[P2P-F] commons / market / currency questions by Mike Riddell

Sat Jan 25 23:19:55 CET 2014

questions from Mike Riddell and a very first reply by me

MIKE RIDDELL

Michel – as you know, with colleagues I am developing a software platform
that I hope in the end will help protect and defend the commons.

So in the context of good OS design theory where i know you are hard to
beat, i have some questions the answers of which will me improve what I’m
working on.

By the way, if what I’m doing is a mad idea it’s a mad idea that’s funded
which is important in the sense that it’s an idea whose time has come.

My questions:

1. “A commons isn’t just a marketplace”. What other key functional
components would you expect? A currency? An accounting system? A payments
mechanism? A social network?

2. “Contribution to the common pool”. You say an institution should be
created to protect the value. I think that ‘value’ is personal information
(and that this personal information is the new commons). Imagine if this
information were stored “all in one place” and kept under lock and key by
this institution acting on behalf of the community so that business and
govt couldn’t get their hands on it without first paying for it, what
constitution would this institution need to have in order to satisfy your
requirements? Would a co-op model work?

3. “market exchange excludes people without market power”. Imagine for a
moment that the system was designed to reward inclusiveness, so in other
words the more users that were connected, sharing and trading the more
valuable the system (and thus the community) became, and the healthier,
wealthier and happier it’s users/inhabitants became. And if the only way to
bring about such a utopian dream were via the markets, would that turn you
against such a system? (You’ve got to remember here, I’m from Manchester –
the home of Free Trade!!!)

4. “Bitcoin doesn’t solve any social problems”. Imagine if in your
community, people agreed the terms upon which they would give each other
credit and the terms of issuance were something along the lines of “you
only get credit from us the community for activities that contribute to the
common good”. Imagine if a network of connected community hubs had an
unlimited supply of such credits, and were able to issue them to members of
the community in exchange for a measured contribution to the common good.
Imagine then that such credits could be stored somewhere safely before
being exchanged in the community’s marketplace, then wouldn’t this flow of
credit – this current – represent the community’s currency? And imagine
that because this currency was very sustainable, very purposeful and very
inclusive, that because of its ability to make the community a better
place, demand to join the community increased and so its stock began to
rise. Then because the stock was rising, speculators from New York City
started buying the stock off individuals that were willing to exchange it
for $$$$US. Wouldn’t it then be the case that the inflow of $US would
increase demand for the community credit, thus producing demand for
contribution to the community’s common good? And wouldn’t the suited and
booted pin-striped swindlers be happy with the fact that (a) they’ve made a
good $financial return for the time they’ve held the stock (b) demonstrated
(because the credits are a unit of account) to their own stock-holders that
rather than being sleazy speculators in it for a quick buck, they are in
fact sustainable, purposeful, inclusive long-term investors that produce a
social dividend that can be measured, and (c) the currency is an asset
class all of its own – a ‘safe-haven’ that’s better than Switzerland
becuase the community currency isn’t prone to inflation (it’s only ever
earned into existence for contribution to the common good) nor deflation
(the supply of the currency is only limited by the community’s willingness
to earn more of it). So if you’ve imagined all that – have you not just
imagined a social stock exchange where individuals can sell their credit to
investors for real world $cash? In other words – A Bitcoin for Good?

Sorry if this is a bit long but i do appreciate your perspective on such
issues and promise not to waste your time!

Thanks, Mike.

MICHEL BAUWENS response

dear Mike, I reposted your questions for the broader community to reply to,
on February 3.

In the meantime, I start responding to the first question, and feel free to
prompt me to continue the conversation.

You ask: "1. “A commons isn’t just a marketplace”. What other key
functional components would you expect? A currency? An accounting system? A
payments mechanism? A social network?"

But that is to my mind a wrong quesiton. A commons is NOT a marketplace. A
commons is either a local scarce resource that doesn't want to be a market,
managed by the community a la Ostrom; or a abundant digital resource which
by definition does not need  and can't have market dynamics. But a commons,
a core abundant resources, can be linked to a market. For example, the
Linux code commons can be linked to a market for services that build scarce
value on top of the abundant commons. That marketplace may be a capitalist
market (IBM, Red Hat), or could be a fair and ethical marketplace that is
more structurally linked to the market.

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
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