It seems to me there is an emerging version of 'open' that is a hyper-neoliberal one, or perhaps right-wing libertarian, see for example, http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools which must be about the most awful proposal for reforming education that I've seen so far ... in this version: people and parents would co-own the school, but the aim would be to generate profit, i.e. learning becomes a by-product of making a profit the same people propose 'free economic zones' with zero worker rights, etc ... I notice this is on John Robb's miu site under the name of resilience ... please note that I have no problem with co-ownership, only with the notion that education is a for-profit activity and that this would be strenghtened by giving students a vested interest in commercial activity ...; co-ownership of a mission-oriented educational institution would be an entirely different matter the issue at state here, a true ontological issue, is inscribing hyper-capitalism even deeper in the human structure, I have personal experience of this. Years ago, I was working for USWeb/CKS - MarchFIRST, a web consultancy that grew by leaps and bounds before collapsing. They had instituted a system whereby developers would become co-owners of the projects with our clients. The results were catastrophic as the whole culture of the company destroyed internal cooperation, since everyone was internally competing with everyone else, you could not call up a sister company, as they would steal your clients ... (actually that culture predated that reform, which only strenghtened it and was itself the result of a particular type of thinking). We had Jerry Springer-type meetings in which employees were competing to win prizes to exotic locations, and a VP saying: "if you see a competitor and he's down, jump on him again and again" .. The whole atmosphere was entirely disgusting. To imagine such dynamics taking over the school environment, is a nightmare of the highest proportion. Again this is not an opposition on any market dynamic per se. For example an interesting project is Kaospilots, a school for social enterpreneurship where students need to fund one third of their education by external consultancies ... but this is done entirely in the context of social projects, and it is a school for enterpreneurship that comes after general education, so it makes sense. Michel -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
On Monday, August 01, 2011 09:47:15 pm Michel Bauwens wrote:
It seems to me there is an emerging version of 'open' that is a hyper-neoliberal one, or perhaps right-wing libertarian,
see for example, http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools
which must be about the most awful proposal for reforming education that I've seen so far ...
I usually associate openness with the concept of equal access, but that's a bad thing to do. As Martin and Devin were pointing out in another thread, open designs do not guarantee access to resources. It's why Stallman prefers the word 'free' rather than 'open', right? Being open is just one part of the equation. We must articulate the others. Openness and peer-based archetectures provide opportunity for equitable outcomes, but its the choices of people who engage with open systems that ultimately decide this. Openness in one aspect of society does not mean openness in others. A propertarian will try to leverage an open system to obtain more property. This is why I don't really see the point of open-source currencies. Replacing one monetary system with another doesn't change the underlying dynamics of domination. We could also have open-source atom bombs. Intent and outcomes matter. -Karl
hi Karl, one remark about open source currencies ... your reasoning applies there was well, for example, indeed Bitcoin is designed to be a scarce, hoarded and speculative currency, but other complementary currencies are designed for equity, such as Time Dollars, so neither openness, not peer to peer architectures are by themselves sufficient, I think for those that believe in equity and justice, we need to find the right ways to critique hyper-capitalist solutions such as the one regarding education,http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools I'd like to use your remark in the blog as well? Michel On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Karl Robillard <[email protected]>wrote:
On Monday, August 01, 2011 09:47:15 pm Michel Bauwens wrote:
It seems to me there is an emerging version of 'open' that is a hyper-neoliberal one, or perhaps right-wing libertarian,
see for example, http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools
which must be about the most awful proposal for reforming education that I've seen so far ...
I usually associate openness with the concept of equal access, but that's a bad thing to do. As Martin and Devin were pointing out in another thread, open designs do not guarantee access to resources. It's why Stallman prefers the word 'free' rather than 'open', right? Being open is just one part of the equation. We must articulate the others.
