July 2017 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: The Centre for Internet & Society - Bulletin - June 2017
by Michel Bauwens 25 Jul '17

25 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Centre for Internet & Society <prasad(a)cis-india.org> Date: Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 12:03 PM Subject: The Centre for Internet & Society - Bulletin - June 2017 To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com Dear Michel Bauwens, Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for June 2017. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here <http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters>. ------------------------------ Highlights - CIS made a submission on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that has come into force this year. In the submission assessed the impact of GST <https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/gst-a-barrier-to-human-rights-for-…> on persons with disabilities. - Indian Patent Office updated the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions. Anubha Sinha throws light on the updated guidelines <https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/indian-patent-office-issues-updated-guideli…> in a blog post. She has clarified that the updated Guidelines take no concrete position to help clarify the ambiguity around patentability of software inventions in India. - A strategic symposium <https://cis-india.org/a2k/marathi-wikipedia-symposium-at-gokhale-institute-…> on Marathi Wikipedia and its sister projects was conducted in April 2017. Subodh Kulkarni has shared the developments in a report. - Compiled a compendium on cyber security <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cybersecurity-compilation-in…> from the Indian context. The document is a comprehensive source compiling all the cyber-security related regulations, policies, guidelines, notifications, executive orders, court rulings, etc. - CIS commented on the renewal of the .NET Registry Agreement <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-from-the-centre-for…>. CIS expressed its strong opposition to the proposed renewal. The comments were prepared by Vidushi Marda with inputs from Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash. - Harsh Gupta discussed "FAT ML (Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning) for Lawyers and Lawmakers" <https://cis-india.org/raw/cisxscholars-harsh-gupta-machine-learning-for-law…> at the CIS office in Delhi on June 29, 2017. - Shyam Ponappa in an article in the Business Standard <https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-june-5-business-standa…> opined that broadband in India needs reforms for local manufacturing and for infrastructure expansion and utilisation *CIS in the news:* - Aadhaar: Ushering in a Commercialized Era of Surveillance in India <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/electronic-frontier-foundati…> (Jyoti Panday; Electronics Frontier Foundation; June 1, 2017). - Privacy is culture specific, MNCs hit by Aadhaar, says TRAI chief <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-june-1-2017-p…> (Pranav Mukul; Indian Express; June 1, 2017). - Centre brings in new safeguards following cases of Aadhaar data leaks on government websites <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-june-2-2017-n…> (Nidhi Sharma; Economic Times; June 2, 2017). - New rules for govt agencies to ensure security of personal data <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-june-2-2017-komal-g…> (Komal Gupta; Livemint; June 2, 2017). - Explore money apps but watch your data <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-june-8-2017-shaikh-…> (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 8, 2017). - New law to unlock data economy <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-yuthika-bhargava-j…> (Yuthika Bhargava; Hindu; June 9, 2017). - Placements at NUJS: Class of 2017 Scores 100% <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livelaw-june-10-2017-simran-…> (Simran Sahni; Livelaw; June 10, 2017). - Why did Nandan Nilekani praise a Twitter troll? <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-kiran-jonnalg…> (Kiran Jonnalgadda; Indian Express; June 10, 2017). - Are biometrics hack-proof? <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-june-11-2017-shaikh…> (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 11, 2017). - GoldenEye ransomware attack hit operations at Pipavav Port, JNPT <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/livemint-june-28-2017-jyotik…> (Jyotika Sood and Utpal Bhaskar; Livemint; June 28, 2017). *CIS members wrote the following articles* - Digital Native: In digiville attention is Currency <https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-june-11-2017-digital-…> (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 11, 2017). - Digital Native: On mute, the Voice of the People <https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-june-24-2017-digital-…> (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 24, 2017). ------------------------------------- Accessibility & Inclusion <http://cis-india.org/accessibility> ------------------------------------- India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here <http://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer> . *Submission* - GST - A Barrier to Human Rights for Persons with Disabilities <https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/gst-a-barrier-to-human-rights-for-…> (Nirmita Narasimhan; June 24, 2017). *Participation in Events* - WSIS Forum 2017 <https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/wsis-forum-2017> (Co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, in close collaboration with all UN agencies; Geneva; June 12 - 16, 2017). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker. - Digital Accessibility <https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/digital-accessibility> (Organized by National Informatics Centre; Bengaluru; June 17, 2017). Rakesh Paladugula, a web accessibility trainer and Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation to scientists about digital accessibility. *-----------------------------------* Access to Knowledge <http://cis-india.org/a2k> * ----------------------------------- * Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects. ►Copyright *Participation in Event* - Fixing Copyright for Education <https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/fixing-copyright-for-education-sccr34-side-e…> (SCCR34 Side Event) (Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; June 7, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker. ►Pervasive Technologies *Participation in Event* - Preliminary Findings: Working Requirements for Complex Products under the Indian Patent System <https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/2nd-international-conference-on-standardisat…> (Organized by O.P. Jindal University; New Delhi; June 10 - 11, 2017). Prof. Jorge Contreras gave a talk on a forthcoming paper. ►Wikipedia As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation <http://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English). *Blog Entries* - Train The Trainer 2017 <https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-the-trainer-2017> (Manasa Rao; June 5, 2017). - Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune <https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/thematic-edit-a-thon-at-j-p-naik-centre-for…> (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017). - Wiki Loves Mayabazaar <https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wiki-loves-mayabazaar> (Pavan Santhosh; June 7, 2017). - Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics <https://cis-india.org/a2k/marathi-wikipedia-symposium-at-gokhale-institute-…> (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017). - Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District <https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digitisation-wikimedia-commons-and-wikisour…> (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017). *Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of June*. *----------------------------------- * Internet Governance <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance> * -----------------------------------* As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online. ►Cybersecurity *Blog Entry * - Cybersecurity Compilation: Indian Context <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cybersecurity-compilation-in…> (Leilah Elmokadem and edited by Elonnai Hickok; June 18, 2017). *Participation in Events* - 2nd India Think Tank Forum <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/2nd-india-think-tank-forum> (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; New Delhi; June 19 - 21, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari participated in the forum. - Second India China Think-Tank Forum (Organized by Institute of Chinese Studies, the Indian Council of World Affairs, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Beijing; June 22 - 27, 2017). Saikat Dutta represented an Indian think tank. ►Free Speech and Expression *Submission* - Comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-from-the-centre-for…> (Vidushi Marda, Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash; June 6, 2017). *Participation in Events* - ISEA 2017 <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/international-symposium-on-el…> (Organized by the University of Caldas, Manizales; Columbia; June 11 - 16, 2017). Sharat Chandra Ram was a panelist. - Freedom of Expression on the Internet : Possibilities and Challenges <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/freedom-of-expression-on-the…> (Organized by Bolivar Technological University; Cartagena; June 29, 2017). Sharat Chandra Ram was a speaker. ►Privacy *Participation in Events* - BIS LITD 17 Privacy Panel meeting <http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bis-litd-17-privacy-panel-mee…> (Organized by National School of India University; Bangalore; June 21, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meeting. - DSCI Best Practices Meet <https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dsci-best-practices-meet> (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; June 22 - 23, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meeting. ----------------------------------- Telecom <http://cis-india.org/telecom> ----------------------------------- CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate: *Newspaper Column* - Broadband Reforms for Local Manufacturing <https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/business-standard-june-5-business-standa…> (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 31, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; June 5, 2017). *-----------------------------------* Researchers at Work <http://cis-india.org/raw> * ----------------------------------- * The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes: *Event Organized * - CISxScholars Delhi - Harsh Gupta - FAT ML for Lawyers and Lawmakers <https://cis-india.org/raw/cisxscholars-harsh-gupta-machine-learning-for-law…> (CIS; New Delhi; June 29, 2017). Harsh Gupta gave a talk. *----------------------------------- * About CIS <http://cis-india.org/> * ----------------------------------- * The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies. ► Follow us elsewhere - Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india - Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K - Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy - Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k - E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k(a)cis-india.org - E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw(a)cis-india.org - List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/ mailman/listinfo/researchers ► Support Us Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71. ► Request for Collaboration We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil(a)cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro(a)cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer(a)cis-india.org. *CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects*. -- 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: What do I Know?
