[P2P-F] Use-Value Crowd Funding - Mutually Funding the Products We Need

Thu Dec 8 17:23:01 CET 2011

Or we could simply co-opt the current infrastructure. Plenty of people
already working on making that happen.

--
Alex Hardman (770.406.6430)
http://www.nycga.net/members/sunflame/
*
http://occupyatlanta.org/contact-communicate/members/sunflame/profile/public/
*

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 10:19 AM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com>wrote:

> Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > Somebody has to actually do the work of getting organized, and to effect
> any
> > economies of scale that involves raising and investing serious amounts of
> > money BEFORE there's any return.  Either:
> >
> > a. Taking money out of current income (take the money I'm using to buy
> > groceries, to help set up a new store, or farm, or buy chickens, or
> > whatever) - not a viable option for most, or,
>
> It is true that many people live paycheck to paycheck, and cannot
> afford to invest money, though some are out of work, and so could
> invest their time.
>
> But some have a bit of extra money and are actually looking for
> somewhere to invest.
>
> I would love to pre-pay for raw milk if I could then get that Product at
> Cost.
>
> Mutual Funds are one way people already invest without knowing how to
> accomplish that production.
>
> Think of this as Mutual Funds, but for Use-Value returns.
>
>
> > And then there's the whole aspect of getting organized, which involves
> > either spending large amounts of time, or hiring folks and paying them,
> or
> > both.
>
> Yes, consumers don't know how to do that, but they could invest
> 'blindly' as they already do, but with at-cost Product as the return.
>
> So what I am talking about might be thought of as Use-Value Crowd
> Funding - where the investors are not skilled in those areas, but are
> simply adding money for the purpose of receiving at-cost Product as a
> side-effect of their co-ownership in the Means of that Production.
>
> >
> > By and large, one has to operate at a pretty large scale to get costs
> down
> > to the level of a supermarket, or Walmart.  The question remains, who's
> > going to bother?
>
> True, but people continue to try opening such stores.  For example,
> http://Wasatch.coop will attempt to open as a consumer owned grocery
> store, supposedly co-owned by the consumer-investors.
>
> I say 'supposedly' because these co-owners do not pre-pay for Products
> and then receive them at Cost, but instead pre-pay and then *buy* the
> Products back from their collective selves - paying Profit and Taxes
> during that final, unnecessary transaction.
>
> >
> >
> >>
> >> Verizon collected $1.38 Billion from us last quarter.  But when we,
> >> the consumers co-own a network, we only pay the costs, so for a
> >> network the size of Verizon, we would pay $1.38 Billion *less* every 3
> >> months.
> >
> > Verizon also has a huge organization, 100s of thousands of miles of
> copper
> > and fiber installed on poles and under streets, and a huge amount of
> > experience - not to mention tremendous monthly cash flow.
> >
> > Lots of luck replicating that from scratch.  Guaranteed it will cost more
> > than what Verizon charges now.
> >
>
> Yes, the ramp-up is difficult, and so what you say is true at first,
> but once we have some critical-mass, we will be operating at Cost
> (except for any needed growth funded by latecomers paying Profit), and
> so will undercut all Capitalist endeavors - eventually attracting all
> possible consumers to join us as co-owners of the backbone of a
> distributed internet.
>
>
> Patrick Anderson
> http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com
>
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