic rise in the millions of unemployed, the growing percentage of ‘contingent’ (part time, temp, contract) and ‘low quality’ jobs, and the millions forced into the ‘shadow economy’ of intermittent, occasional work, still lower paid, or even worse. *The Terrible Triad: Jobs, Wages & Inequality* The global jobs crisis also leads, according to the three ILO, OECD and World Bank reports, to a corresponding decline in disposable income and consumer spending, which contributes significantly to rising income inequality trends. So the jobs crisis means not only wage reduction but the rise of inter-class income inequality as well. In the U.S. alone, median working class family incomes have fallen in real terms (adjusted for inflation) by more than 8%. That includes a 4% drop during the so-called ‘recovery’ since 2009. As corporate profits surged to historic record levels after 2009, and the wealthiest 1% saw their share of total incomes rise to 22%, more than ever before in U.S. history, working class families’ incomes continued to deteriorate it the recovery. And that deterioration is not limited to the post 2007 recession period. It was going on since 2000, and even before that to the early 1980s. The triple problems of jobs destruction, wage decline, and income inequality have become so severe in the AEs in general, not just the U.S., that the global capitalist press, and capitalists themselves, are showing signs lately of growing concern about the trends and problem. Given that, now that it is “safe” to discuss the triple crisis, mainstream economists have jumped on the “income inequality” bandwagon and have begun writing feverishly about it as well. But while identifying the data indicating income inequality, economists have little to say so far as to its fundamental causes—and even less to say about the jobs crisis as the crux of the problem triad. They identify the magnitude of the problem, but provide little explanation of the fundamental, originating causes—especially the fundamental ‘class basis’ of the problem in its inability to create enough decent paying jobs. Instead they limit themselves to calls for token tax reform, when the tax system is not the cause but just an enabler of the income transfers; or suggest ways to reduce senior corporate executives’ excess compensation; or ways to tweak the minimum wage which, while benefiting the lowest paid a little still leaves out the jobs and wage decline crisis for hundreds of millions of remaining workers. *The ‘Ghost’ of John Maynard Keynes* The ‘Achilles heel’ of 21st century capitalism is its inability to create good jobs on a sustained basis, and the corresponding wage stagnation and income inequality that that failure produces. This ‘systemic weakness’ of inability to achieve full employment and its tendency toward growing income inequality was recognized decades ago by the economist, John Maynard Keynes. Almost never quoted from Keynes were his concluding remarks at the end of his *General Theory* work published in 1935. He put it succinctly: *“The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and income.”* One shouldn’t make too much of Keynes, of course. Much of what he tried to say was to propose solutions to the global depression of the 1930s, to “save Capitalism.” While he correctly saw inability to provide jobs and income inequality as the two great inherent weaknesses of modern capitalist economy, he incorrectly assumed its third great problem would correct itself. That problem was the growth of “rentier capitalists” and their tendency to destabilize the entire system repeatedly. Today we would call them “financial speculators” and the “global finance elite” (my term). In his 1935 defining book, The General Theory, Keynes attributed but one chapter to them (ch. 12), then dropped the analysis. And in his concluding chapter 24, Keynes then opined that “rentier capitalism” would be a “*transitional phase which will disappear.*” Keynes called for the “*euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor,*” but believed the process would be gradual and *“will need no revolution.*” He of course was wrong. As recent decades show, the “functionless investor”—that is, the rentier capitalist, the financial speculator—has only grown more powerful and influential, both economically and politically. Their preferred financial institutions, the global shadow banks, now control more than $70 trillion in investable assets—i.e. far more than the traditional global banking system itself. And the negative impact of this increasingly dominant faction of the global capitalist class, in terms of contributing to and precipitating financial crashes globally, continues to grow and destabilize the capitalist system today. It is worth noting that most capitalists today, politicians in charge of economic policy making in the AEs, and the overwhelming majority in the economics profession, never fully accepted Keynes’ views—and especially those regarding jobs and inequality, let alone rentier capitalists’ destabilizing role. That is abundantly clear today, as AE politicians and the corporate powers behind them continue to broadly reject Keynes-like fiscal stimulus provisions calling for government spending on social programs and infrastructure and for the government to directly hire the unemployed if necessary. Instead, today’s policy makers in the AEs prefer a mix of austerity programs and deficit cutting, while