Peer-to-Peer Themes and Urban Priorities for the Self-organizing Society Permaculture Research Institute. By Nikos A. Salingaros, The University of Texas at San Antonio Abstract This essay presents desirable social functioning as basically a matter of free individual decision. I discuss two basic polarities: Left versus Right, and P2P (Peer-to-Peer) versus Global-mass-society. Each polarity takes certain distinctions and concerns as key to understanding political life. Introduction I would like to respond to Michel Bauwens’ article published on 3 April 2010, which examines the nature of a broad alliance that could be expected to adopt a new P2P (Peer-to-Peer) worldview. What I have learned from Bauwens is that the political/economic spectrum consists of a myriad of contrasting approaches, and that any simplistic interpretation is not only wrong but also dangerous. Bauwens summarizes the difference that I discuss here in other terms.
Partitioning society between individual and groupthink populations: the role of the expert Patterns check the validity of expert opinion P2P and pattern thinking. Video of the Day: Yochai Benkler on the Networked Public Sphere, its SOPA victory, and the MegaUpload case. Disruptive Distribution: An Interview with JD Moyer#.TyeIB0q3PZg.facebook. This interview with JD Moyer by Michel Bauwens and Neal Gorenflo is important to us here at Shareable because it combines two important perspectives. The first one is that JD is an entrepreneur who made a successful transition to operating in an open and participatory music culture, embracing and accepting it, providing lessons on how this might be done.
The second is that JD has done this with an ethical point of view and with the welfare of others in mind, reflecting on the evolution of capitalism in the context of the emergence of sharing and P2P dynamics. JD sees not only the chaos that is an inevitable hallmark of transition times, but also the promise of a way out through the crucial concept of civil wealth, partly inspired by the great work of Marvin Brown on the civic economy. A recent posting on how open source is destroying capitalism as we know it has been making the rounds on the Internet, generating buzz and debate on this important topic. -- Michel Bauwens. P2P Essay of the Day: Seeds and the Laws Against the Commons. P2P Essay of the Day: Seeds and the Laws Against the Commons Michel Bauwens 9th January 2012 * Thesis: Seeds and the Law.
Sectoral regulation governed by one business model. By Shabnam Laure Anvar. The research by Ms. Anvar shows how French law is geared against seed-based cooperation amongst farmers. Summary “The seed supply chain is governed by a variety of business models. For more Information, contact the author Shabnam Laure Anvar via Original French version: Semences et Droit. P2P Essay of the Day: Urban Affairs in India, the Right to the City, and Planning as Commoning. * Special Issue: Review of Urban Affairs: The Commons. Economical and Political Weekly. December 2011. This special issue of the Indian magazine focuses on urban dynamics of enclosure and the commons in an Indian context. From the editorial introduction: “Framed by a concept note that sets out the significance of the notion of “commons” to urban processes, this set of five articles looks at urban commons in diverse contexts, from the Yamuna in Delhi, hunting, gathering and foraging livelihoods in Mumbai, water bodies in Hyderabad and Bangalore, to the cinema and how it may or may not be understood as commons.”
An excerpt from co-author Anant Maringanti: “The case for re-envisioning the right to the city via the commons is compelling. In cities like those of India, an engagement between the right to the city and the right of commons – the right to oppose enclosure of shared resources in cities can open up several new possibilities for creating better cities. The P2P Foundation Books of the Year 2011: Our annual top ten list of P2P books. Here is our selection and reading recommendations of the best books we reviewed and presented in 2011 (but which may have been published in 2010). The same list but with links to extensive treatments for each book is here. 1. On Debt, hierarchy and P2P dynamics Without any doubt, this is the most important book of the year, and not just for the p2p/commons community.
Not only is debt the key issue in the present structural crisis, but David Graeber has uncovered how this is a key thread running through human history. Matt Cropp has an interesting quote on the ‘hierarchy’ aspect of debt: “A debt between two individuals thus creates a temporary hierarchical relationship between them, and in societies in which the alienation of relationships pioneered by slavery has been internalized, such debts can then be transfered to, or even originated by, a creditor with no interest at all in the wellbeing of the debtor as long as the debt continues to be serviced. 2. 2b. 3. Øyvind Holmstad: 3b. 4. 4b. P2P Essay of the Day: Chris Cook on Economy 3.0. According to Chris Cook, the “direct, instantaneous connections of the Internet make possible direct people-based (peer-to-peer) credit relationships between individuals and direct asset-based (peer-to-asset) credit relationships between individuals and productive assets.”
Excerpt: “The direct, instantaneous connections of the Internet make possible direct people-based (peer-to-peer) credit relationships between individuals and direct asset-based (peer-to-asset) credit relationships between individuals and productive assets. On the face of it, it could be expected that such dis-intermediation – which I term Napsterization, after the music file sharing phenomenon – would be resisted by banks as credit intermediaries. But in fact, the opposite is true.” * The Characteristics of Economy 3.0: Chris Cook: Inflation hedging Dis-intermediation The banks have knowledge in respect of the ownership of market inventory which is not known to other market participants. The adjacent possible P & I clubs.
