[P2P-F] Community Commons and the Commonskeepers

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear George:

I have no time either for now but see http://p2pfoundation.net/Civic_Commons

I have gathered our material on p2p approaches to civil society, the market
and the state, in 3 new sections,

see: http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Civil_Society

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 8:35 PM, George Por <
george at community-intelligence.com> wrote:

>  Are you guys familiar with “The Civic Commons: A model for social
> action”?
>
> http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/385518/RSA-Civic-Commons-Final.pdf
>
> For a quick glance, it seems it’s worth our attention, but I don’t have
> time just now to dive into it. If anybody has, pls let us know what you
> think.
>
> george
>
>
> 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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>
>


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