The Two Biggest Dogmas
marc fawzi
Dear All,
In reply to various feedback points on why "free" is not sustainable and why self-sufficiency does not lead to true autonomy, I've constructed a separate updated section within the P2P Energy Economy model to address them in more coherent manner.
This entire exercise is helping me tremendously to understand how to cope with the existing economy by exposing the various games embedded within it and allowing me to survive it while working toward an evolving set of ideas that would ultimately modify it.
I hope you find it useful, too.
Here is the section concerning the two biggest dogmas in current social theories:
The Two Biggest Dogmas
The two biggest dogmas present in current social theories are:
- 1. Generalized exchange of goods and services (aka "unconditional barter" or "gift economy") where those who are naturally inclined to give more than they take end up supporting those who are naturally inclined to take more than they give, is a good way to run an economy.
- 2. Self-sufficiency leads to autonomy.
These two dogmas are countered in the following two sections that address fair compensation and increased autonomy.
To summarize the sections below, for the first dogma, the following counter argument is given:
- Getting and giving things for free unconditionally (as in a gift economy) is unsustainable because of the following reasons:
- 1. If a given good or service can be obtained for free then some people may want an infinite supply of it. For example, if Internet bandwidth was abundant and free someone had an insatiable appetite for digital content then they may want to have an infinite amount of it, without compensating those who produce the bandwidth for the cost of producing and delivering that bandwidth, which is an unsustainable situation.
- 2. If there are more people who are inclined to take more than they give then they will have an unfair allocation of the available resources than people who are inclined to give more than they take, which causes the latter population to suffer and ultimately shrink leading to a dominant majority of people who are inclined to take more than give, which is an unsustainable situation.
And for the second dogma, the following argument is given:
- When it comes to the idea that self-sufficiency leads to autonomy, we can point to the fact that no amount of self-sufficiency can compete with the autonomy achieved through increased inter-dependence.
- For instance, in the case of North Korea, a fully self-sufficient country that can make nukes from scratch, the fact is that despite having many educated and capable scientists and engineers, a hard working population, and many natural resources (including agricultural resources) they don't have the autonomy (or power) to achieve the standards of living (including nutrition) that would be theirs if they were an part of a greater inter-dependent whole.
- So if bloggers and youtubers did not produce their own content and did not re-distribute or remixe content from other bloggers and youtubers, the Internet (or Web) as a medium would not have had the autonomy that it has today and the same goes for the bloggers and youtubers, as they would be dependent on the few producers that existed before the Web was born, e.g. TV stations, newspapers, etc.
- Having said that, inter-dependence can easily turn into dependence when most producers become consumers, redistributors and remixers of a few original producers.
- This can happen due to two reasons:
- 1. The majority of producers consume far more than they produce.
- 2. Certain producers have access to a scarce resource (e.g. insider news in case of bloggers like TechCrunch and access to huge amounts of video content in case of youtubers like CBS and other major TV channels) or a higher place in some established hierarchy (e.g. Washington Post vs. Joe Blogger) use this unfair advantage to buy out the most successful of the small producers (Joe Blogger and Joe Youtuber) in order to reinforce others' dependency on themselves.
- The answer to both problems is to assure maximum inter-dependence in the design of the system.
- The way the "maximum inter-dependence" condition is assured in the P2P Energy Economy is by having producers trade in goods and services based on the cost in work energy it takes to produce and deliver the given good or service, so that in order for someone to consume, redistribute or remix another producer's goods or services they need to pay for those goods or services in joule tokens at the same amount in work energy it took to produce and deliver those goods or services, which means that they have to produce their own goods and services (or produce surplus energy) that they can trade with other producers at the cost in work energy it takes to produce and deliver the given good or service, e.g. by using joule tokens.
- Another way the "maximum inter-dependence" condition is assured in the P2P Energy Economy is by eliminating monopolies.
- When it comes to monopolies, they are eliminated in the P2P Energy Economy by the following conditions:
- 1. All industries must meet the following conditions for sustainable abundance:
- a. Efficient, On-demand Production (which permits predictive inventory management so producers don't have to over produce, which causes waste and inefficiency and is therefore unsustainable, or under produce which causes shortages and high prices, which is also unsustainable)
- b. Decentralized, Inter-dependent Production (which assures there's no dependence on a few suppliers)
- c. Renewable Production (which assures there's no dependence on scarce resources)
- d. Scalable Production (which assures that volume is not limited by the production process)
- e. Open Source Production (which assures that the good or service can be produced by anyone, while enforcing social and moral rights of the originator, not their right to a monopoly.)