providing tens of trillions of dollars in free money from their central banks to bankers (QE and zero rates) and additional trillions of dollars in tax cuts for big businesses. Mainstream economists in the AEs seldom, if ever, note Keynes’ twofold fundamental indictment of capitalist economy. And one has to look very hard to find anything in their theories and economic models that account for the changing financial structure of modern capitalism and its effects. AE economists simply don’t understand finance (any more than finance professors understand economics, one might add). Even those AE economists who adopt the “Keynesian” label prefer to selectively appropriate only those passages from his work that suggest that capitalist business cycles are controllable. In so doing, they reach back to pre-Keynes economic theories, integrating them into what they select as “safe” in Keynes. They claim that tax cuts and lower interest rates will stimulate the economy, even when Keynes himself was clearly ambivalent on these effects. What results is a kind of bastard Keynesianism, a “hybrid Keynesianism,” that the liberal wing of the economics profession today who call themselves Keynesians adhere to. One need only look to the past six years of near zero interest rates for banks in the AEs and the trillions in business tax cuts, both of which have failed to generate anything even closely resembling sustained economic recovery. The other wing of the AE economics profession, which might be called “Retro Classicalists,” reject even the social spending recommendations of Keynes and argue all that’s needed is more money and lower costs to businesses. Lower interest rates, lower taxes, and now the emerging consensus to reduce costs by means of labor market “reform” (i.e. a code word that means destroy unions and worker bargaining power) to produce lower wages. Lower business costs and they will then invest it. But lowering business costs to generate jobs and growth is a myth, for which the global facts since 2000 also provide ample evidence. All that the Retro “solution” has produced is that corporations across all the AEs have redistributed the record profits generated since 2008 by the lower costs to their stockholders with trillions in stock buybacks, record dividend payouts, spending on mergers & acquisitions of other companies, and just hoarding the trillions of dollars still leftover—which they now increasingly are in process of sheltering even further by means of global “tax inversions.” Both wings of the profession provide cover for their views by saying their proposals will lead* eventually *to job creation in the end. The “Hybrids” argue that just provide more income (doesn’t matter how or what form) to households and that income will generate spending that will be followed by business investment and jobs. The “Retros” argue that the income subsidization should start directly with business, which will then create jobs. In both cases, jobs are tacked onto the explanation at the end, as an eventual “consequence” of prior income distribution proposals. Jobs are never viewed by either wing as the start of the solution—not the consequence. And the income injections—whether to households via subsidies and transfers or to businesses via tax cuts, zero interest, bail outs, or other costs reductions—never get down to the actual creation of jobs. They claimed in the past that it used get down to the rest of the economy. That was called “trickle down” economics. But today there isn’t even “trickle down.” It’s hardly a “drip-drip.” The faucet of job creation has been virtually shut off. The capitalist “job well” is running dry. *Inequality’s Solution: Working Class Jobs vs. Rentier Capitalists* It is not surprising that mainstream AE economists of either wing have not been successful at proposing theoretical solutions to the current global economy’s inability to generate a sustained recovery on a general scale. Nor is it surprising that capitalist politicians and policy makers in governments and central banks have been unable to do so in fact. Neither economists nor politicians have addressed, or are about to address, the fundamental problem of the global jobs crisis today raised in the three reports. But without confronting that, the wage and inequality problem will only continue to worsen. In particular, inequality driven by not only job and wage stagnation, but by Keynes’ “rentier capitalists,” the “functionless speculator,” who will continue to gain still more global income share at the expense of the rest as working class jobs, wages and incomes stagnate and decline. Contrary to Keynes’ prediction, the “euthanasia of the rentier” financial capitalist may indeed require a revolution. ZCommunications, 18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, USA, 02543 Unsubscribe <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> | Manage Subscription <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4…> If you'd like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails click here <http://send.zcomm.org/wf/unsubscribe?upn=V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58Na…> . -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: Reinventing Organizations
by Michel Bauwens 24 Sep '14

24 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: What went wrong w FLOK… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Fair Coop. Target: Planet Earth!
by Michel Bauwens 22 Sep '14

22 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Örsan Şenalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 5:48 PM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fair Coop. Target: Planet Earth! To: "networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org" <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>, commoning <commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de> An global open cooperative as a revolutionary tool for building other economy at the world level… now! http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/fair-coop-target-planet-earth/ Today I have not expropriated any banks, nor presented anything anyone can call illegal, against perhaps what expected by many, neither do I present a strategy directly related to my return to public freedom, which does not mean I am not still defining that plan. What I now present is a revolutionary project on a global scale, a fruit of the immersion and learning I was allowed to thanks to my 19 months of intense activity in the seclusion of hiding. The moment this project was born during my nights of creative solitude, it became clear to me that I had to make this both a priority and a reality before taking any risk as an individual. Today, I am pleased to have acted on that determination, and I hereby submit the project so that it may become everyone’s. It is the open, global cooperative Fair Coop, one more step in the extension of the integral revolution worldwide; and also the p2p society values, open cooperation, and hacker ethics, among others. I will now explain some of the thoughts that inspired me to do this: The blockchain and Bitcoin brought to the world one of the few missing pieces to allow us to become independent from the old economic system. Old, centralized and new, decentralized systems have begun an open competition for domination in the world of the future. And for the first time in thousands of years, decentralized systems have another chance. However, for those of us who understand the world in terms of cooperation, decentralization is not enough; we believe this new world needs self-organization and mutual support, cooperation needs to infiltrate all those corners where domination is falling behind. Cooperative, self-managed, collective, community-based projects are extending and multiplying everywhere. The practices that preset the way this other world can be everyday, are very much alive. Although these practices are beginning to be quite interconnected at bio-region scale, they are still too isolated and there is mutual ignorance among initiatives that are thousands of kilometers from each other, on different continents, based on different languages. Large amounts of commons are being built in parallel at the local scale, but any one project’s evolution has so far been insufficiently shared with the others. We need more powerful tools to help us share our knowledge, and we must be able to finance their development. We don’t want to stay as viewers in the confrontation between the old, oligarchic and the new, netarchic capitalism. We want a cooperative system also on a global scale, like the ones we practice at local scale, and if we want to see it happen we have to build it. Therefore it became necessary to work on a project to put social cooperation back on the stage of the dominance struggles between economic systems, showing that the path to put human beings back at the center is possible, and is there for us to expand it. This project has arrived and is called Fair.Coop, The Earth cooperative for a fair economy. The initial push to boot this initiative is what we have named “hacking money markets to introduce the virus of cooperation”. This means: A cryptocurrency, negotiable in an uncontrolled way in decentralized markets around the world can be understood as social capital, in which the number of shares is equal to the total number of created coins. If we choose it as our founding capital for a cooperative, it means this capital, instead of being accounted in the dominant currency (euro, dollar…) will be in a currency the system can not control, and also, as our cooperative project grows and provides resources and services of proven usefulness, the value of this capital and the entire cryptocurrency will grow accordingly. It is an important point and I will explain the meaning of this in a different way so it can be fully understood: Consider traditional capitalism. Company owners extract value primarily through: - Income from capital - Labour exploitation In some transnational corporations, netarchic capitalism adds a third way to extract value: free collaboration between humans. For example Facebook or Google ads generate a lot of money because we use their “free” services, while we in fact are working for them for free. What if it is us who create technological tools for cooperation between equals, and use them to generate free knowledge, global commons? Well, then we can do what we like and consider helpful: cooperating, sharing, learning, while letting the economic value of our work remain in cooperative projects, and even reverse to ourselves. It became necessary therefore to find a coin that was not controlled by old capitalism (euros / dollars …), nor exploited by the most innovative capitalism (Bitcoin), one in which we can incorporate our values and cooperative practices. Faircoin therefore was chosen. After months of networking and creation, Fair.coop is born today. The space is open to start cooperation among all of us, and we have supplied the cooperative 10,000,000 faircoins, representing 20% of total existing coins. This social capital was injected into Fair.coop with the following distribution: - 5,000,000 faircoins for the Global South fund (address: https://chain.fair-coin.org/address/fU3wRGZwese65gZqRiQiJvE483iyjY2QD4 ) - 2,500,000 faircoins for the