Co-owning the physical layer
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Michel Bauwens
Mar 17, 2011, 12:08:39 AM3/17/11
to The Next Net
Dear Sepp,
What you are saying here is what I have been trying to say all along, but perhaps not clearly enough so your notion of Distributed stakeholder ownership appeals a lot, and it would be interesting if you could expand it for publication, or at least for a wiki entry. I think this is a very pregnant concept which I may use myself in the future, as a way to convey pluralistic ownership models.
My beef with Patrick is not in his solution, if it were part of an overall mix, but rather that Patrick argues that it is "the" mono-logical solution that we all should adopt.
Rather, the solution lies in the existence of a variety of forms of ownership that have elements of sovereignity and social justice in them, that can be adopted on the basis of choice and as most adapted to particular circumstances. CSA is a good example, where farmers own their farm, but part of their produce is already co-owned by their users, but there can be many other solutions. Riversimple for example, the open source car, has a 6-party stakeholder model, which if I'm not mistaken, even integrates 'representatives' of the environment.
Patrick simply needs to try out his solution concretely, see if it can be adopted by anyone, whether it works as the theory predicts, etc.. and then it will become part of the new reality we are striving for: I personally think this would be more fruitful that trying to convince humanity through arguments that it is the one final solution we have all been waiting for; as I said a number of times, these arguments are only valid from a particular perspective, and carry no weight if you believe it is ethically wrong that all workers should depend on consumers-owners; it's like listening to a promoter of slavery trying to argue that his particular modality of slavery will solve all problems; this person may be right in his perspective, based on an acceptance of slavery, but will not convince anyone who thinks slavery is wrong. In the same way, since I believe universal dependence of workers on users is wrong as a universal solution, I will never 'hear' Patrick's arguments, for the simple reason that I don't want to hear them, since I a priori reject the perspective from which the arguments arise.
Michel
**
Sepp Hasslberger <se...@lastrega.com> Mar 16 11:10AM +0100 ^
Patrick Anderson wrote:
> When does the question of "Should the worker have
> ownership in the Means of Production" switch from
> "Obviously NO" to "Obviously YES"?
I believe what you are driving at is a distinction between 'workers' and 'consumers' or rather 'users'.
In a world where workers are bound to industry and a job is a precondition for survival, where industry is owned by people who have succeeded to accumulate "capital", where we see the worker as one class and the industrialist/capitalist as its opposite, it makes sense to demand worker ownership of the means of production. It is a requirement of social justice that those doing the producing should also receive at least a fair part of the fruits of their labor.
A more just distribution of the fruit of labor allows the workers to function as consumers, meaning people both produce and consume their production, because they have sufficient money to buy what they produce. In an industrial setting, both of those functions actually "work for" the industrialist/capitalist who gains along the whole chain of production, distribution and consumption.
We are gradually moving away from this direct counterposition of labor/capital, as the limits of the model become more and more obvious. Finance (or capital) has, with time, gained a great advantage over labor. Machines are cheaper than most human labor and so workers are being replaced, sent home, relegated to marginal jobs with little pay. Collective bargaining is losing its edge because humans are no longer the only workers available. The worker/consumer is becoming less and less important in economic life.
As we move past the industrial phase, we see production of physical goods relegated increasingly to machines, while a great number of former workers scramble to give new meaning to their lives. We are in a transition phase to a new world, where the main actors of industry, the workers and industrialists of old, no longer make up the economy. The new division is providers and users. Many of the former workers have become providers, and all of us are, to some extent, users. For now, this new paradigm co-exists with the remnants of the industrial model, there is no clear break, no line where one ends and the other starts. It is a fluid change.
The new world is p2p rather than hierarchy. It is a world where providers are users and vice versa.
Now the question becomes: Who should own the means of production - the provider or the user?
I tend to say it should be the provider who owns, but then...
Note that we can be both user AND provider at the same time, and usually this is the case.
Take the co-ownership of a farm. It is the users of the product (milk, meat, vegetables, fruit) who own the farm, but if they share in the work needed to make the product, they are also producers. Some of them do more work than others, so they are more producers, but they are still also consumers.
Is there even a need to distinguish any more?
Perhaps we could consider both users and producers to be stakeholders. In each type of enterprise, some of us hold a greater stake in consumption, some of us are predominantly producers. But all of us have an interest in the activity to continue. So perhaps ownership should be with those who have an interest, be it the producers, be it the consumers.
