William J McKibbin PhD CMC LLC. Joi Ito: Designing institutions with Transparency in mind. Joi Ito: Designing institutions with Transparency in mind Michel Bauwens 6th September 2011 A very important insight on Social Business Design, excerpted from Joi Ito: “As we work on this process of making the powerful transparent, we run into some difficulties because most institutions, even those that are for the most part well-meaning and good, are not robust against transparency because they haven’t been designed to be transparent.
It reminds me of software projects that try to “go open source” after they’ve been written. It’s often nearly impossible because the code is a mess. In most powerful institutions, corners are cut and methods are used in a somewhat “ends justify the means” sort of way. I believe that Wikileaks is just the beginning of a bigger trend where it will become harder and harder to hide information and citizen counter-surveillance will become a norm rather than an exception. “Growing Cities” documentary on urban farming. The Wages of Destroying Labor Bargaining Power: Nearly 30% of Job Losses Due to Management Cutting Pie in Favor of Capital. Yves here.
This short piece by Robert Gordon is important because it seeks to quantify the impact of a phenomenon that economists have noticed a bit late in the game: that the benefits of GDP growth, which used to go mainly to labor (via increased hiring and better wages) now benefit capitalists fare more than ordinary workers. The shift towards increases in GDP favoring corporate profits at the expense of labor became pronounced in the weak Bush expansion (we commented on it in a 2005 article) and Gordon’s effort to try to translate that into the impact on unemployment levels is a useful step forward in the debate.
By Robert Gordon, Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Cross posted from VoxEU The US is missing millions of jobs. High and persistent unemployment in the US has emerged as one of the most important macroeconomic legacies of the 2007-09 world economic crisis. How many jobs are lacking? Figure 2. Figure 3. Figure 4. Table 1. You Owe Me, Buddy § Unqualified Offerings. Homesteading. Reading James C. Scott's excellent Seeing Like a State. He gives, as an example of how land was traditionally held, the following: "Rural living in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Denmark, for example, was organized by ejerlav, whose members had certain rights for using local arable, waste, and forest land.
It would had have been impossible in such a community to associate a household or individual with a particular holding on a cadastral map. " This is just an example of the way land was typically held before the current system of clearly defined freehold of lots was imposed by the state on a reluctant society, and not by any process of "mixing one's labor" with virgin land.
Land was owned by communities first. * I fully anticipate the objection, "But communities can't own anything! " David Bollier on the Value Proposition of the Commons. Excerpted from a speech by David Bollier: (given at the Caux Forum for Human Security in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 13, 2011.) “The Value Proposition of the Commons This brings me back to the commons. One reason that I am so attracted to the commons is it gives us a vocabulary for imagining a new sort of future.
It lets us develop a richer narrative about value than the one sanctioned by neoliberal economics and policy. The commons helps us see that we are actually richer than we thought we were. It’s just that our common wealth is not a private commodity or cash. We can especially see the generativity of the commons on the Internet, which is a kind of hosting infrastructure for digital commons. Benkler’s term for this phenomenon is “commons-based peer production.”
Think of the hundreds of millions of photos on Flickr or the millions of Wikipedia entries in over 160 languages. There are countless such digital commons based on peer production and sharing. A New look at the Industrial Revolution" I'm curious to read the comments on this one: Opening Pandora’s box: A new look at the industrial revolution, by Tony Wrigley, Vox EU: The most fundamental defining feature of the industrial revolution was that it made possible exponential economic growth – growth at a speed that implied the doubling of output every half-century or less. This in turn radically transformed living standards. Each generation came to have a confident expectation that they would be substantially better off than their parents or grandparents. Yet, remarkably, the best informed and most perspicacious of contemporaries were not merely unconscious of the implications of the changes which were taking place about them but firmly dismissed the possibility of such a transformation.
Smith and Ricardo as growth pessimists They thought in terms of three basic factors of production, i.e. land, labor, and capital. The implications of this situation in limiting productive potential are clear and dire. Pandora’s box? The Twilight of Meaning. This is not going to be an easy post to write, and I’m not at all sure it will be any easier to understand; I trust my readers will bear with me.
I could begin it in any number of places, but the one that seems most important just now is the vestibule of the little public library six blocks away from my house. It’s a solid if unimaginative brick rectangle of Eighties vintage, one room not quite so full of books as it ought to be, another room in back for the librarians to work, a meeting space, restrooms, and a vestibule where books that are being discarded from the collection are shelved for sale. That’s standard practice in most public libraries these days.
If a book hasn’t been checked out for three years, or if it needs repairs and there isn’t a huge demand for it, it goes onto the sale shelf. Prices range from cheap to absurdly cheap; the sale doesn’t bring in a huge amount, but at a time of sparse and faltering budgets, every bit helps. 1. 2. 34. Market System (#1 of 2) Swarmanoid project. Triumph of the Rentier City? I am teaching a senior honors seminar this fall. Among the readings is Ed Glaeser's new book, TheTriumph of the City. It is a perfect book for smart undergraduates--it is well written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. It is also packed with fun facts. Early on in the book, Ed celebrates the resiliency of Manhattan, noting that "[b]etween 2009 and 2010, as the American economy largely stagnated, wages in Manhattan increased by 11.9 percent, more than any large county.
" This passage brought to mind Vernon Henderson's pioneering work on large cities and favoritism. He writes: This enhanced role of government in the urbanization process over the years has resulted in a corresponding bias, where certain regions and cities are heavily favored in terms of capital and fiscal allocations, giving favored regions a cost advantage. New York is wonderful, but it has been given an enormous cost advantage in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Are we replacing robots with Chinese people? OK, REALLY, dissertation committee, this is my last blog post for a while. PROMISE. But this Tyler Cowen article was too good to pass up. I just had to blog it. The article is about new data that show that productivity growth has stagnated since 2009. One problem may be offshoring by American companies, as stressed in a study by Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Susan Houseman, senior economist with the W.
I've been critical in the past of Mike Mandel's thesis. BUT...productivity is not the same thing as technology. So why should we care whether our productivity comes from robots (technology) or from cheap Chinese labor (trade)? And here's the interesting part. I also assumed that an increase in the total supply of labor causes negative spillover effects because it reduces the incentives for firms to discover and implement labor-saving innovations that also have positive spillover effects on production throughout the economy.
The US Jobless Recovery: Assertive Management Meets the Double Hangover. Robert Gordon says the changing balance of power between labor and management helps to explain the jobless recovery: The case of the US jobless recovery: Assertive management meets the double hangover, by Robert J. Gordon, Vox EU: High and persistent unemployment in the US has emerged as one of the most important macroeconomic legacies of the 2007–09 world economic crisis. While the decline of business activity in the US was no larger than in Europe, the US is an outlier in its outsized response of the unemployment rate to its decline in output (IMF 2011).Here we quantify the shortfall of US employment—some 10.4 million missing jobs—and ask: Why did the number of jobs decline so much and why has it recovered so little? Figure 1. Actual vs. two criteria of normal employment per capita (2000 Q1—2011 Q2) Figure 2.
What caused the destruction of 10.4 million jobs? Table 1. Can a resource-based economy work? Excerpted from a reflection on a non-monetary economy, from the Moneyless Society blog : “All of the ‘alternative solutions’ to the problems we have in the world today deal with solutions within the monetary system. We have ‘recycling’, ‘carbon shares’, ‘cradle to cradle’, ‘environmental protection’, and so forth. All of these deals with the industry and the monetary system staying as it is. ‘Recycling’ means that we have to recycle the minerals and raw materials used in many of our products. ‘Carbon shares’ is a ‘monetary way’ for the society to be able to continue to pollute the environment, but it will cost a bit more for the polluter. All of these measures assume that the monetary system, the industry, the free market and so forth stay largely as it is. It is understandable that the majority of people can not think in terms of changing the whole system, from the root and up, because it is very difficult to think that far ‘out of the box’.
Yes, we, humans are an industrious race. Gamification is Bullshit. Comments (149) Want to comment on your site? The trackback URL is Seemed over the top until i heard some gamification proponents speak. i still think creating participant structures that correspond to real world actions 1) will be done, and 2) can be done in more humane, just, and pleasurable ways. As an educator, I do this all the time (of course, as do you). However, I'm kind of surprised how much of this is happening and the amount of cultural currency it's gaining. Thank you so much for this. Thanks for this. Great point and sane argument, but I'd like to know how can we assess game structures (or any structure at all): what make games games?
Thanks for this. Even though gamification is bullshit in the primary way the term is being utilized, and businesses are being exploited by it, if even a few companies develop more delightful and enjoyable experiences without compromising the core value of their offering, it could be good. Also, P.T. >bookmark. Jobs and Structure in the Global Economy - Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – The global economy is at a crossroads as the major emerging markets (and developing countries more broadly) become systemically important, both for macroeconomic and financial stability and in their impact on other economies, including the advanced countries. Consider, for example, what has occurred over the past 20 years in the United States. Some parts of the tradable sector (finance, insurance, and computer systems design) grew in value added and employment, while others (electronics and cars) grew in value added but declined in employment, as lower value-added jobs moved offshore.
The net effect was negligible employment growth in the tradable sector. The US economy did not have a conspicuous unemployment problem until the crisis of 2008 because the non-tradable sector absorbed the bulk of the expanding labor force. That pace of employment growth now appears unsustainable. Rodrik: The Manufacturing Imperative. INFOGRAPHIC: The Shocking Wage Gap Between Auto CEOs And Their Employees. 26 propositions on networking, labour and solidarity under/against/beyond a globalised and informatised capitalism | P. Waterman. 2. It is a highly contradictory form which can, however, be more fully, creatively and democratically used by popular, radical-democratic and anti-capitalist forces; 3.
