December 2015 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: 16th BIEN Congress (2016) - Call for papers
by Anna Harris 05 Dec '15

05 Dec '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "BIEN" <bien(a)basicincome.org> Date: Dec 4, 2015 9:49 PM Subject: 16th BIEN Congress (2016) - Call for papers To: <anna(a)shsh.co.uk> Cc: 16th BIEN Congress, Seoul 2016 View this email in your browser <http://us11.campaign-archive2.com/?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f40c9&id=5320277c3…> 16th BIEN Congress, Seoul 2016 *CALL FOR PAPERS* <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2…> *16th BIEN Congress, Seoul *7–9 July 2016 *Korean Basic Income Week *4–10 July 2016 Today the basic income attracts the public attention as a positive alternative beyond an idea. We can see it as important political parties in Europe have adopted the unconditional basic income as a policy objective. One reason for the increased public attention is that many people are coming to believe that the existing system is unsustainable in face of economic and ecological crises. Under these circumstances, we will discuss a more concrete and positive alternative under the theme of Social and Ecological Transformation and Basic Income. The discussion will be around the topics below. ♦ Economic models of post neoliberalism and the position and role of basic income in them ♦ The role of basic income in pursuit of expanding democracy in the political arena and in society as a whole ♦ The role of basic income in the transition to an ecological society and the accompanying cultural society ♦ The role of basic income in the transformation from the work-based society, presuming it as an element of the de-commodification of labor force ♦ The ear of the precariat and basic income ♦ The role of basic income in enhancing gender equality ♦ Basic income as a tool for the resolution of the youth, unemployment problem ♦ Evaluation and prospect of various pilot projects ♦ Post-human prospects and basic income The above topics are not intended to limit the boundaries, but to set as references for a broader discussion. We invite all interested individuals and groups to participate. Those who want to present should submit abstracts(up to one page in A4 in Korean or 300 words in English) to bien2016.callforpapers(a)gmail.com by January 31st 2016. We are happy to inform you that seven keynote speakers will attend the congress and some more keynote speakers could be with us. Seven keynote speakers are: Louise Haagh (York University, England), Yamamori Toru (Doshisha University, Japan), Jan Otto Andersson (ÅboAkademi University, Finland), SarathDavala (India), Minister and Bishop ZephaniaKameeta (Namibia), Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University, China) and Gonzalo Hernandez Licona (Mexico). Korean Basic Income Week will be held along with the 16th BIEN congress. We also invite all interested individuals and groups to participate in this event which will be comprised of concerts, film-screenings, performances and campaigns. Those who want to give proposals for Basic Income Week should submit them to bien2016.callforpapers(a)gmail.com by January 31st 2016. Programs of the congress and Basic Income Week will be compiled from all submissions and proposals by March 31st 2016. We will send a message to all those who have made a submission shortly afterwards. If you have any question, please contact us at bien2016.callforpapers(a)gmail.com. Finally, we will run a day-care center for children under 8 for the participants with to use. Contact us at contact(a)bien2016.org please. Kind Regards, Local Organizing Committee of the 16th BIEN congress, Seoul Executive Committee of Basic Income Week Read more here » <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> [image: Facebook] <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> Facebook <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> [image: Twitter] <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2…> Twitter <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2…> [image: http://www.basicincome.org/] <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> http://www.basicincome.org/ <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2…> [image: Google Plus] <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> Google Plus <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> [image: YouTube] <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> YouTube <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> *Copyright © 2015 BIEN Newsflash, All rights reserved.* Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) was founded in 1986 as the Basic Income European Network and expanded to become an Earthwide Network in 2004. It serves as a link between individuals and groups committed to or interested in basic income. It fosters informed discussion on this topic throughout the world. More information about the 16th BIEN Congress in Seoul can be found at http://bien2016.org/en/ and www.basicincome.org. This Call for Papers goes out to more than 2,250 subscribers. If you would like to be added or removed from the subscription list, please go to: http://www.basicincome.org/bien/subscribe.php. For up to date information about basic income, see: http://binews.org/ *Our mailing address is:* bien(a)basicincome.org unsubscribe from this list <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f…> update subscription preferences <http://basicincome.us11.list-manage.com/profile?u=1ee7284968c494ec88c2f40c9…>