Commons fund (address: https://chain.fair-coin.org/address/fMxkQtTCFZpWuZNZQTq7HxwcZ6rQn1yAWj ) - 1,500,000 faircoins for the Technology Infrastructure fund (address: https://chain.fair-coin.org/address/fJ7dwkfHiJW9867xcovaJ9QDN7khDEMJMm ) - 1,000,000 faircoins for the Pooled fund (address: https://chain.fair-coin.org/address/fNWcvkQLg9ELKkV5gH1nsYBJnzHqw7pka7 ) And the following conditions: Except for the Pool fund which can be used to cover operating expenses at the discretion of the Ecosystem Council and the whole fair.coop, contributions to the other three funds can not be touched in one year. With the Global South fund we call for a redistribution that can reach as many local projects as possible, prioritizing the empowerment of the areas and environments most attacked by the current system, generating a peer-to-peer cooperation environment, to restore global economic justice. As for the Commons and Technology Infrastructure funds, the call is to qualitatively prioritize projects that can most benefit the global common good. This period may well serve to build a participatory, creative and mutually supportive process leading to decisions in relation to the right priorities, defined collectively and efficiently. Also, as collaboration between equals multiplies under all Fair.Coop and especially the FairNetwork,the value of FairCoop’s social capital is expected to respond by growing in value relative to fiat currencies, not forgetting, as a symbol of our independence, that 1 faircoin will always equal 1 faircoin. In this way and just for starters, 20% of the existing monetary resources remain in the hands of a participatory and open political process. Meanwhile Fair Coop will work to continue recovering for the common good resources which may be redistributed through the same funds. So this time, if our collaborative and freely shared vocation is to benefit someone financially, it will be the same ones who are building it before anyone else, that is all cooperatives, and through the funded projects, all of humanity. In other words, we have finally found a way to cooperatively organize, share, learn, help, one that can self-manage without the need, at least in the most delicate initial phase, to depend on others, or having to prioritize selling our production in the market, not even keeping up with regular member fees. All we need in this first phase is to create free knowledge, share andbecome interwoven the way we know best, extend the intangible, and build the material commons; build social currency networks based on faircoin, such as the Faircredit project already presented (LINK). We can innovate to create value together in many areas of the commons. We can each contribute our bit of knowledge, political participation, time, donations, products, services, investment, network-building. Each based on their capabilities and priorities. The market will value it by buying our cryptocurrency and pushing up the value of our social capital, in relation to other currencies. So we can finally “squat” the forex markets, responsible for so much inequality, to recover from a part, large or small, time will tell, of these injustices. I can imagine some anticapitalist will see it as contradictory, me expressing the role of money markets in this project. Anyone trying to quit using money, and who has already done much work regarding community economy and direct exchange can certainly go beyond fair.coop’s monetary initiatives, which does not prevent them to get involved, as one more, in collective creation and political participation. But most of us who are often using a currency, fiat or social, for trading or saving, are dependent on a reference framework for prices and store-of-value function, which is imposed by central banks, so we are somehow passive partners of the system we want to overcome. Moreover, I would like to recall that the Forex market is an irrefutable historical fact over 100 years old, with a trend to be less and less regulated. In recent years, only authoritarian states (such as the case of China where the value is set by government decision) have explored a second path in relation to how to deal politically with the market, while for all I know, from areas related to the ideas we share in the context of the integral revolution, for example, despite experiencing multiple pathways to social currencies as exchange tools has not generated any previous approach on how to confront the forex market to build economic empowerment worldwide. In recent years, new cryptocurrency exchange markets have appeared, uncontrollable by governments, and therefore it is no longer necessary to have a country and a central bank in order to have a currency that can be exchanged across the world. The banking system is outdated and more and more of us are realizing it, so the path we’re starting now is for building something that will, some day, consolidate a global alternative. What was lacking to start walking, was a monetary initiative present in these markets which, instead of relying on human competition to keep the most value, be based on human cooperation as equals, to create value for all of them. With the arrival of Fair.Coop, faircoin has become the cryptocurrency focused on social cooperation that was missing. So we’ll see over time whether this way we’re choosing is the best or not, but at least with this initiative we now have a path to explore, as to how to address this global issue of how to create a more just economic system with the level of social cooperation this planet needs and current technology allows. Fair Coop is born! Let’s get connected, entangled, let’s share, discuss, build! Everything is there to be done and everything is possible. Now it’s up to us! Let’s be the change we wish to see in the world! _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: Would Scottish Independence Mean Economic Sovereignty?
