<div dir="ltr">Thanks a lot John, for your reply. This sounds like a great news, that someone like you is being at the position to draf such an action plan. <div><br></div><div>You are right in terms of 'deployment force', and would be good if you see chance that there is a space to talk about things being put forward, as in your courses at Schumaer Collage (<a href="https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/towards-a-commons-based-political-economy">https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/towards-a-commons-based-political-economy</a>), and in the Commons Transition plan (<a href="http://commonstransition.org/public-policy-for-a-social-knowledge-economy/">http://commonstransition.org/public-policy-for-a-social-knowledge-economy/</a>), or as in Pat and Lewis' book, amongst others? Probably political composition of actors, and accesibility of the argument in society are negative elements here, would you be able to give us an idea how big is the chance as far as you see? </div><div><div><br></div><div>While even the mainstream negative of commons based peer production, the so-called sharing economy*, as well as the right wing version of it 'big society' (in both cases the society is what in real being shared by the rulers) are the global trends, asserted by journals like economist amongst others. One would thins this actually 'the' time to do everything to bring the 'vision' -even if it is at the horizon- which needs concrete resource support to become brighter, to show the potentail it bears giving a hope to broader society(ies).</div><div><br></div><div>What alterantive would Syriza and we have futrher to get the urgently needed support for, other wise? </div><div><br></div><div>*This was 2013: <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy">http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy</a><br></div><div>todat we know this trend is actualised further...</div><div><br></div><div>best, Orsan</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 17 February 2015 at 14:18, John <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:restakis@gmail.com" target="_blank">restakis@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Iannis Margaris is an advisor to Yannis
Dragasakis, the Vice President and parjt of the Greek delegation
in Brussels. <br>
<br>
My sense is that to talk of an emergency deployment force for
commons action plans, etc. is premature. The various ministries
responsible for the social economy, co-ops, etc. are still in the
process of setting up their strategic plans and sorting out the
mess that Syriza inherited from the past government when it took
power. ACs far as I can see, there is no central capacity or
structure right now to co-ordinate a commons "deployment force"...
and I do wish we could come up with another, less militaristic
term for this.<br>
<br>
My hope is, and I have already proposed, that a series of symposia
and programs that involve outside supporters and contributors to
various initiatives connected with promoting social economy and
other progressive initiatives in Greece take place as part of an
integrated social economy strategy. This is part of the Action
Plan for Syriza that I am currently drafting. I do hope the ideas
therein will be taken up, and if they are, there will be
opportunity to forge the kind of international support projects as
suggested.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
John<div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 15-02-17 1:09 PM, Örsan Şenalp wrote:<br>
</div></div></div><div><div class="h5">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><span></span></div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr">Guessing I.M. is someone in the Greek delegation
from Syriza government? What would really be interesting is
to hear whether they had any vision or plan for this moment
expected to come, since this was obvious possibility. Since
the email sounds like requesting for public support campaign
to grow underground. This is partly similar to that we have
been trying to think of, on these exchanges, like an emergency
deployment force, commons action plan, so on.. the situation
now shows that is rather an expressed need by the greek gov?
It would be great to know if there is any preparation from
syriza's side, for instance if they would support, or
encourage, such a commons conference for instance for radical
alternatives? Would it be an interest of them? Could anyone
who received the above email in the first place, or close to
Syriza inform us on that?
<div>
<div> </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ps: Cant access the original book, but from Kevin's
below review of Pat and Mike's book, I got the idea that
there is another transition perspective in the book: </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>"Michael
Lewis and Pat Conaty. <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Resilience-Imperative-Cooperative-Steady-state/dp/0865717079/" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none" target="_blank">The
Resilience Imperative: Cooperative Transitions to
a Steady-State Economy</a></em> (New Society
Publishers, 2012) 400pp.</strong></p>
<p>This book
starts with a macroscopic analysis of where the existing
corporate capitalist economy goes wrong — the
pathological effects of debt-based currency, a GDP that
counts waste as “growth,” etc. — and proceeds to outline
a detailed blueprint for a resilient alternative. This
latter blueprint, in a series of detailed chapters,
examines the authors’ proposals for a sustainable
successor society.</p>
<p>Most of
the proposals are things readers in the green,
decentralist and alternative economics communities are
probably familiar with: basic guaranteed incomes, barter
currencies, taxation of land value and extraction,
community land trusts, employee ownership and
self-management as the standard business model, etc.