Openness and peer-based archetectures provide opportunity for equitable outcomes, but its the choices of people who engage with open systems that ultimately decide this. Openness in one aspect of society does not mean openness in others. A propertarian will try to leverage an open system to obtain more property. This is why I don't really see the point of open-source currencies. Replacing one monetary system with another doesn't change the underlying dynamics of domination. We could also have open-source atom bombs. Intent and outcomes matter.
-Karl
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On Tuesday, August 02, 2011 02:53:08 am Michel Bauwens wrote:
hi Karl, one remark about open source currencies ... your reasoning applies there was well,
for example, indeed Bitcoin is designed to be a scarce, hoarded and speculative currency, but other complementary currencies are designed for equity, such as Time Dollars,
so neither openness, not peer to peer architectures are by themselves sufficient,
I think for those that believe in equity and justice, we need to find the right ways to critique hyper-capitalist solutions such as the one regarding education,http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools
I'd like to use your remark in the blog as well?
Michel
Everyone is free to repost what I write to this list. Sharing ideas is why I'm here. You were asking for critiques of Open Source Ecology and it occurs to me that Marcin ignores just what we're talking about, the insufficiency of openness. He has no interest in copyleft licensing and the political impulse it provides. Here's what Wikipedia says about time-based currency: "One hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. Critics charge this would lead to fewer doctors or dentists. Other systems, such as Ithaca Hours, let doctors and dentists charge more hours per hour." A dollar is worth whatever people agree on. An hour of labor is worth whatever people agree on. Where's the difference Michel? An economy run on opinion and abstract notions of fairness will never be just. Rather than pretending that we can measure the unmeasurable (the value of human life) I'd rather see people focus on more direct methods of bridging intent with outcome. -Karl
hi Karl, the affirmation that one hour of labour equals that of everyone else, directly challenges some forms of domination ... it may not be the best solution, that is not what we're discussion, but there are no objectively fair standards to judge value, they can only be socially constructed and agreed on, there have been, in community economics, http://p2pfoundation.net/Community_Economics, various historical attempts to tackle this, and not all of them are based on time, http://p2pfoundation.net/Time-Based_Economics f.e. 1. Fair-Share Labor System<http://p2pfoundation.net/Fair-Share_Labor_System> 2. Labor Quota System <http://p2pfoundation.net/Labor_Quota_System> 3. Anti-Quota Labor System<http://p2pfoundation.net/Anti-Quota_Labor_System> My only point is that monetary designs that challenge capitalist-exploitative logics can be one of the means to tackle social justice, amongst others, but of course, they are insufficient by themselves ... but I don't see how that keeping compound interest, scarcity designed money could be used productively in a just society, each social field has its own relative autonomy, and needs specific measures and changes; the important thing is to have an integrated or integral view of social change, which helps us to make right choices, after delibartion, amongst proposed alternatives now each value system will have its flaws, but they can be corrected by auxiliary measures ... My question to you is, how do you intend to integrate 'intent' in the economic system .. michel On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:37 PM, Karl Robillard <[email protected]>wrote:
On Tuesday, August 02, 2011 02:53:08 am Michel Bauwens wrote:
hi Karl, one remark about open source currencies ... your reasoning applies there was well,
for example, indeed Bitcoin is designed to be a scarce, hoarded and speculative currency, but other complementary currencies are designed for equity, such as Time Dollars,
so neither openness, not peer to peer architectures are by themselves sufficient,
I think for those that believe in equity and justice, we need to find the right ways to critique hyper-capitalist solutions such as the one regarding education,http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools
I'd like to use your remark in the blog as well?
Michel
Everyone is free to repost what I write to this list. Sharing ideas is why I'm here.
You were asking for critiques of Open Source Ecology and it occurs to me that Marcin ignores just what we're talking about, the insufficiency of openness. He has no interest in copyleft licensing and the political impulse it provides.
Here's what Wikipedia says about time-based currency:
"One hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. Critics charge this would lead to fewer doctors or dentists. Other systems, such as Ithaca Hours, let doctors and dentists charge more hours per hour."