- f. Non-Scarce Qualities (which assures the absence of any scarce qualities that would justify paying more than the cost of work energy it takes to produce and deliver the given good or service)
- g. Non-Scarce Dependencies (which assures that there are no dependencies in the cost-of-work-energy calculation on any goods or services that do not meet the above conditions.)
- h. Fair Compensation (which assures that all producers are paid at the median cost in work energy that goes into making and delivering their good or service and based on their efficiency and creativity, not based on their place in the hierarchy or their access to a scarce resource.)
- i. Open Education (which assures that all peers have access to education at the cost in work energy it takes to produce and deliver that education.)
- 2. Consumers are automatically and anonymously matched to producers based on the required attributes for the given good or service, the producer's lender credits (see: Lender and Borrower Credits) and the affinity between the consumer's and the producer's social, ecological and environmental values.
- 3. Producers are required to share their revenue through lending in order to rank higher as sellers, which assures that in order for a given producer to empower themselves they have to empower everyone.
Sorry if I can't answer all feedback. I've just started working on a mobile software project that takes advantage of these ideas and so my bandwidth is sort of limited.
Marc
Bryan Bishop
> The two biggest dogmas present in current social theories are:
>
> 1. Generalized exchange of goods and services (aka "unconditional barter" or
> "gift economy") where those who are naturally inclined to give more than
> they take end up supporting those who are naturally inclined to take more
> than they give, is a good way to run an economy. 2. Self-sufficiency leads
> to autonomy.
Marc, could you please move this on to another mailing list now, maybe
the postscarcity mailing list, or even better, Michel's p2presearch
list? Since we've discussed these topics, and your P2P model, forever
now-- without progress-- I suggest that those other forums would be a
better medium.
ben lipkowitz
> On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 9:15 PM, marc fawzi wrote:
>> The two biggest dogmas present in current social theories are:
>
> Marc, could you please move this on to another mailing list now, maybe
> the postscarcity mailing list, or even better, Michel's p2presearch
> list? Since we've discussed these topics, and your P2P model, forever
> now-- without progress-- I suggest that those other forums would be a
> better medium.
I am also tired of reading these deliberately misleading arguments and
self promotion. I have neglected to respond to them in the hope that he
would lose interest and go away. Unfortunately he hasn't, and it has
affected outsiders' perception of this list and the general spread of
topics that we discuss. I for one am not interested in economic theories
or any of marc fawzi's "analysis" which is actually just him creating ammo
for later arguments in support of his economic agenda. Are we powerless to
do anything about this?
Samantha Atkins
- s
Nathan Cravens
Nathan
Paul D. Fernhout
In partial defense of Marc's work, he has specified a Creative Commons
license for his work on the P2P Energy Economy page that at least allows
"non commercial use" and modifications under a Sharealike policy (even if he
states there people should make such changes in other places):
http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy
So, that's part of the basis of FOSS activity. He has said he is open to
comments. And in general, the topic would fit into discussions of
transitioning away from a scarcity-mindset.
Even from Marc thinking through these issues himself, over time, he might
come to different conclusions or better-in-some-way proposals (I know I do
that, as I think about things and eventually come to see them from new
perspectives, sometimes disagreeing with something I wrote earlier). People
move in different ways to various truths. As I wrote elsewhere:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"And even though this essay is all about personal growth, I won't speculate
on what sort of person [someone else] has become from his own trials and
tribulations. A better one, I hope, as I have become. At eighteen, I thought
all Iranians should be forced out of the USA for the hostage crisis (until I
met one at PU, even though he kept throwing his knife into the ceiling tiles
in the dorm). I'd have still been cheering on the current Iraq war and
recommending even more flaming death as what those impudent Iraqis deserved
for mishandling "our" oil. I would not be distinguishing between the people
and their guards (let alone having compassion for even the guards). I was
all for bombing the oil fields in Iraq in Gulf War I to teach them a lesson
(which rightfully shocked my mother, whose house was firebombed during WWII
and lost almost all her personal possessions like clothes then). People
grow. Even famous or infamous or anonymous ones. :-) "
I myself don't want to focus on new forms of currency right now, or the
inequity they usually imply, unless at least accompanied by something like a
Guaranteed Basic Income:
http://www.usbig.net/
which I did not notice in Marc's proposal. But in general, the issue of how
to structure an economy so as to allocate current resources to meet current
needs is an interesting one that needs to be addressed by any larger system.
Again, the example I used before was how the internet allocates fixed
bandwidth or fixed computational resources in routers to move packet around.
Marc brings up points that eventually will need to be discussed (even if in
disagreement) because some of them reflect aspects of mainstream economic
thinking (like whether people need to be motivated extrinsically). I
personally am not focusing much time on that right now though, and have made
previous comments on earlier versions of his proposal.