Notions of networking and internationalism, understood as necessary for modernisation and/or human emancipation, can be traced back to at least the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions. Since that time they have been a matter of political dispute between capitalists/technocrats/authoritarians and socialists/democrats/libertarians; 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. Private Property is Not the Right Solution for the Natural Commons. Excerpted from a stirring speech by Maude Barlow, an advocate of commons-oriented approaches to natural resource issues. In this speech, she strongly stresses the link between the environmental crisis and social justice, and calls for an end to “silo thinking” on that issue. When I co-organized the International Commons Conference last October in Berlin, Maude Barlow refused to attend a previously agreed on panel on the relationship and mutual enrichment of the digital commons with the natural commons.
We hope that in the future, that silo too will be broken! Digital commons and their information and knowledge sharing, as well as the sustainability aspects of shared design when coupled with relocalized and distributed ‘making’, has many synergies with the preservation of the natural commons, at least that is our conviction. “From the perspective of the environmental movement, I see two problems that hinder us in our work to stop this carnage.
How the Commons Fits In. Book of the Week: Labor is not a commodity, but a commons. * Book: Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line. Tom Walker. Author Tom Walker explains the motivation in writing this important book, which considers employment as a common pool resource, i.e. advocates a labor commons: “The issue I grapple with in Jobs, Liberty and the Bottom Line is not so much “what is the best remedy for unemployment” or even “what is the case for shorter working time” but why and how has one particular set of policy options been excluded from the mainstream discourse. Of course that possibly translates into “why is the best remedy the forbidden one?” Perhaps as much as or even more than problem solving, I am fascinated by the notion of taboo and its functioning as unwritten prohibition.
How is the elusive ban transmitted and enforced in the absence of explicit instructions for such transmission and enforcement? The answer is through stock narratives that operate virtually as rituals, ignoring conflicting facts, inassimilable scientific theories and appalling outcomes. Towards global policy frameworks: Eleven Structural Problems of the Current World System. Square – Accept credit card payments with your mobile phone. Anonymous: we will use our culture and technology against their economic shocks. SoftwarePatent. The Principles of Good Programming. The Archdruid Report. Urban-agricultural and cultural renewal in Detroit. Book of the Week (3): David Graeber’s on Humanity’s ‘primordial debt’ On the enclosure and depletion of social capital. Dashboards evolve to meet social and business needs.
The insuffficiency of efficiency. Thinking about propertization and the commons. Elinor Ostrom on Going Beyond the Tragedy of the Commons. Book of the Week (2): David Graeber’s take on the fake economics and their Imaginary Myth of Barter. Wicked (1) Mobile communication networks form a new stratum of the city. What Role for Users in a More Social Peer-to-Peer? Megaprojects like bullet train have big cost overruns, critics say. The bright future of solar powered factories. An ideological history of the urge to own. Debugging the profit motive. In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's middle-class underclass. Beyond ‘potemkim’ carbon markets, towards true sustainability metrics. Is there a scientific basis for peer to peer economics? P2P Foundation. Start a 1-Acre, Self-Sufficient Homestead - Modern Homesteading. Can organic agriculture attain ‘miraculous’ productivity? The Lesser Depression. Farm Felons Pick Off California Crops. Common Property Rights and Abundance (Diagram)
Strategy. Grand Strategy Annex - Two Metrics for Globalization. Top 100 Items to Disappear First During a National Emergency. Wealth - Miiu.org. Data not drugs. Why don't they get it? What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund? - Merrill Matthews - Right Directions. Introduction to Transfinancial Economics (3): Some Outstanding Implications of Transfinancial Economics. John Robb on Conducting Economic Insurgencies through Open Source Business Ventures. Are our deep ‘mod ecologies’ threatened by the shallow ‘app ecologies’? Thomas Greco on the nuts and bolts of creating a credit-commons- based local exchange system. Peereconomic update: an interesting experiment in ‘paid usership’ Book of the Week (2): Sacred Economics, Disintermediation and the P2P Revolution. Naomi Klein on the need for integrating the precautionary principle in our addiction to risk. Mapping out the value exchange spectrum (2): applying Gregory Rader’s quadrant view. Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon.
The Natural Limits of Wind Energy | Oil Price.com. Blueprints for Networked Cocreation: 1. Intentcasting. Unifying the Value Universe. Mapping out the value exchange universe (1), a quadrant view from Gregory Rader. Richard Hames on the need for new ways of thinking complexity and change. Ethnos Project Crisis Zone - News for a World in Cultural Crisis. Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide.
Reasoned Localization and Selective Deglobalization. Amy Goodman, Slavoj Zizek, and Julian Assange: the great Wikileaks debate. The Great Reset: Why tomorrow may not be better than today. The Downside of Dependence. Comparing P2P Foundation approach to John Robb’s global guerillas. Degrowth in a context of infinite growth. Complex Organizational Systems: Some Common Principles.
The Rich Complexity of Village Life - The Region. Wikipedia - Epistemological Revolution. Mechanisms of contention reconsidered. Quora: Striving for an Ideal Online Society. Nation & World | Treasury prints less currency as use of plastic soars. The economic benefits of shorter working hours in a new ‘non-economic’ conception of time. Promises and Pitfalls of a Sharing Society.
Columbus Consulting Collaboration. Technology. LocalFood. 21st Century Economy. PostingArchive. Commons. OpenDesign. DeLanda.