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Fwd: Net Neutrality across South Asia
by Michel Bauwens 05 Dec '15

05 Dec '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Prasad Krishna <prasad(a)cis-india.org> Date: Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 12:43 PM Subject: Net Neutrality across South Asia To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com Dear Michel Bauwens, The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) and the Observer Research Foundation in association with Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennnsylvania and Internet Policy Observatory is organizing this event at the Observer Research Foundation's office in New Delhi from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on December 12, 2015. *Context* Net neutrality can broadly be understood as the principle of non-discrimination which in practice allows the internet to be free and open by preventing service providers from slowing or interfering with the transfer of data. Net neutrality has risen as a global policy issue, yet cultural, political, commercial, and economical factors influence how net neutrality is understood and addressed in a particular context. Indeed, the factors driving the net neutrality debate, the way in which governments are addressing net neutrality, the role and response of industry, the public response, and the role of civil society has been varied across contexts. The topic of net neutrality is not limited to a technical debate and brings together a number of issues including the right to access, the right to freedom of expression, fair competition practices, and privacy. This conference seeks to bring together domain experts, industry, government, and civil society across South Asia to understand how net neutrality is understood in different contexts, how it is being addressed from a policy point of view, what the varying public dialogues around net neutrality are, and what role civil society can play in influencing the debate. *Download the Concept Note* <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/concept-note-network-neutrali…> Thanks and regards, Prasad -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org 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/

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Re: [P2P-F] Automation Doesn't Just Destroy Jobs--It Destroys Profits, Too
by Eric Hunting 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

This is an argument I've been making for many years myself. In the debate about automation and job destruction it is commonly overlooked that labor and capital are in the same boat when it comes to long-term impact because production capability itself is becoming a commodity. Machines aren't just getting smarter, they're getting smaller, more adaptive, progressively lower in minimum necessary production volumes, and cheaper. You can now initiate more kinds of production 'out of pocket' than ever before. You can now competitively manufacture more things in the space of a four car garage than ever before. You can now approach a conventional middle-class standard of living based on entirely local and personal production and open source designs. Corporations are beginning to abandon the ownership of their own means to production in favor of job-shops because as that production capacity becomes more of a commodity the cost of money and the adaptability lost to amortization becomes the chief drag on market competitiveness. The volume of consumer goods produced in job shops went past that from traditional factories in the year 2000, and it never went back. The factory--and the traditional capital creating it--is already an anachronism. This brings us to the core premise of Post-Industrial futurism; that the paradigms of the Industrial Age are being eroded by the evolution of the very technologies on which they depend. This is the ultimate crisis of Capitalism; the eventual obsolescence of capital itself by the automation it cultivated as value shifts away from material goods and the means to make them and becomes virtualized, integral to design. The product has no value. The real value is in the 'spime'. Already corporations are increasingly obsessed with litigation, intellectual property, whittling-away at the First Sale Doctrine, and limiting the rights and controlling the behavior of the consumer as means to maintain market share. The long-term evolution of production and distribution is a transition to localization, networking, production-on-demand, increasing reliance on management automation through quantitative analysis, increasing cost-transparency, and eventual integration into the infrastructure of the built habitat as a kind of municipal utility. The global economy will shift from trading in goods to trading in commodity refined materials and modular parts. As labor is factored out of production, cost of production becomes more transparent, market prices capitulate and fall except where they can leverage the value of exclusive design and designer prestige. 