by Michel Bauwens 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kanth, Rajani <rkanth(a)fas.harvard.edu> Date: Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 6:02 AM Subject: What do I Know? To: "michelsub2004(a)gmail.com" <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> What do I Know ? It could be that Michael Polanyi was the only major EM (Eurocentric Modernism: the genre of Modernism that Europe bequeathed to the world)) thinker to emphasize the importance of ‘personal knowledge’ in science. We are prone to reify : and see 'science' as an impersonal project, part of some independently given -if self-licensed - tradition of investigation. It may appear that way, but it is ever , at best, the contribution of gifted individuals who 'personify' the project. The early materialist bias of EM science projected that third person air of 'objectivity' as an ideal. Yes. It is just that - an ideal. We are not here, I believe, to realise ideals: invented by some , for the many. * Fact is that truth can be both personal and objective, in its vital phase of discovery. Canonical traditions are part of our anthropic trait of deification , and ancestor worship, and so we also think of canonicals (Smith, Freud, etc) as templates 'risen above' the herd. And that would be an error. Because the choice of ‘canons’ , itself, is not a democratic process: it is an elite , highly motivated ,selection, At any rate, whether we 'do' science or art, we remain human, personal, and subjective, w/out necessarily invalidating our ideas. * Most established scientific mainstreams are as flawed as not: they are refreshing in debunking retired paradigms, and flawed in clinging to their own dogmas. This is true in physics, much as social theory. Par Exemple the dominant model of Cosmology in physics today is seriously questionable. Black Holes, e.g., were never prima facie, observed natural facts, but, rather, derivations of Math. In the latter, we get out only what we put in. No, I don't think CERN is of much use, and the Higgs Boson is a mere flight of fancy: it's all a billion dollar boondoggle. It's not as if someone first 'observed' such phenomena, and then wrote about them, and conducted experiments. Of course , if you have a few billions invested, 'evidence', of a kind, will, sooner or later be found. This is also true of dogmatic variants of Darwinian evolutionary biology, as of mainstream economics. The Hawking cosmology can be easily quizzed using, e.g., the ideas of the emergent ‘electric universe’ theory. Even our solar system may have originated in ways different from today's conventional wisdom, as Velikovsky, e.g., maintained. Darwinian ideas can be challenged by so-called 'forbidden archaeology' that has uncovered artefacts of human existence aeons before humans were supposed to be around. Nor can something as refined as the human eye be the result of a slow, natural selection. Similarly, ‘trickle down’ economics can be rubbished by straightforward empirics, and so on. * So, we participate in ritualised affirmations of dominant ideas just as easily in science as in other domains of societal life. So, then: what do we know? That science is a social enterprise susceptible to social pressures. And that dominant individuals in science can exercise dominant power over others, even in the face of recalcitrant facts. * So the moral is that for real science to be preserved , we must allow individual scientists maximum latitude to formulate new ideas. This simply does not exist today in the EM world, where powerful, monistic, 'establishments' – dare I say cabals? - control science, via funding, and prevent advance: and many good ideas are shelved , at times, for far too long. The state needs be divorced from science, for starters. And I don’t mean handing it over to corporatists:the odd thing about 'free enterprise' ideologues is that they do not permit it, at the ground level, anywhere, to anyone (Wall Street sets limits to Main Street enterprise) not even in science. * So, the ‘human story’, in the sciences, is a mixed one. We are both brilliant, and corrupt. And the process of science is plagued with detours and dead ends. Ultimately, the only test is the rather pedestrian, empirical one. Does gravity exist? Well, a leap off a (low) table should decide that. But does gravity really hold together the entire universe? That would appear doubtful: electro-magnetism is a far more convincing candidate, for being exponentially more powerful. Did the Big Bang ever take place? Now, that's a toughie: and 'background radiation', or a presumed ‘dark energy’ , will not suffice (which is no more than ‘proving’ one hypothetical by another): and it is curious that it is virtually assumed to be a fact, a priori, as it were. It is a hypothesis, at best, and a stretch, at worst. Much rigor is needed here, since there's so much snake-oil around. And EM science is bursting with sharp-eyed operators with tenures to be had , and prizes to be won. Not to mention all those research monies. And, like Oscar Wilde, they can resist anything - except temptation. * So, again, what do I know? I'm compelled to be brief! :) I know that EM ways of thinking/being are a libel upon the promise of our real Anthropic state. That IT is responsible for our decline/debacle to the point of bringing us all – good, bad, and ugly -to the point of human extinction. I also know that our original Anthropic state, our Default State, of simple tribal society, embodied the essentials of our societal being such as no other society since. How? They managed to restrain male destructive drives – which are the scourge of all living things - within the prison of affective, kin relations to the extent humanly possible: in other words, they expunged intra-tribe violence,(much like the incest prohibition bans , within certain degrees, intra-kin sex). Compare that achievement to the ordinary state of ANY EM society. This is NOT to idealise them, simply to state an important fact. They were built not on interests but on affections. On Conviviality, not Competition. Most of them broke up into empires, owing to male-inspired mutations (either from within or without). * One of those empires is EM, which stepped out of a feudal empire claiming to be god’s gift to this world. It was not. It managed to convince a few, owing to the allure of its tendentious slogans of ‘freedom’ ( free, in essence ,from any societal obligation of support and maintenance) and that that road leads to Nihilism and an Amoral society, we know today, though many noticed it even back then. EM broke a social compact dating back to antiquity, and beyond. And yet are applauded for that sacrilege. Given its feudal provenance, it could pass itself off as ‘progressive’: and many to this day still think that democracy, liberty, women’s rights and the diminution of servitude , in general , were ‘gifts’ of EM - rather than concessions extracted from it by sheer force - of defiant social movements. EM was a movement led by the new Commercial classes seeking space - at the top - for themselves. * Indeed, whatever it may have ‘gifted’ us stands absolutely no comparison to what it took away from all of us. Two ‘World Wars’ (i.e. 2 EM Wars, generously dragging in the world at large), and dozens of other ‘wars’ (declared/undeclared) virtually without interruption - millions upon millions dead, and a Third Great War in preparation - should be proof enough. That much touted ‘Sixth Extinction’, far from being imminent, is not only mis-specified but has already taken place: and needs to , indeed must, refer to the ( still on-going) genocide against non-European peoples for four straight centuries (stated simply, European elites continue to murder non-Europeans with complete impunity, as they have since the Sixteenth century). It is not uninteresting that European scholars , who have principally written our mainstream histories to their own advantage, omitted to ‘notice’ that trivial fact? At any rate, EM drives now threaten even the sheer physical stability of our host planet. * Driven by pure, untrammeled, abject greed, it inaugurated the darkest chapter in the history of our kind. Being racist, sexist, and imperialist, it pushed the whole world off all tracks leading, potentially, to civilization. To this day, it is the natural ally of every form of societal pathology, recidivism, and chauvinism. What do I mean by civilization? The pacification of our conditions of existence, both social and natural. Contra the above, it created the most insecure society in the history of our kind, extending the basic economic insecurity of profit-led production to seamless aggression and gathering of means of violence on a scale unimaginable by the worst tyrannies of history. By institutionalizing economic insecurity it ensured a vicious struggle for survival amongst the poorer orders, thereby fanning the flame of anger, aggression, and frustration: ideal bases for divide et impera policies involving violence and militarism. And it started a degradation of our environs that goes on, unabated, to this day. It won’t do to say, O India and China do it too, today: yes, because they were force-fed EM mantras by their EM mentors. India learnt it , perforce, from the Brits; and ‘revolutionary’ China imported it first via a ‘Marxism’ that ignored externalities, and then later by Western assisted , wholesale corruption of its somewhat dubious ‘socialist’ restraints that today marks its growing conformity to EM noms. And No, ubiquitous guns and civilization simply don’t mix: indeed , the general availability of guns is a mark only of the degree of barbarism, as manifest in their Lead Society. And yet the vast majority of European elites – Left, right, or Centre (barring, as ever, honorable exceptions) still swear by EM nostrums: only some amongst its tragic victims - the poor, the laboring orders, the ex-colonial world , women, and First peoples, appear to understand its lethal, misanthropic nature. So, we are now presented with a clear Choice: between our original Anthropic Society (cemented by affections) AND what I shall term (EM inspired) Entropic Society ( held, loosely, if at all, by force and mutual distrust, and disintegrating by the day). * I also know that men and women are profoundly, and naturally, dissimilar. By instinct, men are aggressive and violent , and women are nurturing. Now biology is biology, not destiny: and behavior can be molded: but, in the case of men, it needs to be continuously monitored , checked, and contained. And then some. It is this ‘paradigm of masculinity’ , as I term it, that is the great threat to societal peace: as it has always been. It is still that which subverts all utopian agendas of amelioration. It is curious that instincts are admitted in the case of animals, but not humans! That stems from the Christian presumption that we are not animals, but are ‘made in god’s image’. Really? So, ‘god’ is an ape? The moment one brings in instincts, as I do, one is accused of’ ‘ essentialism’ (a standard , knee-jerk, EM put-down). But, as I have said many times: instincts exist and explain as much of human behavior as other extrinsic variables. It is time that EM prejudices were exposed for the facile sham they are. ** I have also maintained that , amongst all the European tribes, the Anglo-Norman has gone the farthest with EM postulates , which is why the US exhibits the Neanderthal character it does: even its close cousin, the UK, has still a few restraints left in place, stemming from the