[P2P-F] Community Commons and the Commonskeepers

[Michel Bauwens]

thank you Jeffrey, this will be published on our blog on the 31st,

Michel

http://p2pfoundation.net/Demand-Side_Reduction_Cooperatives

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Jeffrey Sterling <teleboiski at gmail.com>wrote:

> The global economy is broken because it has evolved and mutated to serve
> the needs corporations (govt corps and fortune 1000 corps) not human beings.
> Many of the commonskeeper and caregiver roles that are a critical function
> for civil society are either considered undervalued chores or the
> responsibility of some bureaucracy. It is imperative to take back
> responsibility for our community commons and form cooperative organizations
> that work to reduce the demand for resources and services that are not
> local.
>
> We need to create a new language and toolkit for a network of community
> economies (geographical and virtual)  where people can aggregate demand for
> products/services and fulfill those needs without the middleman (aka Fortune
> 1000 corporations). As we evolve our new economy we must find ways to allow
> many kinds of public benefit organizations to flourish and collaborate by
> being compensated for overall demand reduction. As such,
> the future of resilient, eco-sustainable communities is in demand-side
> reduction cooperatives. Our ablility to set the agenda lies in our control
> of the entire demand-side of the economic equation and our ability to
> self-organize using the Internet.
>
> Let's take a closer look at the community infrastructure from the
> supply-side and the demand-side.
>
> On the supply side a community may have a electricity company, a water
>> company, a gas company, oil companies (gasoline), and waste stream companies
>> (sewer, trash, recycle, compost). Each company is siloed and views their job
>> as maintaining and operating a supply chain for an ever growing demand for
>> their service. Some pay lip service to demand reduction at times but it is a
>> "fox in the hen house" situation.
>>
>> Now suppose community members created a demand side reduction cooperative,
>> that was funded through a performance based contract placed on each of the
>> supply side companies, that provided demand side reduction services to it's
>> members.
>>
>> Examples:
>>
>> - Catching rainwater in cisterns for graywater and freshwater supply that
>> eliminated the need for the next groundwater well or dam.
>>
>> - Superinsulating all homes in a community to reduce the number of new
>> powerplants or a new gas pipeline.
>>
>> - Creating a smart microgrid that will provide peaking power negawatts as
>> an independent power producer and provide solar collectors for peak cooling
>> as well as battery backup storage and essential power to computers in the
>> home.
>>
>> - Creating a community wide distributed generation system that provides
>> essential power to the community in case of disaster plus CHP (combined heat
>> power) to the local hospital/greenhouse/community pool.
>>
>> - Creating an on demand local ridesharing and shopping delivering service
>> using community members and their vehicles to reduce the demand for
>> cars/roads/gasoline and providing jobs for underemployed people and reducing
>> the demand for underfunding government services.
>>
>> - Creating community reuse services that reduce the demand for recycling
>> and waste removal that reduces the need for landfills.
>>
>> The basic idea is that siloed supply side companies are not in the
>> business of reducing demand they are in the business of increasing supply
>> which damages the environment and is not sustainable. Creating community-run
>> demand side reduction coops (that are voluntary) will make a community
>> resilient, sustainable and will create work for community members. Having a
>> community-owned cloud will make the integration of demand side reduction
>> services into the life of a community possible. Also establishing
>> performance based contracts where demand reductions are measured with make
>> it possible for demand side reduction services to be cash flow positive
>> because demand reduction decreases the need for supply which keep the money
>> in the community.
>>
>>
>
>
> Given a choice people are usually willing to do more with less. Integrating
> our demand-side consumption using demand-side reduction cooperatives and
> other community benefit entities wil create meaningful work within one's own
> community and make our community more resilient and eco-sustainable.
>
>


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