'Brand' manufacturers will increasingly take on the aspect of ateliers--design studios. The next Apple will be composed of a relative handful of people whose chief jobs are design, development, and the management of spimes with all production owned by someone else and local to the consumer. The next Ford or Toyota will assemble cars on demand at the dealership--maybe generic dealerships. (an overlooked impact of electric cars and the electric power train is their ability to radically drive the number of components in a car down. Tomorrow's car might have less than 100 parts and go together like a desktop PC!) So Capital is running out of things to do, the paradigm or money is failing, and the model Westphalian state is running out of people to tax, while, now evolved to accommodate Industrial Age paradigms, having no other mechanism to define, capture, and collectivize surplus social productivity to do anything with. (are you going to conscript labor off the street to make fighter jets?) The state and the monetary system have been very closely wedded through the Industrial Age, premised on a concept of extracting and collectivizing monetary capital as societal debt to gift to elites to create the means of production, and now their common paradigms are breaking-down. To continue to exist government will have to devise a new basis of economics--a new paradigm by which to define resource collectivization and a rationalization for it--or (more likely) a new economy will emerge stigmergically by the logic intrinsic to the underlying technology and the compulsion of people to make things work day-to-day. This is why, when I talk about basic income myself, I talk about two forms of it. An 'institutional' basic income--that is disbursed as money and administered by some kind of bureaucratic institution--and an 'integral' basic income that's built into the 'firmware' of the infrastructure of the built habitat and disbursed as on-demand access to goods based on a systemic quantitative analysis of demand. Long-term, we are likely to evolve toward that integral form as local communities are compelled to take on increasing responsibility for keeping daily life going as the state increasingly fails them and people discover the at-hand means/technology to do that in their now local production capacity. All these things add up to a picture of a very different lifestyle in the future that I don't think we communicate too well right now. This is why I've been very interested in the notion of using the approach of Living Museums in a future context to illustrate future lifestyle and am working on projects like the Open House documentary to showcase open source living. On 11/9/15 4:52 AM, p2p-foundation-request(a)lists.ourproject.org wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: *Chris Quigley* <cmqesquire(a)gmail.com <mailto:[email protected]>> > Date: Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 6:33 PM > Subject: Fwd: Excellent Art By Charles Smith > To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net > <mailto:[email protected]>> > > > Michel, > > > Thought this might be of interest. > > Kind regards, > > Christopher > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > *Musings <http://www.oftwominds.com/musings-sample.html> My Books > <http://www.oftwominds.com/CHS-books.html> Archives > <http://www.oftwominds.com/archives.html> Books/Films > <http://www.oftwominds.com/books.html>* > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > *Automation Doesn't Just Destroy Jobs--It Destroys Profits, Too* > <http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov15/automation-profits11-15.html> > > /November 9, 2015/ > > /The idea that taxing the owners of robots and software will fund > guaranteed incomes for all is not anchored in reality./ > > *Automation is upending the global order by eliminating human labor on > an unprecedented scale--and the status quo has no reality-based > solution to this wholesale loss of jobs.* > > Two recent articles highlighted the profound consequences of advances > in robotics and AI (artificial intelligence) on employment: four > fundamentals of workplace automation > <http://www.mckinsey.com//Insights/Business_Technology/Four_fundamentals_of_…> and > Robots may shatter the global economic order within a decade > <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11978542/Robots-may-shatter-th…> as > the pace of automation innovation has gone from linear to parabolic > (via Mish). > > > *The status quo apologists/punditry have offered two magical-thinking > solutions to the sweeping destruction of jobs across the entire > spectrum of paid work*: > > 1. Tax the robots (or owners of robots) and use the revenues to pay a > guaranteed income to everyone who is unemployed or underemployed. > > 2. Let the price of labor fall to the point that everyone has a job of > some sort, even if the pay is minimal. > > Neither one is remotely practical, for reasons I will explain today > and tomorrow. > > *Today, let's examine the misguided fantasy that automation/robotics > will generate enormous profits for the owners of robots.* Here's the > problem in a nutshell: > > *As automation eats jobs, it also eats profits, since automation turns > labor, goods and services into commodities.* When something is > commoditized, the price drops because the goods and services are > interchangeable and can be produced almost anywhere. > > Owners must move commoditized production to low-tax regions if they > want to retain any profit at all. > > *Big profits flow from scarcity, i.e. when demand exceeds supply.