fading, but not dead, legacy of an ‘un-bourgeois’ aristocracy , and a near-heroic, long-suffering, working class. Dropping a nuclear device on helpless civilian populations, as in Japan, much as the gratuitous saturation bombing of Dresden at the conclusion of WWII , that surpass even Nazi atrocities, is an educational index as to the real ruthlessness undergirding our ‘civilisation- mongers’. Finally, I maintain that North Europe pirated the commerce/legalisms of southern Europe (Italy) and then claimed lineal descent from them as part of one single ‘ western civ”, (thereby passing themselves off as ‘civilized’): Not True. Southern Europe (Greece/Rome/Venice) was part of a great Mediterranean civilization , itself at the intersect of ideas from Egypt, India, and China. North Europe ‘borrowed’ much of its so-called ‘enlightenment’, and most of its resources, from all and sundry(including, no less, from ancient civilisations in West Asia, India, and China). It’s vaunted ‘industrial revolution’ is simply inconceivable without it. It was, as has been remarked born in fire: and baptized in blood. * To sum up. Anthropic society is communal/co-operative and kindred-based: it is our Default State of Being, as humans. It is both natural and social simultaneously. Entropic Society (deriving from EM) is an illegitimate usurper, cast in a Hobbesian mode, a society of asocially individualized beings, wallowing in ‘universal egoism’ (Hegel) with little or no cultural or moral scruples. It is starkly Amoral and Post-Human: and it will turn us into something even worse – A Trans-Human ‘society’ of cyborgs, which will end all Evolution. Follow it and we will , along with many others, vanish as a species. We are close enough to it as far as genuine anthropic values go, already. * And it is not at all difficult to doff it all: since we would only be returning us to our species-being, to our essential natures - of co-operation and mutualism - that EM so very willfully extinguished generations ago. As I have said the human family – no matter how constructed - is the repository of such values that still survives universally despite EM policies; and it , easily, gives the lie to ALL EM ideals : note that it is not democratic, not equal, not individualist, nor ‘free’. Fancy that! And yet , it offers us our first, and final, sanctuary, based on caring, consideration, and conviviality that is our birth-right, be we high or low, rich or poor, European or Non-European. It is, in fact, the only ‘utopia’ that is not utopian. And Communities can still be re-founded on those essential anthropic axioms, an extension of kinship norms to a wider 'extended' family of Gemeinschaft social forms. It would make life, and living, meaningful again, for all of us: EM or not, overcoming the anguish/alienation of our extant constituted entities. Perhaps it is what nature 'intended' for us? ** So, that is what I know. But then again: what do I know? REFERENCES Kanth, R Farewell to Modernism: On Human Devolution in the Twenty-First Century, Peter Lang, NY 2017. Kanth, R The Post-Human Society, De Gruyter, Warsaw, 2016 [© R.Kanth 2017] -- 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: Furthernews Issue 25
by Michel Bauwens 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Furtherfield <info(a)furtherfield.org> Date: Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 4:08 PM Subject: Furthernews Issue 25 To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com Latest news from Furtherfield Gallery, Commons and neighbourhood <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1195…> - arts, technology and social change - furthernews issue 25 FORWARD <http://crm.furtherfield.org/civicrm/mailing/forward?reset=1&jid=760&qid=158…> THIS NEWSLETTER VIEW <http://crm.furtherfield.org/civicrm/mailing/view?reset=1&id=164> IN BROWSER SIGN UP <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1196…> TO FURTHERNEWS *We hope you enjoy reading FurtherNews. Before you dive in, we would like to invite you to become a Network Supporter or donating if you can afford to <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1197…>. This support helps expand programmes like these. Thank you.* Furtherfield is renewing its mission! <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1198…> Image by Pau Ros. NEW WORLD ORDER exhibition at Furtherfield, 20 May - 25 June 2017. Taken from the video The Blockchain: Change Everything Forever. Published on Oct 3, 2016. Our new mission is to undertake 'Fieldwork in Human and Machine Imagination'. This is part of a new drive to make our work more sustainable and impactful and we will be launching our new website soon. Alongside featured editorial articles we will host a Community Blog for people to showcase and respond to current work - as articles, reviews, interviews, and videos. We will continue to support diverse and critical practices that align with Furtherfield’s new programmes of exhibitions, labs and debates. These will be presented for all to explore on the new site. It’s gonna be wild! What's happening now? <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1199…> Children of Prometheus <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1199…> at Furtherfield Gallery Open Sat-Sun till 20 August Featuring artists relating our use of technology today to the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus and his theft of fire for humankind - Furtherfield's current exhibition has had an excellent response from the public so come along and see what the fuss is about. Latest Reviews, Interviews and Articles <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1200…> *The New Observatory at FACT <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1200…> - by Daniel Rourke* The New Observatory curated by Hannah Redler Hawes and Sam Skinner, in collaboration with The Open Data Institute, transforms the FACT galleries into a playground of micro-observatories. The exhibition considers how ubiquitous, and increasingly invisible, technologies of observation have impacted the scale at which we sense, measure, and predict. <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1201…> *Choose Your Muse Interview: Ryota Matsumoto <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1201…> - by Marc Garrett* Marc Garrett interviews Ryota Matsumoto, artist, designer and urban planner, cofounder of the Metabolist Movement, and principal and founder of the interdisciplinary design office, Ryota Matsumoto Studio. <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1202…> *Community as situation: Prec(ar)ious Collectives in Athens <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1202…> - by Chloe Stavrou* Alongside Documenta 14, six visual artists and eight contemporary Greek choreographers devised Prec(ar)ious Collectives, exhibiting a hybrid space and experimental notion of a community. <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1203…> *Review of The Gathering Cloud, JR Carpenter <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1203…> - by Mary Paterson* Carpenter creates a dreamscape to imagine the future in her new literary artwork incorporating found images and text stored on cloud computing servers. <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1204…> *An Interview with Alan Sondheim <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1204…> - by Michael Szpakowski* As part of the Children of Prometheus exhibition at Furtherfield, artist Michael Szpakowski interviews US artist Alan Sondheim about his art: its digital nature, the creative process, its context, and about his artwork in the exhibition. For all reviews, articles and interviews, visit here <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1205…> What's Happening Now? Are We All Addicts Now? Furtherfield Gallery & Finsbury Park Opening 15 Sep, 6-8pm 16 Sep -12 Nov, Open Fri-Sun 11am-5pm New artworks addressing how addictive behaviours have been normalised by intimate digital devices. Katriona Beales addresses the inescapability of machine-driven connection and Fiona MacDonald : Feral Practice reminds us that networks exist within the food we eat and the soil under our feet. Developed with clinical psychiatrist Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones and curator Vanessa Bartlett. The accompanying Book designed by Stefan Schafer <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1206…> can be pre-ordered. Book launch - Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain, London, Autumn 2017 Imagined as an artefact published before blockchain changed the world, Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1207…> is a collection of fiction, theory and documentation of artists’ experiments with blockchain. Edited and published in collaboration with Torque <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1208…> and Liverpool University Press. <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1209…> Design 4 ACTION! Permaculture Course, Finsbury Park, London, Autumn 2017 <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1209…> London’s Permaculture Design Course Design 4 ACTION aims for positive design for your life, your community and your world - at Furtherfield Commons in Finsbury Park 6 weekends, Oct 2017 - Mar 2018, BOOK HERE <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1209…> <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1210…> Northumbria-Sunderland CDT conference 2017 <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1210…> Tue 25 July 2017, 10am – 4.15pm BALTIC Gateshead NE8 3BA Marc Garrett speaks at this conference exploring knowledge production within, across and beyond academic institutions. All welcome, BOOK HERE <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1210…> Join the Furtherfield network <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1211…> Join Netbehaviour <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1211…> <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1212…> Discuss and share @furtherfield <http://crm.furtherfield.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1212…> Furtherfield is supported by Arts Council England through the National Portfolio funding programme, Haringey Council and the generosity of individual supporters. Click here <http://crm.furtherfield.org/civicrm/mailing/optout?reset=1&jid=760&qid=1581…> if you no longer wish to receive this newsletter. McKenzie Pavilion Finsbury Park London, N4 2NQ -- 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: [CommonGood] FYI: 1 interesting event, 1 remarkable document
