[P2P-F] Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto

Fri Mar 18 03:22:15 CET 2011

What do you all think?:

http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto

Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto
>From P2P Foundation
Contents

   - 1 Contributors<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Contributors>
   - 2 "Michigan is
Screwed"<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#.22Michigan_is_Screwed.22>
   - 3 Energy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Energy>
   - 4 Education<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Education>
   - 5 Manufacturing<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Manufacturing>
   - 6 Research and
Development<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Research_and_Development>
   - 7 Food systems<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Food_systems>
   - 8 Jobs<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Jobs>
   - 9 Government<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Government>
   - 10 Your additions
here<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#Your_additions_here>
   - 11 References<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#References>

Contributors

   - I'm Sam Rose, from the Foundation or Peer To Peer Alternatives
   http://p2pfoundation.net/ and co-founder
   http://futureforwardinstitute.com/ I am a Michigan native, former blue
   collar worker and now independent business person.

"Michigan is Screwed"

See: http://www.youtube.com/embed/AUpO1QFMDtM

It's likely you are highly aware of the current political situation that
people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other
struggling industrial states are facing. In Michigan in particular it looks
to me like the goal of Rick Snyder and the legislators that control the
Michigan House/Senate is to tear down 20th century community
infrastructures, starting from the bottom up.

The reality is that if the people in power in Michigan now fully succeed,
private mega corporations will queue up to enclose property, extract wealth
and resources at lightning speed, further impoverish our community's most
vulnerable members, push out those willing to fight by making their lives
and communities miserable, and put whomever is left on their knees. They
want our money flowing out of our pockets and communities, and their cheaply
made worthless crap flowing in. They want to grab our land, our trees, frack
out our natural gas and deplete our water, and run our soil down to clay.
They want to push people out of the largest cities, fence of the empty land,
bulldoze the buildings and sit on the land waiting for a future day when
it's value increases. They want to do all of this while paying next to no
taxes, employing none of the people of Michigan, and investing nothing back
into the communities. They already got a huge amount of the money out of our
communities by way of fraudulant mortgage scams that destroyed the economies
of several countries around the world. They can make it more miserable for
any of us that don't pick up and leave by: increasing our taxes (the elderly
and retired, the poor, etc). Making our schools so deplorable that no one
will want to move to our communities. And, whenever possible, declaring an
"emergency" and dissolving local government, installing private corporations
in their place with license to do whatever they want without any oversight.
I am willing to bet that most of you that voted for Rick Snyder and the
people in Michigan Congress probably did not vote for what I describe above.
I'll bet that your ancestors didn't fight to get you to where you are now,
just to see us all start to slip back towards whatever they came here to get
away from. However, the sad fact is that what I describe above is now upon
you, and all of us.

Fortunately for us, we don't have to accept this reality. We currently have
all of the building blocks we need to turn things around for ourselves here
in a relatively short amount of time.

A clue comes to us from our own state's past. At the turn of the 19th-20th
century, automobiles were prohibitively expensive for all but a few people.
One of the reasons was a monopoly on the designs of automotive technology by
George B. Selden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden Selden and
associate's efforts to protect their patents led to a battle with Henry
Ford, which resulted in a decision by courts to open up automotive
technology for those that were not using the Selden engine design.

>From Open Source - History and Development Adrienne Walker San Jose State
University
http://infosherpas.com/ojs/index.php/openandlibraries/article/view/43/65:

*Free sharing and open source are not 21st century ideas, we tend to think
of open source as a way of being connected to the Internet as software but
open source was in existence early in the 20th century although it took a
different form. That form was automobile manufacturing. For those of you
familiar with early automotive history, Henry Ford challenged the patent of
George Selden. Selden had a chokehold on the automobile industry but Ford
won a challenge to Selden's patent (The history of free and open source,
2009). Henry Fords breakthrough initiated the beginning of open source in
the modern age and coupled with the formation of the Motor Vehicle
Manufacturers Association was influential in creating cross-licensing
agreements. Cross-licensing agreements existed between the United States
automobile manufacturers of the day. Each automobile manufacturing company
modified the technology and filed patents, these patents were shared, and no
exchange of money, no lawsuits and an industry thrived (The history of free
and open source, 2009).*

[1]<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#_note-0>

We can do this again in Michigan. We can start in our own communities,
re-building our economies around sharing not just technology, but also
production of food, energy, and knowledge.
Energy

*There's enough wind and solar power across the state of Michigan to run the
whole state on wind and solar energy alone.* Open sourcing the technology
for wind, solar, and batteries for hybrid/electric cars would create an
explosion of innovation across the state and in the region, and eventually
worldwide. If we really want to get into manufacturing green energy in the
state of Michigan, the fastest route will be by way of creating sound design
cores for small wind generators and solar collectors/solar and releasing
them under an open license (like TAPR for instance
http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html ) Our first step can be to install hybrid
solar/wind in as many individua locations as possible (some neighbrhoods can
team up and group buy for a whole block), and install them in a way that
turns the current electrical grid into a "Net metering" grid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering

We can also start processing our plant and animal waste in open source
biodigesters to produce electricity (example
http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Biogas ) and our agricultural and
surburban landscaping refuse into new soil and biofuel.