Distributed stakeholder ownership?
Sepp
--
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
What you are saying here is what I have been trying to say all along, but perhaps not clearly enough so your notion of Distributed stakeholder ownership appeals a lot, and it would be interesting if you could expand it for publication, or at least for a wiki entry. I think this is a very pregnant concept which I may use myself in the future, as a way to convey pluralistic ownership models.
My beef with Patrick is not in his solution, if it were part of an overall mix, but rather that Patrick argues that it is "the" mono-logical solution that we all should adopt.
Rather, the solution lies in the existence of a variety of forms of ownership that have elements of sovereignity and social justice in them, that can be adopted on the basis of choice and as most adapted to particular circumstances. CSA is a good example, where farmers own their farm, but part of their produce is already co-owned by their users, but there can be many other solutions. Riversimple for example, the open source car, has a 6-party stakeholder model, which if I'm not mistaken, even integrates 'representatives' of the environment.
Patrick simply needs to try out his solution concretely, see if it can be adopted by anyone, whether it works as the theory predicts, etc.. and then it will become part of the new reality we are striving for: I personally think this would be more fruitful that trying to convince humanity through arguments that it is the one final solution we have all been waiting for; as I said a number of times, these arguments are only valid from a particular perspective, and carry no weight if you believe it is ethically wrong that all workers should depend on consumers-owners; it's like listening to a promoter of slavery trying to argue that his particular modality of slavery will solve all problems; this person may be right in his perspective, based on an acceptance of slavery, but will not convince anyone who thinks slavery is wrong. In the same way, since I believe universal dependence of workers on users is wrong as a universal solution, I will never 'hear' Patrick's arguments, for the simple reason that I don't want to hear them, since I a priori reject the perspective from which the arguments arise.
Michel
**
Sepp Hasslberger <se...@lastrega.com> Mar 16 11:10AM +0100 ^
Patrick Anderson wrote:
> When does the question of "Should the worker have
> ownership in the Means of Production" switch from
> "Obviously NO" to "Obviously YES"?
I believe what you are driving at is a distinction between 'workers' and 'consumers' or rather 'users'.
In a world where workers are bound to industry and a job is a precondition for survival, where industry is owned by people who have succeeded to accumulate "capital", where we see the worker as one class and the industrialist/capitalist as its opposite, it makes sense to demand worker ownership of the means of production. It is a requirement of social justice that those doing the producing should also receive at least a fair part of the fruits of their labor.
A more just distribution of the fruit of labor allows the workers to function as consumers, meaning people both produce and consume their production, because they have sufficient money to buy what they produce. In an industrial setting, both of those functions actually "work for" the industrialist/capitalist who gains along the whole chain of production, distribution and consumption.
We are gradually moving away from this direct counterposition of labor/capital, as the limits of the model become more and more obvious. Finance (or capital) has, with time, gained a great advantage over labor. Machines are cheaper than most human labor and so workers are being replaced, sent home, relegated to marginal jobs with little pay. Collective bargaining is losing its edge because humans are no longer the only workers available. The worker/consumer is becoming less and less important in economic life.
As we move past the industrial phase, we see production of physical goods relegated increasingly to machines, while a great number of former workers scramble to give new meaning to their lives. We are in a transition phase to a new world, where the main actors of industry, the workers and industrialists of old, no longer make up the economy. The new division is providers and users. Many of the former workers have become providers, and all of us are, to some extent, users. For now, this new paradigm co-exists with the remnants of the industrial model, there is no clear break, no line where one ends and the other starts. It is a fluid change.
The new world is p2p rather than hierarchy. It is a world where providers are users and vice versa.
Now the question becomes: Who should own the means of production - the provider or the user?
I tend to say it should be the provider who owns, but then...
Note that we can be both user AND provider at the same time, and usually this is the case.
Take the co-ownership of a farm. It is the users of the product (milk, meat, vegetables, fruit) who own the farm, but if they share in the work needed to make the product, they are also producers. Some of them do more work than others, so they are more producers, but they are still also consumers.
Is there even a need to distinguish any more?
Perhaps we could consider both users and producers to be stakeholders. In each type of enterprise, some of us hold a greater stake in consumption, some of us are predominantly producers. But all of us have an interest in the activity to continue. So perhaps ownership should be with those who have an interest, be it the producers, be it the consumers.
Distributed stakeholder ownership?
Sepp
--
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
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