by Michel Bauwens 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Birgit Daiber <bir.dai(a)hotmail.com> Date: Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 5:41 PM Subject: [CommonGood] FYI: 1 interesting event, 1 remarkable document To: "commongood(a)listi.jpberlin.de" <commongood(a)listi.jpberlin.de> Dear Friends and Colleagues, 1)From 30 August to 2 Sept, an intersting conference will take place in Buenos Aires: "La Economia de los/la Trabajadores/las" concentrating on workers occupied factories and self-organised cooperatives. The conference is organised by the Open Faculty Programm of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires and it's place is Piqué in Buenos Aires. 2) Tina Ebro is distributing the newest article of Walden Bello "It’s Not Only Necessary to Develop an Alternative to Globalization — It’s Entirely Possible" enjoy reading it! Yours, Birgit *Foreign Policy In Focus, 17 July 2017* It’s Not Only Necessary to Develop an Alternative to Globalization — It’s Entirely Possible It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? *Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is an international adjunct professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He’s the author of Capitalism’s Last Stand? Deglobalization in a Time of Austerity (London: Zed, 2013), an associate of the Transnational Institute, and co-chair of the board of Focus on the Global South.* *by Walden Be <http://fpif.org/authors/walden-bello/>ll <http://fpif.org/authors/walden-bello/>o * [image: democracy-free-trade-TPP-oligarchy-neoliberalism] (Photo: StopFastTrack / Flickr) Free trade and the freedom of capital to move across borders have been the cutting edge of globalization. They’ve also led to the succession of crises that have led to the widespread questioning of capitalism as a way of organizing economic life — and of its paramount ideological expression, neoliberalism. The protests against capitalism at the recent G20 meeting in Hamburg may seem superficially the same as those which marked similar meetings in the early 2000s. But there’s one big difference now: Global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. Yet capitalism’s resilience amidst crisis must not be underestimated. For trade activists, in particular, who’ve been on the forefront of the struggle against neoliberalism and globalization over the last two decades, there are a number of key challenges posed by the conjuncture. *Neoliberalism’s Surprising Strength* First is the surprising strength of neoliberalism. The credibility of neoliberalism, to which free trade ideology is central, has been deeply damaged by a succession of events over the last two decades, among which were the collapse of the third ministerial of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, and the Global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the effects of which continue to drag down the global economy. Most of us in the field remember the time late in 2008, when after hearing accounts of the Global financial crisis from an assembly of orthodox economists at the London School of Economics, Queen Elizabeth posed the question: “Why didn’t anybody see this coming? <http://www.irishtimes.com/business/virtual-explanation-for-market-cycles-1.…>” None of the dumbfounded economists could answer her then — and last I heard, the queen is still waiting for the answer. What one finds puzzling is despite this loss of credibility, neoliberalism continues to rule. Academic economists continue to teach it, and technocrats continue to prescribe it. The false assumptions of free trade theory underlie the free trade agreements or economic partnership agreements into which the big powers continue to try to rope developing countries. To borrow an image from the old western films, the train engineer has been shot and killed, but his dead hand continues to push down on the throttle, with the train gathering more and more speed. The takeaway from this is that so long as there are interests that are served by an ideology, such as corporate interests and knowledge institutions that have invested in it, even a succession of devastating crises of credibility isn’t enough to overthrow a paradigm. *Export-led Growth Is Still on Course* The second challenge is especially relevant to developing countries. It is the persistence of the model of export-oriented growth. Now, this model of development through trade is shared both by neoliberals and non-neoliberals — the difference being that the former think it should be advanced by market forces alone and the latter with the vigorous help of the state. Now, over the last few years, the stagnation of the once dynamic centers of the global demand — the U.S., Europe, and the BRICS — has made this model obsolete. It was, in fact, the non-viability of this once successful model of rapid growth in current global circumstances that pushed China, under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, to push the country away from an export-oriented path to a domestic demand-led strategy via a massive $585 billion stimulus program. They failed, and the reason for their failure is instructive. In fact, a set of powerful interests had congealed around the export-oriented model — the state banks, regional and local governments that had benefited from the strategy, export-oriented state enterprises, foreign investors — and these prevented the model from being dislodged, even given its unsuitability in this period of global stagnation. These same policy struggles are going on in other developing countries. In most cases, the outcome is the same: The export lobbies are winning, despite the fact that the global conditions sustaining their strategy are vanishing. *The Right Eats Our Lunch* A third challenge has to do with the fact that when major changes in trade policy do take place, it’s not because of the actions of progressive groups but of demagogues of the right. I think this is clearest in the case of the United States. It was Donald Trump who shot down the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that had been the object of so much criticism coming from the left. Trump may be a demagogue and his motives may be opportunistic, but it was he who came through on one of the central demands of U.S. labor — not the Democrats — with the consequence that he’s been able to win over large parts of the white working class. In Europe, working classes are moving to right wing parties in significant numbers as well, not only owing to a racist response to immigration, but also because these far-right parties are espousing anti-globalization and anti-free trade rhetoric. As in the case with the Democrats in the U.S., the Social Democrats in Europe are identified with financialization and free trade, and this is a central reason for their loss of credibility. But it was the *non-establishment* left, the left of social movements, that began and developed the critique of globalization, neoliberalism, and free trade in the 1990s and the 2000s. But for a variety of reasons, we weren’t able to translate our politics into an effective movement. The extreme right, on the other hand, opportunistically expropriated our message, rebranded themselves as anti-neoliberals opposed to the center-right as well as the center-left, and now they’re eating our lunch. *The Alternative* The final challenge has to do with coming up with a credible alternative paradigm. My first two points stressed the importance of powerful interests in sustaining a paradigm despite its loss of intellectual credibility. But this isn’t sufficient to explain the continuing powerful influence of neoliberalism. Our failure to move from a critique of neoliberal capitalism to a powerful alternative model — like socialism provided to so many marginalized classes, peoples, and nations in the 20th century — is part of the problem. The theoretical building blocks of an alternative economic model are there, the product of the work of so many progressives over the last 50 years. This includes the rich work that has been done around sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization. The task is to integrate them not only into an intellectually coherent model, but into an inspiring narrative that combines vision, theory, program, and action, and one that rests firmly on the values of justice, equity, and environmental sustainability. Of course, the work towards this goal will be long and hard. But we must not only be convinced that it’s *necessary* but also confident that it’s *possible* to come up with an alternative that will rally most of the people behind us. Ideas matter. To borrow the old biblical saying, “Without vision, the people perish.” These are some of the central challenges confronting trade activists. We cannot leave the field to a neoliberalism that has failed or to an extremism that has appropriated some of our analysis and married them to hideous, reactionary values. A progressive future is not guaranteed. We must work to bring it about, and we will. *.* _______________________________________________ CommonGood Mailingliste JPBerlin - Politischer Provider CommonGood(a)listi.jpberlin.de https://listi.jpberlin.de/mailman/listinfo/commongood -- 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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Fwd: Money for the People (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 24 Jul '17

24 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> Date: Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 6:11 AM Subject: Money for the People (GTN Discussion) To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com >From Mary Sue Schmaltz <marysue(a)igc.org> ------------------------------------------------------- [Moderator’s Note: As you may have noticed, the GTI site was down for a few days. Thankfully, we’re back up and running. Note that the discussion ends on MONDAY, JULY 31st (one week from tomorrow), although we may extend it due to the glitch. – JC] Mary Mellor's exploration of the nature of money and its role in the diminishment of socially and environmentally relevant values is well taken. Active participation from local, regional and national governments will be imperative to any endeavor to transform monetary structures. However, it need not be expressly a centralized governmental function. Currency expert Bernard Lietaer has long argued that we could re-design our system of money in a manner that would be more socially beneficial if we were to shift the money "target" away from the competitive model towards more socially viable aims. Ultimately, Lietaer believes the answer lies in designing complementary forms of local currencies to work in tandem with our conventional currency systems. Lietaer also introduced the idea of a global currency called the Terra, which would be comprised of a combination of various commodities and international services. Creating a standardized basket of the prominent commodities and services, he believes, would incentivize long term thinking and would better stabilize the global business cycle as it would be more inflation-proof. In line with Mellor's idea of public money is the idea of utility banking. Banking expert Martin Mayer notes the significance of banks no longer acting as social institutions rooted in their communities with direct relationships to their depositors and borrowers. Now banks are businesses who sell off their loans severing the relationship between borrower and lender while shifting risks onto the public. Suzanne McGee in her book Chasing Goldman Sachs likened the money grid to an electrical grid. Just as we have electric and water utilities, McGee proposes that we need a banking utility. When liquidity dries up, it can be just as devastating as a water or electrical shortage. Playing off the proposed public option for health care, Ellen Brown in her book Web of Debt suggests that we consider a public option in banking. Instead of taking profits out of the community system, the public banking system would be better positioned to reinvest in the community. An example of such a successful regional bank already exists – the Bank of North Dakota, which is owned by the state. It is vital that we directly address not just the creation and control of the currency itself, but the whole system of money and finance - including accounting rules, taxation, regulations and other metrics which incentivize or discourage certain types of activities. Rana