Much of this new infrastructure can be managed by user-owned cooperatives
where needed.
Education

It's time to create cooperatives where parents and teachers are the owners
of school systems. Most cirricular development can be released under
creative commons licenses (as seen withhttp://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home
http://ftacademy.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/ etc etc )

Parents can work with teachers and their students to adaptively shape
learning over time. *No more showing up in cinderblock buildings and being
trained to be told what to do at the expense of truly learning how and why
to do it. We teach children CRITICAL THINKING and skills to solve problems
on their own with little or nothing to work with except their minds.
Children are no longer raw material to be shaped into employees for big
business. They are now taught to invent, build, experiment, create and
destroy, co-manage and co-govern anywhere anytime with anything. They are
taught actual history and left to decide for themselves. They are taught to
produce their *own* food, energy, information systems as needed. They are
taught to be programmers, not users. Makers, not consumers. Independent
problem solvers, not employees. This is 21st century education in Michigan.*
Manufacturing

Manufacturing in Michigan will become small, distributed, diverse and
massively adaptable and interoperable. Designs are shared and improved
constantly. Technology cooperatives not only design and produce physhical
hardware and software technology for people, but they also teach people how
to do this themselves, and how to effectively use technology.

Existing manufacturing labor unions will help create these new technology
cooperatives by taking their pension fund monies out of greedy wall street
companies and re-investing in Local Economic Development. Tens of thousands
of people who are laid off from jobs will also pool resources to create
these Technology Cooperatives throughout the state. This could happen here
in Michigan within one year.
Research and Development

Michigan Technology Cooperatives can invest their surplus resources in
ongoing open source research and development, driven by the needs of people
in Michigan and throughout the US and world. Students learn to participate
in this activity at as early an age as possible.
Food systems

Food cooperatives and community supported agriculture have proven themselves
in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and elsewhere. As our world spirals
into a collapse of global commercial energy and resource distribution,
leading to increasing costs for imported goods, we can sidestep that problem
and produce food locally and regionally. We can create enough food locally
in Michigan to make imports a luxury-only source of food (instead of the
majority of food source for our state). We can create community owned food
cooperatives in every city in the state, while simultaneously bolstering
the *hundreds of thousands of LOCAL food producers and retailers that
already exist in this state*.
Jobs

*NO. No more jobs.* It is ALREADY fact that over 98% of businesses in
Michigan are now small
businesses[2]<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#_note-1>.
This is in part because most of those who are left actually participating in
economic activity stopped looking for a job about 5-6 years ago and started
a business. So this is what we do, we start businesses, and we connect them
together. Go pay the $10 and register a DBA with your name on it at the
county clerk. You are now ready to do businesses. Team up with other people
in your community to share what you are learning about starting and running
your own collaborative business/enterprise. In some cases we start
cooperatives, credit unions, and ways for people to invest and receive
return on investment in their local community (and not just monetary
investment). We stop saving our retirement savings in 401k and other Wall
Street scams and we invest that money locally and receive a robust and
healthy return on investment.
Government

When we're not busy having our faces shoved to the grindstone at a job,
we're going to have some time to engage in Local, State, and Federal
governments. However, we are also going to make them increasingly obsolete
in the process. We are going to be able to come up with rules together via
connective technologies like the internet. We're going to also be able to
team up on government when we're not being listened to.

*We can do it without political parties* following The Political Principles
of Peer-to-Peer
Advocacy<http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Political_Principles_of_Peer-to-Peer_Advocacy>
.

*No advocate of peer-to-peer politics wants all communications or activity
routed through them. Bottlenecks are weaknesses.*
Your additions here

This is what transformation in Michigan means to me. What does it mean to
you? I want to know. I'll faithfully incorporate whatever any of you
contribute, and I will spread it around. It's time to get real, dig in and
change this place, now.
References

   1. ↑<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#_ref-0>
Special
   thanks to Nathan Oostendorp who made me aware of this part of Michigan
   industrial history when he presented this at http://igniteannarbor.com
    see http://ingenuitas.com/
   2. ↑<http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&printable=yes#_ref-1>
    http://levin.senate.gov/senate/smallbusiness/index.html

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-- 
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://futureforwardinstitute.com
http://forwardfound.org
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http://p2pfoundation.net
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"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."
- Carl Sagan
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