From Instrumental Rationality to Collaborative Rationality. * Book: Planning with Complexity. An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy. By Judith E. Innes, David E. Booher. Routledge, 2010. A review by Larry Susskind: “In their extraordinary new book, Planning With Complexity (Routledge, 2010), Judith Innes and David Booher make the case for a new way of knowing and deciding.
Diversity Complexity science says that complex adaptive systems need to involve large numbers of individual agents connected through multiple networks. So, Innes and Booher suggest that to make collaborative processes more effective, they should be self-organizing, with diverse agents, involving many interactions and non-linear dynamics. Interdependence The condition of interdependence holds that agents must depend to a significant degree on other agents.
Authentic Dialogue Authentic dialogue requires that agents engage with each other in deliberations that adhere to Habermas’ ideal speech conditions. THE ART OF PATHOGENIC WARFARE. Within human social and economic systems, pathogenic behavior is spreading. This is particularly true among powerful, successful, and wealthy people (finance, economics, politics, etc.) in the developed world. What specifically do I mean by pathogenic? An ever greater number of these people are adopting behaviors that are actively hostile to the human systems we rely upon. They actually think it is OK to put these systems at risk for personal benefit. Obviously, this is very dangerous. Given the massive amounts of network, technological, and financial leverage that's currently available to these people, even a single bad actor can wreak global havoc like never before (as in, they could cause an economic collapse that's so severe that it could kill more people than every war we've ever had to date, combined).
So, why is this happening and how can we prevent it? Good, Neutral, and Bad Bacteria First, it's important to understand that our bodies are filled with bacteria. Pathogenic Warfare. Lauren Anderson: the “We” of the our collaborative age will replace the “Me” of the industrial age. Ugo Mattei - State Market, and the Commons.
“One of the most penetrating essays on the commons that I have encountered in the last few years was published this year by Italian comparative law professor Ugo Mattei, who teaches at the International University College of Turin (Italy) and the University of California, Hastings College of Law. Professor Mattei deals with a topic that gets very little attention – how the commons relates to the State and Market – and does so in the broadest philosophical scope imaginable and with great sophistication. So far as I can tell, Mattei’s essay, “The State, the Market, and Some Preliminary Question about the Commons,” (in English and French) written this year, has not been published in any scholarly journal.
This is not entirely surprising: the short essay is too cutting-edge for in its theorizing, and the commons itself elicits limited interest in mainstream academic disciplines beyond the ritualistic flogging of Hardin’s “tragedy” essay. Mattei writes: Mattei goes on to say: Cooperative counter-economy in the U.S. Mira Luna writes in Shareable: “While mainstream America is hoping for federal economic reform, some social justice organizations have a radically different idea, and are organizing low-income communities to build a new economy from the grassroots up. Tired of asking for change from the top down, they are taking their economy into their own hands. Social justice organizations, having a strong membership base rooted in community, are ideal spaces to cultivate alternative economic projects, as relationships of trust and solidarity have been nurtured over time through education and a history of taking action for justice.
Here are some exciting examples of grassroots alternative economy projects for social justice. Folks at the bottom of the economic pyramid are not only finding ways to individually climb the path to realizing the American Dream. Amongst the examples she cites are the following models: P2P and Utopia: the values of the new civilization. P2P history (1): A history of the Socialisation of Production.
“It would be entirely one-sided to look at capitalism and only see crisis. Undoubtedly, in most capitalist countries many people have experienced a declining standard of living, unemployment and a reduction of the welfare state in the past decades. If you add to this the intensification of work leading to stress and burn-outs, the past decades do not present a pretty picture. There is a big difference compared to the fifties and sixties. However, that does not exhaust the question.
It does not mean that there has been no economic development at all during this period. Only on very few occasions has capitalism meant an actual decline in the economy and then, with the exception of the depression in the thirties, only for a very short period of time. The normal condition for capitalism is for the means of production to develop. What is does it mean to ‘develop the means of production? In the past, Stalinists and reformists alike had their own myths about economic development.
What is the P2P Foundation all about? The Gordon Cook Interview series. Because of increased attention to our work, we are relinking to an interview series conducted by Gordon Cook: The Gordon Cook Interview * (1): On the origins of our engagement with P2P * (2): Phase transitions, scarcity, and abundance * (3): From the commons to open and distributed manufacturing * (4): Peak Hierarchy and Open Agriculture * (5): The role of the P2P Foundation Background: On March 4 2010, Gordon Cook was able to interview me in Bangkok.
This is the interview proper, which starts pp. 18+. Gordon Cook’s Summary: “Looking at the apparent ramping up of a fresh stage in the economic crisis, one has to begin to wonder about the sustainability of the global economic system that is generally thought of as “free market capitalism.” Whereas Yochai Benkler identified peer production in the context of the Internet, Michel has gone on well beyond that to identify a broad array fundamental changes underway that are burrowing, termite like, at the foundations of global capitalism. Source: