[P2P-F] commons and households

Mon Oct 16 10:13:41 CEST 2017

Yes, it is this lack of reciprocity which is the key to undermining the relationships dictated by the market economy. That is why the words being discussed in the current ongoing conversation, which are all attempting to describe a relationship, eg. cooperation, democracy, community, fall short, not because they have been co-opted by 'the other side', but because they attempt to put together what has already been taken apart.

When as Kevin describes with the use of technology, the household expands to include, rather than putting together separate entities, it will hopefully be the non reciprocal values of family, love and care, which will predominate, and will hold the group together. Whether one's own experience of family was a happy one or not, the family is and always has been the basic reproductive unit. With the 'commons', we are acknowledging the beauty and wholesomeness of sharing. The seed of that lies within the family. That is where we first learn of love and affection, which are essential to healthy sharing relationships. 

To impose a commons structure without understanding the quality of these relationships, is unlikely to address the fundamental reality of alienation, and objectification of people and nature in our current economy.

Anna

> On 15 Oct 2017, at 21:38, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> But besides being multi-generational, a household can incorporate
> multiple families -- approaching primary social units like
> hunter-gather bands or clans in size. At that point, given
> micromanufacturing technology, a majority of food and finished goods
> production might take place in the household sector and not be
> governed by reciprocity. That would amount to an expansion of the
> household to incorporate a major part of the economy, even if a
> considerable social economy remained to coordinate exchange of
> surpluses between such primary social units or to coordinate the
> remaining forms of production that require a scale beyond their
> resources.
> 
>> On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 1:16 AM, Roberto Verzola <rverzola at gn.apc.org> wrote:
>> I will argue that the household (whether it is a nuclear family or a multi-generational one) is qualitatively different from the other three (govt, market, commons) and therefore deserves to be treated separately.
>> 
>> The basic difference is that members of the household do not put a high priority, if they consider it important at all, to keep track of values created and exchanged within the household. Governments and markets keep very close track. Those who share common resources presumably want some accounting and tracking too, if not as detailed as the other two, to guard against free-riders and to reward to some extent those who contribute most to the common resource pool.
>> 
>> In our work on energy, for instance, we consider it important that a microgrid operated as a commons have a bidirectional electric meter (the old analog meter is enough) installed per household, to keep track of imports and exports of electricity. We have, by the way, concluded that net metering is the simplest way to do so, making it a long-term solution to the problem of accounting for the P2P exchanges that will increasingly occur in a grid. (Unlike the feed-in-tariff system successfully pioneered by Germany, which seems to be approaching the end of its useful life.)
>> 
>> Greetings to all,
>> 
>> Roberto
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, 15 Oct 2017 12:13:15 +0700
>> Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> thanks Kevin, good point,
>>> 
>>> Michel
>>> 
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 14:13:47 -0500
>>> From: Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com>
>>> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] thinking true meta-governance and the gaps in p2p
>>>    theory regarding the household economy
>>> Message-ID:
>>>    <CANETeEz58DrDsYAbc9bnak18Z5JnFZHUN102QtdQbXj13VFLuA at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>> 
>>> IMO the boundary between the household and the larger informal/social
>>> economy is very permeable. The nuclear family household is relatively
>>> recent and artificial, and to a considerable extent encouraged by 20th
>>> century capitalism's promotion of social atomization which reduced the
>>> household to the smallest possible size which would still socialize
>>> the costs of reproducing labor-power and the culture of obedience
>>> without providing a potential base for cost-, income- and risk-pooling
>>> which might increase the bargaining power of labor. It's quite likely
>>> that as total labor hours decline and precarity increases, we'll see a
>>> lot more not only of multi-generational houses but of multi-family
>>> cohousing, micro-villages and the like that internalize an increasing
>>> share of direct production for use.
>>> --
>>> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org
>>> 
>>> 
>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>> 
>>> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
>>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>> 
>>> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Roberto Verzola <rverzola at gn.apc.org>
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kevin Carson
> Senior Fellow, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> 
> "You have no authority that we are bound to respect" -- John Perry Barlow
> "We are legion. We never forgive. We never forget. Expect us" -- Anonymous
> 
> Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
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