thanks james, I see a parallel of what is happening with this labor aristocracy with what happened to the engineering class in the late 19th cy ... part of these post-artisans where coopted by capital .. ; the difference today is as you say that the ecological crisis makes it a tragedy ... the good news is here, i.e. how close the new generative social movements are to our own analysis and recommendations, see: ( http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Interfa... ) Excerpts[edit <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Local_Food_Movement_in_Belgium&action=edit§ion=2> ]On the political origins of the movement[edit <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Local_Food_Movement_in_Belgium&action=edit§ion=3> ] "The current renewal of local food networks in Western Europe, and notably in France (Zimmer, 2011), Italy (Toscano, 2011) and French-speaking Belgium finds its roots in the alter-globalization movement in the early 2000. In France, the new local food network setting, AMAP2, was launched in 2001 by small peasants and a local section of the alter-globalization network ATTAC and was directly inspired by the US groups for “Community Supported Agriculture”. In Liège, two social and cultural centres particularly active in the local alterglobalization movement were also among the first ones to start direct purchase groups for local food. The “Beau Mur” hosts both the local section of ATTAC and one of the larger group of local food consumers in town. It gathers over 80 families every Tuesday. A frontrunner of the local alter-globalization movement and the heart of the "Social Forum in Liège" in mid-2000s, the autonomous social and cultural centre "Barricade3" launched its “GAC” as early as 1999. It organizes a dozen talks a year about food, denouncing the hold of transnational corporation over food and pointing to concrete alternatives. In 2013, Barricade was again the main initiator of a new model of local food network: the “Liège Food-Earth Belt” (“Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liégeoise”, see below). It involves dozens of actors from different sectors and promotes the production and local food consumption. As I have showed elsewhere (Pleyers, 2010: 35-105) Barricade and most of the local food initiatives emerged in a specific part of the alter-globalization movement, bathed in a culture of activism4 that focuses on prefigurative activism, personal subjectivity and a concept of change rooted in everyday life." Scaling through swarming[edit <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Local_Food_Movement_in_Belgium&action=edit§ion=4> ] "Rather than enlarging its various groups, many groups thus opt for “emulation” (Tarde, 2001) and “swarming” rather than a growing organization (Pleyers, 2010: 93): “We don’t seek to build a big organization but many, many small organizations, each maintaining its specificities.” By doing so, they hope to maintain convivial and participatory group dynamics and to counter the trend towards institutionalization that usually characterizes civil society organizations and solidarity economy projects. When a group grows, the interpersonal dimension progressively gets lost and the separation between the project entrepreneurs and the more passive “consumers” widens. These actors lead us to reconsider the importance of local level in a globalized world." On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 4:06 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

Ironic how an ICO token economy is actually a classic *token economy, *a faux system of symbolic exchange. Yet it is difficult to understand why yet another version of supply-side production, investment and finance -- which has led to most of the present crises in global society, including the widening inequality and poverty of the precariat and the increasing deterioration of Earth's vulnerable natural cycles -- is continuing to be marketed as an invisible hand of God which will regenerate civilisation and create a Techno/Hayekian/Randian Utopia. We know from history that social illusion and economic bubbles go hand in hand, but it is past time to recognise that we are in a major planetary crisis because Nature will not wait for us to reconfigure our economic systems. So it is simply not enough to critique this civilisational problem as a failure of democratic capitalism or neo-liberalism. A new generation is being drawn into this myth of token economies as its overarching hope, and more human energy, creativity and productive labor are being diverted from the real social and ecological problems, distracting everyone and creating greater confusion. Much of the dialogue I've seen in this space during recent weeks has renewed my faith that the P2P group is truly on the track of systemic change and the development of a new narrative. Thank you, friends, your efforts are much needed and greatly appreciated.

----------------------------------------- From: "Michel Bauwens" To: "p2p-foundation" Cc: Sent: 12-Jan-2018 11:40:47 +0000 Subject: class analysis of the token economy, part 2

Tokens as a Model for Community Acquisition <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Tokens_as_a_Model_for_Community_Acquisition&action=edit&redlink=1> [edit <https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Bancor&action=edit§ion=3> ]

Chance Barnett:

"In this way, a token sale represents a new model of crowdsourcing or crowdfunding, where the line between buyers and customers are blurred.

As an example, imagine if 1,000 new participants sign up and buy tokens in an ICO. This not only provides funding for futher development and expansion, it also jumpstarts the underlying service with a community of users as token holders. One example of this was the Bancor ICO, which took in over $153M at the time, while the sale also resulted in thousands of token-buyers. These early and first buyers of the Bancor token are the most likely future users and adopters of the core protocol and services that Bancor provides.

"We had one of the largest bounty programs in history with thousands of active participants working towards the success of the token launch, directly through our software's alpha demo," Galia Benartzi, CoFounder and VP of Business Development at Bancor explained.

"While we ourselves were a small team, we had ambassadors all over the world translating, explaining and creating great content about the Bancor protocol. These contributors remain more motivated than ever to see the project succeed, as they own a piece of the open source network via their tokens. Rather than paying marketing or PR firms, we can share these resources directly with end-users in a distributed and still orchestrated way. The reach is a step function larger and also feels much more authentically aligned. This is inline with blockchain's promise to decentralize every aspect of business, including growth itself." ( <https://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2017/09/23/inside-the-meteoric-rise-of-icos/#2e010b515670> https://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2017/09/23/ inside-the-meteoric-rise-of-icos/#2e010b515670)

-- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <http://commonstransition.org>http://commonstransition.org

P2P Foundation: <http://p2pfoundation.net>http://p2pfoundation.net - <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net>http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: <http://twitter.com/mbauwens>http://twitter.com/mbauwens; <http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens>http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

#82 on the (En)Rich list: <http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/> http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

-- 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/