* If > supply exceeds demand, prices fall and profits vanish. > > (Monopoly is a state-enforced scarcity. In our state-cartel economy, > there are many monopolies or quasi-monopolies. While eliminating these > would lower costs, that wouldn't reverse the wholesale destruction of > jobs and profits--it would only speed the process up.) > > *The other problem the "tax the robots and everything will be funded" > crowd overlooks is the falling cost of software and robots lowers the > barriers to competition*: nothing destroys profits like wave after > wave of hungry competitors entering a field. > > The cost of automation and robotics is falling dramatically. This > lowers the cost of entry for smaller, hungrier, more nimble > competitors, and lowers the cost of increasing production. When > virtually any small manufacturer can buy robots for less than the > wages of a human laborer, where's the scarcity necessary to generate > profits? > > The parts needed to assemble a $45 tablet are dropping in price, and > the profit margins on those parts is razor-thin because they’re > commodities. Software such as the Android operating system is free, > and many of the software libraries needed to assemble new software are > also free. > > *Automation increases supply and lowers costs. Both are deadly to > profits.* > > *Here’s the core problem with the idea that taxing the owners of > robots and software will fund guaranteed incomes for all:* the more > labor, goods and services are automated/commoditized, the lower the > profits. > > The current narrative assumes more wealth will be created by the > digital destruction of industries and jobs, but real-world examples > suggest the exact opposite: the music industry has seen revenues fall > in half as digital technology ate its way through the sector. > > A $14 billion industry is now a $7 billion industry. Profits and > payroll taxes collected from the industry have plummeted. So much for > the fantasy that technology always creates more jobs than it destroys. > > As subscription music services replace sales of songs and albums, > revenues will continue to decline even as consumers have greater > access to more products. In other words, the destruction of sales, > employment and profits is far from over. > > *Examples of such radical reductions in paid labor abound in daily > life.* To take one small example, our refrigerator recently failed. > The motor was running but the compartment wasn’t being cooled. Rather > than replace the appliance for hundreds of dollars or hire a high-cost > repair service, I looked online, diagnosed the problem as a faulty > sensor, watched a tutorial on YouTube (what I call /YouTube > University/), ordered a new sensor for less than $20 online and > completed the repair at no cost beyond a half-hour of labor, which > cost me nothing in terms of cash spent. > > The profit earned by YouTube was minimal, as was the profit of the > firms that manufactured the sensor and shipped it. The sales and > profits that were bypassed by using nearly-free digital tools were an > order of magnitude higher. > > I was recently interviewed via Skype by an online journalist with > millions of views of his YouTube channel. A decade ago when he worked > in mainstream TV journalism, an interview required costly, > time-consuming travel (for the crew or the subject), a sound engineer, > a camera operator, the talent (interviewer), editor and managerial > review. These six jobs have been rolled into one with digital tools, > and travel has been eliminated entirely. > > Some will argue that the quality of the video and sound isn’t as high, > but the quality of the user experience is ultimately based on the > viewer’s display, which is increasingly a phone or tablet. So in terms > of utility, value and impact, the product (i.e. output) produced by > one person replaces the conventional media product that required six > people. > > My own solo digital content business would have required a handful of > people (if not more) only a decade ago. With digital tools and > services, it now requires just one person. Those of us who must work > with digital tools to survive know firsthand that what once required a > handful of workers must now be produced by one person if we hope to > earn even a marginally middle-class income. > > Multiply an appliance that doesn’t need to be replaced and a repair > service that doesn’t need to be hired, a half-dozen positions replaced > by one part-time job, a fully functional commodity tablet that costs > 10% of the high-profit brand and you understand why profits will > plummet as software eats the world. > > *These are not starry-eyed examples based on projections; these are > real-world examples of widely available digital technologies > destroying costs, sales and profits on a massive scale.* > > Some observers have suggested taxing wealth rather than profits to > fund the super welfare state of /guaranteed income for all./ But the > value of assets ultimately rests on their ability to generate a > profit. As profits fall, wealth may be more chimerical than these > observers believe. > > Tomorrow we'll look at the rising costs of human labor and explore why > this trend will persist even as labor becomes increasingly surplus. > > -- Eric Hunting erichunting(a)gmail.com

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