Foroohar in her book Makers and Takers: The rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, does a great job of examining how the incremental rise of hyper- financialization and commodification have diverted resources away from activities that promote overall well-being. Former British banking regulator and chairman of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, Adair Turner, in his book Between Debt and the Devil, notes that a mere 15% of the global financial flows are applied to the real productive economy. The rest relates to fabricated values derived from financial engineering and manipulations, divorced from the real productive economy of products and services. These values are truly representative of the "something from nothing" to which Mellor refers. It's not just that financial values are widely disconnected from human and ecological values. These values are not even in line with sound economic values. When companies such as Apple borrow funds to buy back shares in order to artificially prop up its share price rather than innovate, the distortion becomes obvious. Exacerbating the distancing of economic values from life-affirming values is the fact that finance today is driven by complex algorithms. Quantitative expert Paul Wilmott has been sounding the alarm loudly about the role of complex algorithms in financial risk and value distortion. Per Wilmott: "If you used the wrong model to design airplanes, you'd kill passengers and end up in prison. But do the people using financial risk models care what happens? Of course they don't." Value at Risk, the dominant risk measurement used by the financial industry certainly proved fatal to global financial health leading up to the financial crisis of 2008. Skewed financial modeling is still the driving force of economic values. (Paul Wilmott just co-authored a new book with Paul Orrell which was just released entitled The Money Formula: Dodgy Finance, Pseudo Science, and How Mathematicians Took Over the Markets , which I'm sure will add new insights to this debate.) We also need to be careful not to simply monetize certain altruistic or caring activities. Technology exists today for exchange systems which make it possible to maintain the integrity of such activities. For example, BiologicTx, has developed a kidney transplant chain, whereby the system identifies willing donors to compatible matches without financial gain. Say a person needs a kidney transplant and a loved one would readily offer one of their kidneys, but they are found to be biologically incompatible. The altruistic intent remains intact to mutual benefit as the willing donor is still giving a kidney to get a kidney for their intended recipient. As we struggle with financing the needs of our aging populations, we might consider a Japanese approach known as the fureai kippu, which roughly translates into “caring relationship voucher.” People volunteer as caregivers to the elderly and receive credits. All in all, I very much appreciated Mary Mellor's paper which offers a great starting point for delving deeper into discussions about the monetary system. How do we connect people to services and products? How do we preserve the quality and create universal access to life-giving resources? What will be the new nature of livelihoods and market participation in this era of automation and worker obsolescence? We can begin by linking financial values to real life on the ground. Local circles of economic activity should be nested within the global system, but not smashed down by the top-heavy nature of our dominant money systems. Mary Sue Schmaltz marysue(a)igc.org ----- Original Message ----- > Transition Network >Sent: Jul 19, 2017 4:25 PM > > for the People (GTN Discussion) > > >From Peter Barnes > > ----- >I love Mary Mellor’s path-breaking thinking and writing on money. And I completely agree with her main point: that we, the people, ought to reclaim sovereignty over our currency and issue new money directly to ourselves as part of a basic income, rather than let banks create it by making loans. > >But her proposal, as well as others that are necessary for a Great Transition, leave me wondering about how we craft a viable political strategy. Speaking as an American, I wonder how many of my fellow-countrymen have any inkling about how banks have privatized the social construct we call money. Very few, I’d venture to say. So it is hard to imagine a popular movement arising for monetary reform along Mellor’s line. The same is true for other proposals discussed on this site: they are necessary for our planet and society, but way too complex for the average distracted citizen to comprehend. > >That’s half of our political challenge. The other half is that all of our proposals face intense political opposition from powerful legacy industries, whether these be fossil fuel companies, health insurers or banks. These companies have immense power to confuse the public, buy politicians, and block progressive legislation. So how do we create a framework that is simple and persuasive enough to inspire a popular movement, and sturdy enough to do so over the decades it will take to effect a Great Transition? > >The best historical model we have, it seems to me, is social insurance. Leaving aside its older European roots, this model took root in America with the Social Security Act of 1935 — propelled by such grassroots movements as the Townsend Clubs — and has expanded steadily ever since, resisting all efforts from powerful industries to decimate or privatize it, including the latest onslaught against the Affordable Care Act. What has made social insurance so impregnable are its universality (the middle class is solidly behind it) and the fact that it addresses the near-universal fear of economic insecurity — a fear that, despite our seeming prosperity, is only intensifying. > >That said, the present financial base of social insurance — payroll contributions by workers and employers — has essentially maxed out. Nor is it possible to supplement existing labor income by taxing it. So a 21st century system of economic security will have to be built on a new financing model, which I have proposed to be income from common wealth, in the manner of Thomas Paine and the Alaska Permanent Fund (see With Liberty and Dividends For All). > >Picture, then, a giant “common pot” into which flows money from multiple forms of common wealth and out of which flow monthly dividends to every American with a Social Security account. Such a pot could begin, as Social Security did, with a relatively small inflow and outflow, and grow over time as Americans become comfortable with it. Its funding sources could include fees on pollution of shared ecosystems and use of socially constructed financial infrastructure, as well as new money created in the manner Mellor proposes. > >This system, anchored by the common pot, would serve three functions simultaneously. First, it would address the pressing need for lifetime economic security, a need that will only increase as automation and artificial intelligence replace more jobs. Second, it would create demand for more revenue sources which, if properly designed, would advance one of the key goals of the Great Transformation: internalizing the costs of destabilizing nature. Third and perhaps most importantly, it would supply the political juice for the first two functions. To paraphrase Mary Poppins, rising dividends from the common pot would become the sugar that helps the less palatable transformational pills go down. > >In short, three cheers for Mellor’s monetary proposal. And let’s make good use of it by embedding it in a larger strategy that makes a greater transformation politically possible. > >-Peter > >Peter Barnes >Author, With Liberty and Dividends For All > >********************************************* > >************** > >On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Great Transition Network wrote: >From Paul Raskin >________________________________________ >Dear GTN, > >The old proverb—money is the root of all evil—may overstate the case, but money is, indeed, implicated in the iniquitous debt/growth spiral now degrading Earthland. > >Mary Mellor explains in her new GTI essay, “Money for the People,” that it needn’t be so. The modern money system is a social construct that evolved to spur capital accumulation, but lingers on in an era needing, instead, to throttle consumerism, debt, and the economic growth machine. Rather than creating money privately through bank lending, as the current system does, an alternative approach—public money—can undergird an economy oriented toward people and use value, not profit and exchange value. > >I think you’ll find Mary’s vision of a critical institutional pillar of a Great Transition economy illuminating, intriguing, and inspiring. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/money-for-the-people, and let the comments and questions begin! How would public money work in practice? How would it interface with the market? How might its pursuit contribute to strategies for system change? > >Comments are welcome through JULY 31. > >Looking forward, >Paul Raskin >GTI Director > >HOW WE WORK >Odd-numbered months are for internal GT Network discussions; even-numbered months are for public dissemination. You will receive all comments via email, and can review the entire thread online at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. The essay will be published alongside a “Roundtable,” comprised of selected comments from the GTN discussion and a response from the author. > ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/191- money-for-the-people/2377 Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org -- 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: The tyranny of the ‘collaborative commons’
by Michel Bauwens 21 Jul '17

21 Jul '17

excellent critical piece that invites us to be weary about commons romanticism, Michel ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vasilis Kostakis <kostakis.b(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 5:29 PM Subject: The tyranny of the ‘collaborative commons’ To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> http://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=1240 -- Dr. Vasilis Kostakis Senior Research Fellow, Tallinn University of Technology Research Affiliate, Harvard University Founder, P2P Lab -- 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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Fwd: Money for the People (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 20 Jul '17