by Michel Bauwens 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ellen Brown <ellenhbrown(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 1:03 AM Subject: Would Scottish Independence Mean Economic Sovereignty? To: michel(a)p2pfoundation.net Hi, here is my latest article, posted on the LA Progressive -- Would Scottish Independence Mean Economic Sovereignty? <http://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1a…> Best wishes, Ellen http://EllenBrown.com http://PublicBankingInstitute.org <http://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1a…> Unsubscribe <http://wordpress.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1a…> michel(a)p2pfoundation.net from this list. Update your profile <http://wordpress.us7.list-manage2.com/profile?u=8829ce026276832f7fc66a1a9&i…> -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Win a copy of “OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism”
by Michel Bauwens 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs(a)uti.at> Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2014 at 4:34 PM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Win a copy of “OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism” To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/announcement/view/22 You can win one of 20 copies of Christian Fuchs’ new book “OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism” http://fuchs.uti.at/books/occupymedia-the-occupy- movement-and-social-media-in-crisis-capitalism/ by participating in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique’s ( http://www.triple-c.at) commonist social media contest: Send tripleC a self-made picture (jpg format) as well as a 500 word short text that symbolises and deals with the following two questions: What’s wrong with capitalism and capitalist social media such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, etc. ? How would a commonist social media world look like? Send your picture (just one), text (500 words, not more), and postal address until Saturday Sep 27 to the tripleC office: office(a)triple-c.at The books will be given to the senders of the first 20 submissions (submissions affirmative of capitalism and opposed to commonism are excluded from winning because they contradict question #1). Only one submission per person is possible. By participating you agree that your picture and text will be published together with other submissions in a blog post on http://fuchs.uti.at/blog (if you don’t want to have your name mentioned, then say so in your submission) Zero Books will publish the book at the end of October 2014, so the winners will be among the first getting to read the book. About the book: The Occupy movement has emerged in a historical crisis of global capitalism. It struggles for the reappropriation of the commodified commons. Communications are part of the commons of society. Yet contemporary social media are ridden by an antagonism between private corporate control (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and self-managed, commons-based activist media. In this work, Christian Fuchs analyses the contradictory dialectic of social media in the Occupy movement. Drawing on a political economy framework and interpretation of the results of the OccupyMedia! Survey, in which more than 400 Occupy activists reported on their social media use, OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism shows how activists confront the contradictions of capitalism and communication in the age of crisis and social media. The book discusses the contradiction between commercial and alternative social media and argues that the existence of a surveillance-industrial complex expressed in the PRISM system shows the urgent necessity to create social media beyond Facebook and Google. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: The Crisis of Capitalism 2. Protests in Crisis Capitalism 3. Occupy and Digital Media 4. Research Method: The OccuyMedia! Survey 5. Results of the OccupyMedia! Survey 5.1. Analysis of the Respondents’ Demographic Data 5.2. Defining the Occupy Movement 5.3. Occupy and Social Media 5.4. Communicating Activism 5.5. Corporate and Alternative Social Media 6. Interpreting the Data: Social Movement Media in Crisis Capitalism 6.1. Defining the Occupy Movement 6.2. Occupy and Social Media 6.3. Communicating Activism 6.4. Corporate and Alternative Social Media 7. Alternatives 8.Conclusion: Activism and the Media in a World of Antagonisms _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: SunPower CEO Tom Werner on 70 MW of Merchant Solar in Chile : Greentech Media
