[P2P-F] Global Government Revisited (GTN Discussion)

Mon Sep 11 17:32:13 CEST 2017

dear friends,

I would like to make a very general remark on this discussion.

I believe that any proposal for global governance should be rooted in real
trends, and not just in some idea of how things should be.

Last spring, we undertook to draft a Commons Transition Plan for the City
of Ghent in northern Belgium (Flanders), which proposed, based on
pre-existing seed forms that could be developed further, a institutional
design for public-commons partnerships.

See here for an english summary:
http://commonstransition.org/commons-transition-plan-city-ghent/ and thanks
for having a look at the three included graphs, which explain things
visually.

Now this is of course a local plan, but our great discovery was the
isomorphism between the emerging digital economy, and the urban commons and
its institutional and economic forms, which turn out to be extraordinary
similar. In fact, we propose that the cities become the transnational
institutional arm, the 'state' of the commons if you will, by collectively
sustaining the common infrastructural needs of the emerging urban commons
(what we call protocol cooperativism).

On a transnational scale, we see the emergence of

* global productive communities co-constructing very large scale productive
knowledge commons, which are not possible to sustain through state or
corporate forms, managing their infrastructure through for-benefit
associations such as the FLOSS Foundation; a recent study in which we
participated, called P2P Value, showed that 78% of 300 such communities
studied, have or are working on open and contributive accounting (our
current excitement concerns the projects on establishing globally shared
supply chains with distributed ledgers)

* globa-local entrepreneurial coalitions, of both the extractive (IMB with
Linux) and the generative kind (Enspiral, Ethos, Sensorica, Las Indias
etc..) connect around them

So add to this the existing infrastructural commons organizations just
mentioned above and the city leagues we have proposed, and we have an
emerging infrastructure for human cooperation through civil society commons
iniatives, livelihood entities, and governance institutions

What does that tell us about global governance ?

That it can't be just a re-arranging of the nation-state institutions in
some new format, nor some add-on of the older global CSO's

in fact, what is needed is to trans-nationalize the idea and practice of
public-commons-generative partnerships, i.e. to complement the inter-state
system with globally scaled trans-national organizations that reflect the
interconnection of the new wave of commoning, which at least in western
european cities, have known a tenfold increase in ten years (2 other
studies confirm our own findings on this rate of expansion)

In Ghent, we identified 500 urban commons, active in every single area of
human provisioning, offering generative alternatives to current practices.

This is the huge shift which as yet, not so many mainstream observers, are
able to see, because they are looking for huge formal structures, and are
blind to the emerging interconnected distributed infrastructures,

in my opinion, the future is not a world government with its potential
negative aspects, but rather a interlinked set-up of transnational
public-commons partnerships to deal with the urgent issues facing humankind

Michel Bauwens

On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 8:59 PM, Great Transition Network <
gtnetwork at greattransition.org> wrote:

>
> From Adam Blakester <adam at starfish-associates.org>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you Luis for generously opening up your thoughts and work for
> comment and discussion.
>
> I think it is critical that this exploration clearly unpacks governance
> from government. All too often I see the two conflated, which brings
> serious risks. I frequently hear people talk about governance as if it is
> government! Yet government is merely one part of a broader system of
> governance. Nor is it sitting atop all of the other parts ~ but for perhaps
> some very specific areas of responsibility such as taxation and law. I'll
> come back to this.
>
> Government to date has been overwhelmingly hierarchical, with ridiculous
> levels of power vested in the political position-holders. This leaves
> government incredibly vulnerable to elite interests ~ which invariably have
> ease of access to the handful of people in the top positions.
>
> How might a world, or any other, government be designed without this
> fundamental flaw? A recent example is the unprecedented government
> intervention in Australia to buy-back a mining licence. A critical moment
> in this history making campaign was the Bentley Blockade ~ which was much
> more like a festival ~ where several thousand people were blocking the coal
> seam gas company's access to a strategic mining site. The Police and
> Government authorities demanded to speak with 'those in charge' to
> negotiate a solution. The blockaders explained that there was no one in
> charge, nor any command and control system of authority. Instead, if they
> wanted to negotiate they would need to do so with every free person
> present! They didn't even try.
>
> The very same destructive and selfish interests which are jeopardising
> life on earth at this time are ill-equipped to engage and influence free
> and open groups of people. Rather, they are fit-for-purpose to use the
> power of the elite, who in turn continue to mine ~ literally and
> metaphorically ~ the natural, social and spiritual capital of our world for
> their own toxic and insatiable desires.
>
> The other serious design flaw of governments is the revolving door of
> Ministers (politicians) who only rarely have demonstrable expertise and
> experience in the areas of their portfolio responsibilities. Time and time
> again political decisions are out-of-step with reasonable solutions ~
> climate change and the 6th Great Extinction are two obvious examples where
> political decisions continue to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the
> causes and severity of the problems.
>
> Lack of competency, together with the influence of the elites, are key
> causes of such sub-optimal decisions (and perhaps nearly always have been).
> What kind of lunacy is it to have a system like this? How have we been
> conned to think that a mere vote every three or four years for a group of
> political candidates and parties with little ability for their
> responsibilities is a good option? Perhaps some reading on corporate
> psychopathy is in order!
>
> All of which is why it is so key to focus instead on governance ~ systems,
> processes and capabilities which enable the range of actors who do have
> relevant expertise, experience and stake to collaboratively develop shared
> priorities and solutions. This is about public rather than political
> policy! The 'direct' and 'horizontal' democracy movements are pioneering
> efforts in this direction.
>
> Cautiously, I suggest that one possible shift is for government to become
> the facilitator of such collaborative governance processes ~ which I admit
> would be a profound transformation and evolution from the current forms of
> government ~ much like the 'backbone support organisations' as described in
> the Collective Impact literature. For such an arrangement to work, there
> would need to be a similar transformation of taxpayer budget
> decision-making to something like a participatory budget process where the
> participants are the various collaborative governance realms (i.e. health,
> education, infrastructure, conservation, climate change and the like).
> Better still, such a collaborative budget would ideally leverage resources
> from the private and public realms in addition to those raised from taxes.
>
> I feel like an ungrounded dreamer to write such things, however in my work
> I have seen these methods work on a local/regional scale. Perhaps not
> surprisingly, of all the actors, government is one of the least able to
> participate effectively in such fora. They keep thinking that the ultimate
> decisions must surely be theirs and struggle to collaborate as one key
> stakeholder among many.
>
> Which brings me to my last point, which some of you may recall me raising
> many years ago. I truly believe we need to transform the concept of
> nation-state-citizenship as part of this endeavour.
>
> How can we be born on this Earth as anything other than Earthlings? How
> can natural resources and systems be anything other than part of the global
> commons shared equally and severally by all life forms ~ human and other?
> How can a person be legally defined and confined by citizenship, or
> subjecthood, at birth nearly two decades before they can legally enter any
> other contract as an adult?
>
> It is my view that the new global governance needs to emerge from a
> movement of people who withdraw their 'social licence' (i.e. citizenship)
> from these corrupted and inept forms of government and begin to come
> together as free and willing co-creators of a truly collaborative
> governance system for all beings and all living things. Governance without
> borders!
>
> "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." ~ Kris
> Kristofferson
>
> In respect,
> Adam Blakester
>
> **************************************************
>
> On 1/09/2017 4:42 AM, Great Transition Network wrote:
> From Paul Raskin
>
> -----
> Dear GTN,
>
> The world confronts grievous global-scale risks with feeble global-scale
> institutions, or, as I’m fond of putting it, Earthland resembles a failed
> state (www.greattransition.org/publication/journey-to-earthland). This
> dangerous incongruity demands reconsideration of the fraught project of
> global government, a task Luis Cabrera takes on in his new GTI essay,
> “Global Government Revisited: From Utopian Vision to Political Imperative.”
>
> Surely any rigorous Great Transition vision must address the need for
> supranational decision-making, but what are the contours of new
> institutions appropriate for the task? What intermediate steps can move us
> down that road? Read Luis’s answers at www.greattransition.org/
> publication/global-government-revisited.
>
> Please share your reactions and comments by SEPTEMBER 30.
>
> Looking forward,
> Paul Raskin
> GTI Director
>
> HOW WE WORK
> GT Network discussions of new essays occur in odd-numbered months. You
> receive comments via email, and can review all postings at
> www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. Then, in the following
> even-numbered month, we publish the essay along with a “Roundtable” (edited
> commentary drawn from the discussion and the author’s response).
>
> -----
> Hit reply to post a message
> Or see thread and reply online at
> www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/192-global-
> government-revisited/2428
>
> Need help? Email jcohn at tellus.org
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> Hit reply to post a message
> Or see thread and reply online at
> http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/192-
> global-government-revisited/2434
>
> Need help? Email jcohn at tellus.org
>
>
>

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