20 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> Date: Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 1:49 AM Subject: Money for the People (GTN Discussion) To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com >From Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004(a)gmail.com> ------------------------------------------------------- I very much appreciate Al Hammond insights into the new market dynamics of digital capitalism, and on the likely perenniality of the market function within a broader plurality of resource allocation methods. One key for me is to distinguish capitalism from markets, and to realize that markets can be transformed. Markets can rule with a market state at their disposition, but market can also serve other more dominant systems of allocation as it did when it was an emergent force under feudalism. Today, with the exponential growth of new digital and urban commons, most of which are subsumed under capital but by no means all of them, we have a new opportunity to transform markets so that they can serve the commons. Capitalism is, as Kojin Karatani has argued in The Structure of World History, a three-in-one system: capital - state - nation. Crucial in this current conjuncture, is that the classic strategy of change 'within capitalism', the famous Polanyan double movement, in which the mobilized people (aka the 'nation') forced the state to periodically rebalance run-away capitalist logics, seems to no longer function. The most likely reason is that capital has become transnational, and that nation-states simply no longer have the clout and the will to rebalance through inter-state efforts. This means that though the system is in deep crisis, its alternatives are in a bind too, which is a great opportunity for a more systematic transformation. One of the potential strategies is to work with the commoners and their commons-based entrepreneurial coalitions, and to work, from the commons outward, to transform the market forms that depend on the commons. This is crucial, as capitalism in the advanced sectors and places, is moving from commodity-labor forms, to 'netarchical forms', i.e. the direct exploitation of human cooperation, whether in commons-production or in distributed markets. In my last contribution, I mentioned briefly protocol cooperativism. Here is the rationale for it. In the last few years, we have seen the emergence of a cooperative/solidarity-based alternative to the netarchical platforms (GAFA), i.e. the platform cooperative movement. Signs of change are the two successful conferences in NYC, evidence of union-coop funded platforms for nurses and cleaners, and more and more cooperative digital platforms that are listed in the Internet of Ownership directory. I am personally involved in the shift from the cooperative and ESS movement in France, towards a convergence of cooperative and commons forms; and the same evolution is underway in cooperative federations in other countries and Western Europe. Platform coops are worker or multi-stakeholder owned and governed platforms, that are at the service of a commons or distributed market based community, in which the platform itself is considered a commons; and the 'cooperative' legal form is considered to be a management model for such commons. But they can easily slip back into competitive cooperativism and become mere collective modalities of capitalism. This is why platform coops need to be 'open coops', i.e. they must make their contribution to the commons a strategic and legal priority. They must move from a position of capital accumulation, to a position of commons accumulation, and from a position of redistribution, to one of predistribution. The way to do this is by adopting protocol cooperativism. This means there should not be 40 different ride-hailing coops competing with the one Uber, each with their own software (there are 13 ordering software packages for ordering food from CSA's, only in the Italian solidarity economy, as Jason Nardi of RIPESS told me once). There should be one open source ride-hailing applications, which can be used by all the different open/platform cooperatives. Given the fragmentation of the commons economy, who can be the 'agents' of such transformation, of such 'commonification' of market dynamics? Today, we already have 2 such agents, but we need a third political/institutional one. The two first agents which have emerged in the last 15 years are the global open source communities in the world of free software and open design, who have successfully created for-benefit associations (such as the FLOSS Foundations) as 'commons infrastructure organisations'. The second agent are the global generative and entre-donneurial coalitions who have created market activities and incomes for the commons sector. This second sector is still very emergent and weak, but is exists and is growing. But global transnational civic institutions, and global post-capitalist ethical market coalitions may not be enough, we may need a transnational political institution, i.e. the 'state form' of the commons economy. My intuition is that, in a age of increasingly fragmented sovereignty, coalitions of cities may play this role. The exponential rise of urban commons, (I identified 500 projects in a 300k populated city of Ghent, covering all provisioning systems), the rise of 'rebel cities', 'fearless cities', climate change coalized cities, commons-oriented progressive coalitions in spanish cities (look at the amazing Impetus Plan for the growth and support of the cooperative, solidarity and commons economy in Barcelona), give me hope that in time, coalitions of cities may emerge who can collective support the infrastructures of protocol cooperativism. In other words, networked cities today are a potential form of transnational governance that may also be an important agent for the commons transition. The role of progressive coalitions at the nation-state level, is to support the emergence, consolidation, and trans-nationalization of the commons infrastructure, so that it becomes maximally resilient and able to withstand the pressures of global capital. An all-out assault of a single progressive nation-state against capital today is doomed, but the nation-state arena can be an area for consolidation of a transnationally organized commons sector. Michel Bauwens ************************************ On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 4:44 AM, Great Transition Network wrote: >From Al Hammond ----- I confess to being both attracted and dismayed by Mellor’s essay, and think the comments of Hallsmith (especially about the potential of blockchains to create new vehicles and currencies for exchange) and Hornberg (about the use of non-general currencies to support a basic income) improve it. My dismay comes from the apparent lack of understanding of the fundamental role that markets play in both shaping and enabling personal and corporate and state behavior. Markets can be regulated and transformed, but they are not going away, and with the increase in access to information and choice, they are arguably more responsive to consumers than ever before. If consumers desire a Great Transition, or a more sustainable economy, markets will respond (that’s where Whole Foods and the rise of organic and locally-sourced produce came from). The important point about blockchains (there are now hundreds under development) is that they, like the internet, are not under the control of any single entity—corporate or governmental. I think it likely they represent a disruptive new force—and novel forms of money—that can potentially become harnessed in service to a Great Transition. But the time to engage with those developing these new entities is now. Markets, too, are changing in a fundamental way, with the rise of cloud-based or platform businesses like ebay or Amazon for retail, Uber and Lyft for local transport, Google for search, Facebook for social connections, Apple for mobile phone apps, etc. These types of businesses do not manufacture anything (except data); rather, they connect buyers and sellers of goods and services or developers and users of apps or networks of friends, creating new (on-line) business ecosystems and the tools to navigate them. Increasingly, those tools include artificial intelligence to optimize and improve the consumer experience (and to sell targeted advertising). Platform businesses are winning out, and already constitute an increasingly large share of markets, because they are more efficient (and generally have far lower environmental impact) than the business models they are replacing. This may well represent an essential part of the Great Transition. For example, if India and Africa largely skip building malls and go straight to e-commerce, and to a major extent skip buying personal cars and rent self-driving electric vehicles from Uber-like entities, the forgone environmental impact will be enormous. Indeed, China is well along in this transition—800 million people shop, chat, and do their banking on the WeChat app—despite still buying lots of personal cars and building lots of malls. Of course, technological change is socially disruptive—and this one may hasten the need for a guaranteed minimum income. But consider another platform business—Discovery Education, a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel, whose digital content (personalized to the reading level or math achievement of each individual student) is already used in 50% of the classrooms in the US and is spreading overseas (they are big in the UK and in Egypt, for example). School systems converting to this and related digital platforms typically give students a Chromebook in 1st grade, teach coding starting in primary school, use artifical reality videos instead of textbooks to demonstrate how hearts beat or galaxies form, and include proficiency in teamwork as a major educational objective. Hundreds of new Ed-tech companies are formed every year in the US alone, proliferating the toolset. Perhaps as this kind of education reaches global scale (in local languages), it will create workforces that are at home in the digital world and can create their own employments—and perhaps the kind of aware consumers and citizens that a Great Transition will need. My broader point is that the discussion of elements of a GT need to deal with the world as it is, including how the world is rapidly changing. --Al Hammond ************************************************** Tuesday, July 11, 2017 >From Alf Hornborg ----- Comment on Mary Mellor’s essay “Money for the People” Mary Mellor is absolutely right that we need to understand that money is both a social construct and an active force, which means that it can be redesigned so as to promote quite different social and ecological processes than those generated by the current money system. She is justified in proposing that the creation of money should be democratically controlled through the state, and that this would make it possible not only to liberate us from the exigencies of debt and the compulsion to achieve economic growth, but also, for instance, to provide all the inhabitants of a nation with a basic income. Beyond the conceptual constraints of conventional economics, this perspective allows us to see that the rules of the economic game are as arbitrary and potentially mutable as the rules of any other game designed by humans. Nevertheless, I would like to complement Mellor’s crucial insights and proposals in a few ways. First, her assertion that it is not “money itself” that fuels exploitation and environmental destruction needs to be modified. As long as we are referring to what in economic anthropology is called “general-purpose money” (money that can be used to purchase virtually anything), money *itself* does indeed fuel exploitation and environmental destruction. If there are no constraints on what we can buy with our money, we shall naturally be looking for the best deals, which usually means the lowest-paid labor and the lowest-priced resources. The globalized capitalist market is an expression of the inherent logic of general-purpose money. This logic is the same regardless of whether such money is created by banks or states, and even regardless of the existence of interest. Mellor writes that “some form of money has been around in almost all human societies.” Yes, but not the particular form of money that developed