by Michel Bauwens 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Week (Assai) <dew(a)assai.com.au> Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 4:18 AM Subject: SunPower CEO Tom Werner on 70 MW of Merchant Solar in Chile : Greentech Media To: Michael Bier <michael.bier(a)chl.org.au>, Michel Bauwens < michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/SunPower-CEO-Tom-Werner-on-70MW… SunPower CEO Tom Werner on 70 MW of Merchant Solar in Chile Someday solar electricity generation won't require subsidies, incentives, tax breaks, feed-in tariffs or even a power purchase agreement to reach a customer. Solar power producers will simply bid into power or energy markets and compete head to head with coal, gas, and nuclear. It's happening today in Chile. Total and Etrion Corporation claim that their proposed Project Salvador is "the world’s largest solar power project based on spot market electricity (“merchant”) revenues." Power will be sold to the Sistema Interconectado Central electricity network. The 70-megawatt deployment is in the Atacama region of Chile, a high-altitude region with some serious DNI <http://social.csptoday.com/emerging-markets/dni-measuring-bang-your-buck>. The Atacama Desert is more than 40,000 square miles and has the earth's most intense sunlight. GTM Research has the data <http://www.greentechmedia.com/research/report/solar-in-latin-america-the-ca…> on the region: "With an energy-intensive mining sector accounting for one-third of the world's copper and a massive dependence on imported fossil fuels, Chile's electricity prices are very high. In 2012, some consumers were paying an average of $0.25 per kilowatt-hour on the spot market. Solar companies recognizing the need for cheaper, domestic generation in Chile have planned for more than 6 gigawatts of projects -- some of which could cost less than $2 per watt to develop." The project will be built and maintained by Total’s affiliate, SunPower (SPWR). We spoke with SunPower CEO Tom Werner this week. He defined "merchant solar" as essentially meaning that there's no PPA and said, "We are betting we will produce power at less than the going rate." Werner called this project a team effort that produced on the promise of Total's international reach. Werner noted that the combination of Chile's high electricity prices and high DNI puts Chile in "a position to emerge as one of the leaders in the Latin American market for renewable energy -- in particular, ground-mounted solar PV," according to SunPower. Chile also has net metering and a 20 percent by 2015 Renewable Portfolio Standard. Werner said conditions on this project were ideal for interconnect and water availability. Werner noted that most merchant solar projects were done on a much smaller scale. He also pointed out another first: Total has a 10 percent equity stake in the project, further demonstrating Total's commitment. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the U.S. government’s development finance institution, is financing 70 percent of the $200 million project with the balance funded by Etrion, Total and Solventus. According to a release, Chile has an investment-grade rating, and the OPIC debt is "non-recourse project debt with a 19.5-year tenor." “Project Salvador is an important step in the process of transforming the capabilities of solar power in the world. This merchant project confirms that solar energy is becoming competitive with other conventional energy sources,” said Philippe Boisseau, President of Marketing & Services and New Energies and a member of the Executive Committee of Total in a release. Boisseau told us in an earlier interview, "‘We have some projects in South Africa and in Chile that we're bringing to SunPower. That's another one of the benefits we are bringing: access to the world where it is economical with no subsidy to produce electricity.” Boisseau commented to GTM yesterday that “[t]his is the first solar project in Chile for Total and SunPower. It is a proof of the strong collaboration between our teams. Total is leveraging its international footprint, with activities in 130 countries, to develop SunPower solar projects around the world.” First Solar <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/First-Solar-Advances-162-MW-of-…> (FSLR) also regards Chile as a growth market. Earlier this year, First Solar acquired Solar Chile, a five-person Santiago-based solar developer with a 1.5-gigawatt early-stage pipeline of PV power projects in northern Chile, including the Atacama Desert. The thin-film solar panel manufacturer and project developer has applied for permits for the $370 million, 162-megawatt Luz del Norte project, according to a filing with Chile’s environmental licensing department. The project will use more than 1.7 million panels, with construction slated to start in June 2014. Chile could be one of the first real, non-incentivized solar markets in the world. Its relatively unreliable and expensive electricity has made Chile an early adopter of energy storage technology <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/energy-storage-meet-energy-mark…> in the mining industry, as well. Stephen Lacey's recent article on Chilean power markets pointed out that: - Installations will grow strongly in Chile, but it will take many years for the 6 gigawatts of project announcements to materialize. - Initial development will focus on the mining sector, but larger projects will sell into the spot market. SunEdison recently signed an agreement <http://www.sunedison.com/wps/portal/memc/aboutus/newsroom/pressreleases/!ut…>with the Chilean mining company CAP to supply electricity from a 100-megawatt plant -- the largest so far in Latin America. OPIC was