Each of them, by itself, involves the kind of
fundamental structural change you could spend days
imagining the effects of. Taken together, their
cumulative effect is the a model of society that makes a
“petty bourgeois socialist” like me salivate, and would
make P.J. Proudhon and Henry George jump up out of their
graves and shout “Hallelujah.”</p>
<p><span></span></p>
<p>In the
course of each chapter, the authors examine the
pathological effects of a particular structural
privilege or monopoly — and in particular, it’s
contribution to the cost of living. At the end of the
chapter, they present the savings from the average
family’s expenditures that would result from their
proposed reform, along with a running total of the
cumulative savings from previous proposals in the book.
By the end of the book, that amounts to a huge portion
of average household expenditures.</p>
<p>I have a
few quibbles; I’m an anarchist, after all. Although the
guaranteed basic income coupled with Pigouvian taxation
would be a vast improvement on the present system, my
preference is for</p>
<p>1) letting
the full deflationary effect of technological progress
and the abolition of monopoly run their course (with a
much bigger likely reduction in GDP and prices than even
Lewis and Conaty envision);</p>
<p>2)
distribute the hours of necessary labor as widely as
possible through a drastically reduced work week; and</p>
<p>3) support
the elderly and incapacitated, and those whose
productive activity is difficult to monetize, through
cost- and risk-pooling mechanisms like communal primary
social units (cohousing projects, extended family
compounds, urban communes, intentional communities,
squatter communities, and the like).</p>
<p>Second — a
quite minor quibble — I’m skeptical about the authors’
claim that an end to the subsidized corporate food
system would significantly raise household food costs.
For one thing, I think a lot of food production would be
shifted out of the cash nexus altogether, and into the
informal and household economy. And even if it takes
more labor to grow a tomato in a raised bed than on a
mechanized plantation, I still think the total labor
involved in growing it via soil-intensive cultivation at
the actual site of consumption is probably less than
that required to earn the money to pay the price of
agribusiness produce (including all the embedded costs
of long-distance distribution, high-pressure marketing,
batch and queue processing, etc.). Ralph Borsodi’s
analysis of the economics of home production is still
valid, eighty years later.</p>
<p>Third —
much more important in my opinion — is their treatment
of the idea of “free markets.” For example, here’s their
take on the neoliberal policies of recent decades: “When
government got out of the way and the free market was
unleashed, once again the rich got richer and the poor
got poorer.”</p>
<p>No.
Neoliberalism involved<a href="http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/free-market-reforms-and-the-reduction-of-statism" style="color:rgb(184,91,90);text-decoration:none" target="_blank"> simply
weakening some secondary restrictions on the state’s
primary grants of privilege</a> to big business and
the plutocracy. These primary grants of privilege — the
most fundamental structural feature of our economy —
were left in place and strengthened. Without all the
government-enforced or -provided subsidies, regulatory
cartels, artificial property rights and artificial
scarcities that now exist — subsidies to extractive
industries, the state-enforced banking monopoly,
absentee titles to vacant and unimproved land, and
“intellectual property” [sic] among them — Fortune 500
corporations and the entire billionaire class would melt
like garden slugs with salt on their backs.</p>
<p>One thing
I especially appreciate is they grok the concept of
resilience in its essence, not just some accidental
features of it. Their seven principles of resilience on
pp. 19-20 include things like redundancy, modularity,
and tight feedback loops that should be familiar to
readers of John Robb or John Boyd.</p>
<p>If you’re
the kind of person who’s review in the first place, it’s
a safe bet this is the kind of book you’d enjoy. I know
I did."</p>
<p>best,
Orsan</p>
<p><br>
</p>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 17 February 2015 at 09:55, mp <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mp@aktivix.org" target="_blank">mp@aktivix.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><span><br>
<br>
On 17/02/15 01:24, Michel Bauwens wrote:<br>
> Ioannis requests to forward this message:<br>
<br>
</span>!!And requests that you delete email<br>
addresses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br>
<span><br>
> In case you forward this, please erase previous
e-mail addresses for<br>
> privacy reasons.<br>
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