in colonial Europe. The destructive implications of general-purpose money were evident to critics of market economies from Marx to Polanyi. [1] The logic of such money is distinctly different from the “special-purpose money” that was identified, for example, among the Tiv people of Nigeria. Precolonial Tiv, like most traditional cultures, recognized more than one sphere of value. [2] Whatever kind of money that existed, it could not readily buy *everything*. When Mellor writes that it is difficult to envisage societies without “some mechanism to facilitate comparisons of value,” she does not reckon with the possibility of recognizing such cultural limitations of commensurability. Mellor’s point that money is a social construct means that it is potentially possible to democratically design a money system that recognizes limits to commensurability. To take a couple of drastic examples, it would be possible to decide that rainforests are not exchangeable on the same market as Coca-Cola, or that food in the global South is not purchased with the same kind of money as is used for financial speculation on Wall Street. A system of separate currencies for basic needs versus global markets would insulate values pertaining to sustainability and survival from the abstract capital flows of the world-system. It could thus serve to check exploitation and environmental destruction. Second, I find it problematic to speak, as Mellor does, of things with “use value,” “social value,” or “little or no value.” Value is always in the eye of the beholder. We need to clearly distinguish between the biophysical properties of a given item, on the one hand, and its value for specific humans, on the other. There is no universal standard for judging whether a particular item has “use value,” “social value,” or no value at all. Value is a thoroughly cultural phenomenon. This means that we need to think about economy and ecology as analytically separate, even though we know that they interact in practice. In doing so, for example, we can see that we tend to value things higher the less of the original energy that is left in a set of resources transformed in production. [3] Mellor is definitely on the right track. The planet will not be saved by trying to get the colonial outlook of mainstream economics to somehow accommodate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. [4] Nor will it be saved by a socialist revolution that collectivizes ownership but continues to think in terms of money and exchange value. Money is not just a reflection of the relations of production but an artifact that operates as an active force in organizing such relations. To change the logic of the global economic game, we must change money itself. My third point, then, is that the basic income to which all of should have a right should not be paid in general-purpose money, because that would simply keep us buying the products of the lowest-paid labor and the most degraded landscapes. [5] It should be paid in a special-purpose, complementary currency that can only be used to buy products and services produced within a specified radius of the point of purchase. This is not “local money” in the sense of geographically restricted currencies, but one single, national currency – issued by the state – that is only for local use. There is no space here for listing the many social and ecological benefits of such a reform, but it would be quite in line with Mellor’s general understanding of money as our main – perhaps only – chance of achieving sustainability, justice, and resilience. [6] [1] In his book “The Great Transformation” (1944), Karl Polanyi argued that the idea of the self-regulating market, unless checked by society, would logically lead to increasing exploitation, environmental degradation, and economic instability. [2] The economic anthropologist Paul Bohannan in the 1950s showed that the Tiv economy was organized around three separate “spheres of exchange,” and that some conversions between separate spheres of value were morally discouraged. [3] This was pointed out by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in his 1971 book “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process.” [4] The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Entropy Law, states that the energy and matter of an isolated system will become more disordered over time. As Georgescu-Roegen showed, this implies that an economic production process will simultaneously increase economic value and physical disorder. [5] In choosing the least expensive products, consumers inadvertently encourage production processes that show the least concern for the environment, which often means the most lax environmental legislation. [6] I have elaborated this proposal in an article called “How to Turn an Ocean Liner,” in volume 24 of the Journal of Political Ecology (2017). Professor Alf Hornborg Human Ecology Division, Lund University +46 222 3113 +46 708 122433 www.palgrave.com/cn/book/9781137567864 ************************************************************ ***************** Från: Great Transition Network Skickat: den 11 juli 2017 01:03 Till: Alf Hornborg Ämne: Money for the People (GTN Discussion) >From Gwendolyn Hallsmith ----- Report from the Front Lines of Monetary Democracy Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Mary Mellor’s thoughtful essay about Money for the People. Her call for public money and robust, democratic, transparent money issuance can be seen as what Star Trek refers to as “the final frontier” in our efforts to create a resilient, sustainable world. I wholeheartedly agree with her public money solution, yet sadly lack her confidence in centralized, party-driven, representative global governance. I imagine she might be a Star Trek fan, with a secret hope that the Federation can save the day. I have to confess that I was immediately on guard with her abstract’s first sentence, which relegated “local initiatives” to the sidelines, claiming that they can only lead to modest gains, not large-scale transformation. Why are we so enamored with large scale in the first place? I have begun to see anything larger than human scale as part of the problem, not part of the solution. Particularly when it comes to democracy. (I am writing from the U.S., where we are suffering from extreme inequality’s impact on large-scale democracy – and the best government our corrupt and debt based money can buy). Beyond the initial assumption about local initiatives, she actually doesn’t talk at all about why large scale is needed, even in the quest for public money – she seems to conflate “public” with large, central states. Public comes in many flavors, after all, and the Sparkasse public banks in Germany have demonstrated that some level of public money is possible at a small scale – there is no town too small in Germany to host one of these independent, networked public banks. Here in bucolic Vermont, we have been working with some success to get a Vermont State Bank, which would wrest a portion of the money issuance authority from the large, private banks. My experience here, however, has shown me that the large powers – the globalized corporations, their partners in globalized banks, and their hapless cronies in neoliberal academia – have set numerous obstacles on the road to Money for the People, and these obstacles need to either be overcome or rendered obsolete before a large-scale transformation is possible. Overcoming them is nearly impossible – they control the media, the money supply, the armies, navies, courts, and legislatures. The rewards they offer their adherents – unlimited wealth, power, and privilege - is too strong a potion, even if it is only a pipe dream. Three years ago, 20 towns and cities in Vermont voted to direct the state legislature to establish a Vermont State Bank. Our towns and cities make decisions using the closest thing to direct democracy, where every registered voter has a right to vote on budgets, laws, and other propositions. Did the legislature take this democratic input and act? Not really. We still do not have a state bank, even though they threw us a bone where 10% of the money in the big banks is now loaned directly into the Vermont economy. This year, when we went to the legislature with the successful (and profitable) experience of that program as the wind at our backs, we ran into a stone wall. This is precisely because in addition to the growth imperative and inequality machine the current monetary system imposes, as Mellor very carefully and accurately documents, the artificial scarcity and hoarding the system requires pits the “haves” against the “have-nots” and the people in power – the elite – know on which side of the toast their bread is buttered, and do not lift a finger to help us, even when their political party has public banking as a plank in their platform. My faith in parties has died with my faith in large-scale democracy, I’m afraid. They are not public, they are not democratic, and they need to die a rapid and final death. Lest you imagine that my despair at the progress on the road to Money for the People has left me bereft, take heart. I believe we are on the cusp of the old system being rendered obsolete, much, much easier on some levels than overcoming the powers by fighting them directly through democratic organizing and legislative action. I am not giving up on that; just saying it is necessary but not sufficient. I have seen the future, and it is block chaining its way into the heart of the human value system, where things with true meaning and value can thrive again. The advent of new value-embedding technologies is something that Mellor does not even mention. While they are encrypted now in the labyrinthine interwebs, their principles and practices can apply universally, and I would argue even without the complex and sometimes impenetrable technology. My prediction: these systems will restore sovereignty to human-scale communities once again, and we will be free from large-scale totalitarian domination and impoverishment. They can be at once both private and public – the new transparency makes it possible to keep watch on their “amplification” and development. The distributed ledger is at once both local and global. Local iterations can spring into existence using highly democratic and time-tested issuance and conflict management practices. Their identity certification and transaction transparency can pave the way for direct, not party, democracy at all scales. The UN has just issued payments in a refugee camp in Ehters, for example, demonstrating that global and local can work together directly and effectively for the common good. Public, private, global, local, large and small – all of these demand definition and rethinking if we are to transcend the bitter and outdated paradigm that is driving the planet toward rapid human extinction. Neoliberal economics and their elitist partner in representative democracy are well past their shelf life – let’s bring on the new day already. Beam me up, Scotty. Gwen Hallsmith ************** On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Great Transition Network wrote: >From Paul Raskin ________________________________________ Dear GTN, The old proverb—money is the root of all evil—may overstate the case, but money is, indeed, implicated in the iniquitous debt/growth spiral now degrading Earthland. Mary Mellor explains in her new GTI essay, “Money for the People,” that it needn’t be so. The modern money system is a social construct that evolved to spur capital accumulation, but lingers on in an era needing, instead, to throttle consumerism, debt, and the economic growth machine. Rather than creating money privately through bank lending, as the current system does, an alternative approach—public money—can undergird an economy oriented toward people and use value, not profit and exchange value. I think you’ll find Mary’s vision of a critical institutional pillar of a Great Transition economy illuminating, intriguing, and inspiring. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/money-for-the-people, and let the comments and questions begin! How would public money work in practice? How would it interface with the market? How might its pursuit contribute to strategies for system change? Comments are welcome through JULY 31. Looking forward, Paul Raskin GTI Director HOW WE WORK Odd-numbered months are for internal GT Network discussions; even-numbered months are for public dissemination. You will receive all comments via email, and can review the entire thread online at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. The essay will be published alongside a “Roundtable,” comprised of selected comments from the GTN discussion and a response from the author. ----- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/191-money-for-the-people/2374 Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org -- P2P Foundation: p2pfoundation.net - blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/ mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundationUpdates: del.icio.us/mbauwens; friendfeed.com/mbauwens; twitter.com/mbauwens; www.facebook.com/mbauwens ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/191- money-for-the-people/2375 Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org -- 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: The Biotech Industry Is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs from the Inside
by Michel Bauwens 20 Jul '17

20 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jonathan Latham <jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org> Date: Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 3:05 AM Subject: The Biotech Industry Is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs from the Inside To: bsr-PROJECT-ELIST1(a)gn.apc.org Dear Friends and Colleagues Published today (Wednesday, July 19, 2017) in *Independent Science News* *The Biotech Industry Is Taking Over the Regulation of GMOs from the Inside* byJonathan Latham, PhD https://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/the-biotech- industry-is-taking-over-the-regulation-of-gmos/ *Synopsis:* The corporate takeover of the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR) and its biennial ISGBMO conference is a case study in the methods and the goals of the biotech industry. It exemplifies industry efforts to capture international GMO regulation and showcases the specific regulatory objectives of the biotech industry. Please share if you find this article of value. yours sincerely Jonathan Jonathan Latham, PhD Executive Director The Bioscience Resource Project Ithaca, NY 14850 USA www.independentsciencenews.org and www.bioscienceresource.org jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org Skype: jonathanlatham2 Tel: 1-607-319-0279 “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward Bernays, Propaganda _______________________________________________ BSR-project-elist1 mailing list Info and options: https://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/bsr-project- elist1 To unsubscribe, email bsr-project-elist1-unsubscribe(a)gn.apc.org -- 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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Fwd: Money for the People (GTN Discussion)
by Michel Bauwens 20 Jul '17

20 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork(a)greattransition.org> Date: Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 3:25 AM Subject: Money for the People (GTN Discussion) To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com >From Peter Barnes <peter(a)tomales.org> ------------------------------------------------------- I love Mary Mellor’s path-breaking thinking and writing on money. And I completely agree with her main point: that we, the people, ought to reclaim sovereignty over our currency and issue new money directly to ourselves as part of a basic income, rather than let banks create it by making loans. But her proposal, as well as others that are necessary for a Great Transition, leave me wondering about how we craft a viable political strategy. Speaking as an American, I wonder how many of my fellow-countrymen have any inkling about how banks have privatized the social construct we call money. Very few, I’d venture to say. So it is hard to imagine a popular movement arising for monetary reform along Mellor’s line. The same is true for other proposals discussed on this site: they are necessary for our planet and society, but way too complex for the average distracted citizen to comprehend. That’s half of our political challenge. The other half is that all of our proposals face intense political opposition from powerful legacy industries, whether these be fossil fuel companies, health insurers or banks. These companies have immense power to confuse the public, buy politicians, and block progressive legislation. So how do we create a framework that is simple and persuasive enough to inspire a popular movement, and sturdy enough to do so over the decades it will take to effect a Great Transition? The best historical model we have, it seems to me, is social insurance. Leaving aside its older European roots, this model took root in America with the Social Security Act of 1935 — propelled by such grassroots movements as the Townsend Clubs — and has expanded steadily ever since, resisting all efforts from powerful industries to decimate or privatize it, including the latest onslaught against the Affordable Care Act. What has made social insurance so impregnable are its universality (the middle class is solidly behind it) and the fact that it addresses the near-universal fear of economic insecurity — a fear that, despite our seeming prosperity, is only intensifying. That said, the present financial base of social insurance — payroll contributions by workers and employers — has essentially maxed out. Nor is it possible to supplement existing labor income by taxing it. So a 21st century system of economic security will have to be built on a new financing model, which I have proposed to be income from common wealth, in the manner of Thomas Paine and the Alaska Permanent Fund (see With Liberty and Dividends For All). Picture, then, a giant “common pot” into which flows money from multiple forms of common wealth and out of which flow monthly dividends to every American with a Social Security account. Such a pot could begin, as Social Security did, with a relatively small inflow and outflow, and grow over time as Americans become comfortable with it. Its funding sources could include fees on pollution of shared ecosystems and use of socially constructed financial infrastructure, as well as new money created in the manner Mellor proposes. This system, anchored by the common pot, would serve three functions simultaneously. First, it would address the pressing need for lifetime economic security, a need that will only increase as automation and artificial intelligence replace more jobs. Second, it would create demand for more revenue sources which, if properly designed, would advance one of the key goals of the Great Transformation: internalizing the costs of destabilizing nature. Third and perhaps most importantly, it would supply the political juice for the first two functions. To paraphrase Mary Poppins, rising dividends from the common pot would become the sugar that helps the less palatable transformational pills go down. In short, three cheers for Mellor’s monetary proposal. And let’s make good use of it by embedding it in a larger strategy that makes a greater transformation politically possible. -Peter Peter Barnes Author, With Liberty and Dividends For All ********************************************* ************** On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Great Transition Network wrote: >From Paul Raskin ________________________________________ Dear GTN, The old proverb—money is the root of all evil—may overstate the case, but money is, indeed, implicated in the iniquitous debt/growth spiral now degrading Earthland. Mary Mellor explains in her new GTI essay, “Money for the People,” that it needn’t be so. The modern money system is a social construct that evolved to spur capital accumulation, but lingers on in an era needing, instead, to throttle consumerism, debt, and the economic growth machine. Rather than creating money privately through bank lending, as the current system does, an alternative approach—public money—can undergird an economy oriented toward people and use value, not profit and exchange value. I think you’ll find Mary’s vision of a critical institutional pillar of a Great Transition economy illuminating, intriguing, and inspiring. Please read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/money-for-the-people, and let the comments and questions begin! How would public money work in practice? How would it interface with the market? How might its pursuit contribute to strategies for system change? Comments are welcome through JULY 31. Looking forward, Paul Raskin GTI Director HOW WE WORK Odd-numbered months are for internal GT Network discussions; even-numbered months are for public dissemination. You will receive all comments via email, and can review the entire thread online at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. The essay will be published alongside a “Roundtable,” comprised of selected comments from the GTN discussion and a response from the author. ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/191- money-for-the-people/2376 Need help? Email jcohn(a)tellus.org -- 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: new Digital Dharma posts
by Michel Bauwens 18 Jul '17

18 Jul '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Steven Vedro <dharma(a)srvedro.com> Date: Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 6:03 AM Subject: new Digital Dharma posts To: Steven Vedro <steven(a)srvedro.com> Friends: I have starting posting to my Digital Dharma blog at its 10th anniversary of being published. If you are interested, the blog can be accessed at srvedro.com, while the Facebook location is: https://www.facebook.com/Digital-Dharma-Spiritual-Metaphors-of-Technology- 168927409852731/ Steven PS - If you want the book, it is still available on Amazon <https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Dharma-Expanding-Consciousness-Infosphere/dp…> or from the publisher (Quest Books <http://questbooks.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=802>), or I can send you an autographed copy for $15 (includes postage). <https://www.facebook.com/Digital-Dharma-Spiritual-Metaphors-of-Technology-1…> Digital Dharma: Spiritual Metaphors of Technology - Home ... <https://www.facebook.com/Digital-Dharma-Spiritual-Metaphors-of-Technology-1…> www.facebook.com Digital Dharma: Spiritual Metaphors of Technology. 105 likes. This will be the F/B home for my writings relating to my book "Digital Dharma" and my... -- 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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