involved in financing this project as well. - Only the most sophisticated companies will be able to navigate Chile's complicated electricity market. SunPower will deploy the Oasis single-axis tracker module, with construction expected to start before the end of the year. *Tags*: chile <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/chile>, finance specialist <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/finance+specialist>, first solar <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/first+solar>, fslr <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/fslr>, policy <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/policy>, solar electricity <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/solar+electricity>, solar pv <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/solar+pv>, spwr <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/spwr>, sunpower <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/tag/sunpower> -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: STWR Newsletter - September 2014
by Michel Bauwens 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Share The World's Resources <info(a)news-stwr.org> Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 4:09 PM Subject: STWR Newsletter - September 2014 To: "michel(a)p2pfoundation.net" <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Dear Michel Bauwens, Please find below a list of articles and blogs published on www.sharing.org in recent weeks, including Spanish and Slovenian translations of three essays by STWR's founder Mohammed Mesbahi. Mobilising a counter-hegemonic climate movement <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OU-1/c.aspx> As concerned citizens mobilise for climate change demonstrations across the world, never has it been more important to embrace a collective demand for ‘system change’ as the surest way to limit global warming and ensure environmental sustainability. Sharing as the new common sense in a post-growth world <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OV-1/c.aspx> We need to talk a lot more about sharing as a way to radically reframe the post-growth debate, argues a recent report from the Green House. If growthism is the substitute for a more just and equal society, then it's time that we all start saying so - and embrace a new common sense for sharing. It’s time for a post-Piketty vision of shared wealth <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OW-1/c.aspx> The latest bestseller in economics has done a great deal of service to progressives in highlighting the imperative of shared wealth. But given the social and ecological limits to economic growth, this emerging conversation on global sharing has to get a lot more radical. Discurso sobre los ismos y el principio del compartir <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OX-1/c.aspx> ¿Cómo podemos generar conciencia de que el compartir es la solución a una crisis planetaria, y la última esperanza que nos queda para rehabilitar un mundo dividido? Es central a esta pregunta el problema de los “ismos”, en los cuales nuestra complacencia se ha intelectualizado a fin de justificar su existencia como normal. Dialog o delitvi hrane <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OY-1/c.aspx> Če smo zainteresirani, da zaustavimo trajno kriminalno ravnanje, ki sredi obilja povzroča stradanje, svojih aktivnosti ne smemo omejiti samo na raven naše lastne države ali lokalne skupnosti. Rajši bi morali razmišljati o delitvi hrane na globalni ravni in, pred vsem drugim, v povezavi s politiko dokončnega izkoreninjanja lakote, pravi Mohammed Mesbahi. Comercialización: la antítesis del compartir <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-GR70YU-19S5OZ-1/c.aspx> El peligro no es la comercialización per se sino nuestra constante identificación con su manifestación interna y externa, en la cual la inteligencia de la humanidad es llevada en sentido opuesto a su evolución natural y espiritual. ¿Qué es el mal, después de todo, sino nuestra identificación con él? Best wishes, STWR www.sharing.org Unsubscribe <http://news-stwr.org/M4P-2TKFM-2EGR70YU7A/uns.aspx> ------------------------------ [image: STWR] Share The World's Resources PO Box 52662, London N7 8UX, United Kingdom +44 (0) 20 7609 3034 Email: info [at] sharing.org A not-for-profit civil society organisation with Consultative Status at ECOSOC. Registered in the UK no. 4854864 -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0

Fwd: [lfowhattheflok] Lien
by Michel Bauwens 21 Sep '14

21 Sep '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Reso-nance <fenshu(a)reso-nance.org> Date: 2014-09-21 15:05 GMT+07:00 Subject: [lfowhattheflok] Lien To: LFOwhattheflok(a)zinclafriche.org *Bauwens & stiegler ///* http://polemictweet.com/pour-la-transition-une-conomie-du-partage-de-la-con… +++++ *www.whattheflok.org <http://www.whattheflok.org> *Festival Faire & Penser du 29 septembre au 4 octobre 2014 à Marseille * * RESO-NANCE numérique *41 rue Jobin 13003 MARSEILLE | N° Siret: 523 736 650 00020 Code APE: 9499Z www.reso-nance.org | info(a)reso-nance.org -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

1 0