A dollar is worth whatever people agree on. An hour of labor is worth whatever people agree on. Where's the difference Michel? An economy run on opinion and abstract notions of fairness will never be just. Rather than pretending that we can measure the unmeasurable (the value of human life) I'd rather see people focus on more direct methods of bridging intent with outcome.
-Karl
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
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Michel, My understanding is that Cahn only intended time dollars to supplement government money, and if so then it does nothing to curb the most egregious abuses by elites. Even on it's own terms the concept seems flawed in that one hour of my labor is not equal to one hour of yours. If it turns out that I'm twice as productive as you then I'm twice as productive and to pretend otherwise is (to invoke Korzybski) psychologically harmful. The anti-quota and fair-share labor systems seem reasonable to me. Production for use is a clear indicator of intent, right? It's when you weave these abstract 'scoring' systems around the process of production that intentions (not to mention material realities) become obscured. If my goal is to help my fellows (or at a minimum not add to their burdens) then I'm going to help them and any tit-for-tat accounting is superfluous at best, and a source of inefficiency and corruption at it's worst. When open systems are used to their full potential they are all about integrating intent. They provide not only a shared situational awareness of what's going on, but meta information about why, and how to change it. -Karl
It seems to me there is an emerging version of 'open' that is a hyper-neoliberal one, or perhaps right-wing libertarian,
see for example, http://miiu.org/wiki/Vesting_students_as_co-owners_of_schools
which must be about the most awful proposal for reforming education that I've seen so far ...
in this version: people and parents would co-own the school, but the aim would be to generate profit, i.e. learning becomes a by-product of making a profit
the same people propose 'free economic zones' with zero worker rights, etc ...
I notice this is on John Robb's miu site under the name of resilience ...
please note that I have no problem with co-ownership, only with the notion that education is a for-profit activity and that this would be strenghtened by giving students a vested interest in commercial activity ...; co-ownership of a mission-oriented educational institution would be an entirely different matter
the issue at state here, a true ontological issue, is inscribing hyper-capitalism even deeper in the human structure,
I have personal experience of this. Years ago, I was working for USWeb/CKS
Thanks Michel this is an example of the poison that's beginning to infect education across the world and a worry I've expressed in my published work in a number of instances. The kind of crap the article you've forwarded to the list talks about attempts to eliminate any hope of wisdom that develops over time and with careful reading and thinking, i.e. scholarship and critical thinking; for an understanding that teachers really do know more than share-holding students. This is not a gesture toward democracy as the story will tell you, it's a crack in the door to complete subsumption to capitalism. It pains me to say that I'm sometimes not sure whether the next generations will be educated at all except into learning that the world is about competition and if you can't fight (unless we as educators continue to resist it), give up early and let the bullies win because it's easier. Forget widening participation and different learning styles and capacities. Just back to the neo Darwinian nonsense. Propaganda is about education after all. Phoebe On 2 Aug 2011 05:48, "Michel Bauwens" <[email protected]> wrote: -
MarchFIRST, a web consultancy that grew by leaps and bounds before collapsing. They had instituted a system whereby developers would become co-owners of the projects with our clients. The results were catastrophic as the whole culture of the company destroyed internal cooperation, since everyone was internally competing with everyone else, you could not call up a sister company, as they would steal your clients ... (actually that culture predated that reform, which only strenghtened it and was itself the result of a particular type of thinking). We had Jerry Springer-type meetings in which employees were competing to win prizes to exotic locations, and a VP saying: "if you see a competitor and he's down, jump on him again and again" .. The whole atmosphere was entirely disgusting.
To imagine such dynamics taking over the school environment, is a nightmare of the highest proportion.
Again this is not an opposition on any market dynamic per se. For example an interesting project is Kaospilots, a school for social enterpreneurship where students need to fund one third of their education by external consultancies ... but this is done entirely in the context of social projects, and it is a school for enterpreneurship that comes after general education, so it makes sense.
Michel
-- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
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participants (3)
-
Karl Robillard -
Michel Bauwens -
Phoebe Moore