[P2P-F] Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto

Fri Mar 18 03:44:57 CET 2011

Dear Sam,

This is a really great document, and it is hugely important, and therefore a
great advance, that p2p principles are translated in such a  potent way for
local usage,

two remarks,

- I think you may want to articulate the precise relationship between open
source and business, it's implied but I can imagine the obvious remark of,
if it's open source, how can we make money ... so some phrase or two showing
how open software and design creates vibrant economies ?

- two, while I broadly agree with your statement about politics, I think it
is formulated too strongly anti-politically, a lot of what you want to do
will be impacted by legal prohibitions and such, which  you may have to
change, and this brings you into politics/policy, so you need to articulate
some kind of connection

Michel

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 9:22 AM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
> Retrieved from "
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto"
> Category <http://p2pfoundation.net/Special:Categories>: P2P Politics<http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Politics>
>
>    - This page was last modified on 18 March 2011, at 02:19.
>    - Copyright Information<http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Foundation:Copyright>
>
>
> --
> --
> 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
> http://hollymeadcapital.com
> http://p2pfoundation.net
> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
>
> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> P2P Foundation - Mailing list
> http://www.p2pfoundation.net
> https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>
>

-- 
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20110318/897b858e/attachment.htm 