Part of the issue is also the perennial problem of the "open source"
movement as opposed to the "free software" movement (or their analogs in
terms of content). "Open source" was coined as a term about practical value
of access to source code in business, whereas "free software" was intendede
to be about freedom overall (although "free" has multiple meanings in
English, making that term problematical and often misunderstood.) And that's
a reason I've had trouble with "Open" in phrases, even as I have used that
myself in OSCOMAK. Part of what may be happening here is a culture clash
between those who see "Open Manufacturing" as about freedom, and those who
see it as about fitting into an existing economic order somehow (or one that
has been slightly tinkered with, like backing currency by electricity or
even gold again). Related to that, it seems there is a concern expressed
here that Marc's comments are an issue with new people looking at the list;
is there any other way that concern could be addressed?
I realize we all have limited time, but here's one example of a point from a
recent post of Marc's that is provocative but still perhaps a step to
enlightenment: "Getting and giving things for free unconditionally (as in a
gift economy) is unsustainable because of the following reasons: 1. If a
given good or service can be obtained for free then some people may want an
infinite supply of it."
Ursula K. Le Guin touched on that in the novel "The Dispossessed" with a
society that saw hording as mental illness. One could probably have a long
discussion on that point (even in complete or limited disagreement). But,
what's most important is Marc has brought up a point and stated it boldly.
But most people here (including myself at this point) are too busy with
other things based on other assumptions to want to spend much time
discussing that right now. But, in general, it's an important issue to work
through, human motivation when presented with abundance (including, if
people do hoard, how long do they hoard? -- James P. Hogan's book "Voyage
From Yesteryear" has some funny scenes about that :-).
But a big question, is, are we having this discussion because we don't want
to work through that point, or are we having this discussion because we feel
we have worked through that point and the conclusions are being ignored and
we want to focus on other things? :-) The two situations have different
possible resolutions and would say different things about this group.
This entire situation raises issues Clay Shirky talks about that can hamper
any group; one example from here:
"A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
"The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and
worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious
pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique.
You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein
newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying "You know, The Two Towers is a
little dull. I mean loooong. We didn't need that much description about the
forest, because it's pretty much the same forest all the way." Try having
that discussion. On the door of the group it will say: "This is for
discussing the works of Tolkein." Go in and try and have that discussion.
Now, in some places people say "Yes, but it needed to, because it had to
convey the sense of lassitude," or whatever. But in most places you'll
simply be flamed to high heaven, because you're interfering with the
religious text. So these are human patterns that have shown up on the
Internet, not because of the software, but because it's being used by
humans. Bion has identified this possibility of groups sandbagging their
sophisticated goals with these basic urges. And what he finally came to, in
analyzing this tension, is that group structure is necessary. Robert's Rules
of Order are necessary. Constitutions are necessary. Norms, rituals, laws,
the whole list of ways that we say, out of the universe of possible
behaviors, we're going to draw a relatively small circle around the
acceptable ones. He said the group structure is necessary to defend the
group from itself. Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on
track, on message, on charter, whatever. To keep a group focused on its own
sophisticated goals and to keep a group from sliding into these basic
patterns. Group structure defends the group from the action of its own members."
Shirky also goes on to say: "People who work on social software are closer
in spirit to economists and political scientists than they are to people
making compilers. They both look like programming, but when you're dealing
with groups of people as one of your run-time phenomena, that is an
incredibly different practice. In the political realm, we would call these
kinds of crises a constitutional crisis. It's what happens when the tension
between the individual and the group, and the rights and responsibilities of
individuals and groups, gets so serious that something has to be done. And
the worst crisis is the first crisis, because it's not just "We need to have
some rules." It's also "We need to have some rules for making some rules."
And this is what we see over and over again in large and long-lived social
software systems. Constitutions are a necessary component of large,
long-lived, heterogenous groups. Geoff Cohen has a great observation about
this. He said "The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get
into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as
time increases." As a group commits to its existence as a group, and begins
to think that the group is good or important, the chance that they will
begin to call for additional structure, in order to defend themselves from
themselves, gets very, very high. "
Anyway, so what are our "goals" here in this group? And what is the
"process" we believe in? And what are the "meta" processes we are using to
change those processes? I'm not saying we need to define them completely,
I'm just suggesting this is an opportune point to reflect on them again.
There must be some important goals that people strongly care about here if
people are getting annoyed about some emails getting in the way of them,
even to the point of using scatological language (change in the title :-).
What have we said already? From:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
"We bring free and open source software development methodology to the
physical world. Key words: open source manufacturing, engineering,
automation, abundance, post-scarcity, semi-scarce, open source distribution
/ transport, CAD, CAM, CAE, mechanical, open source hardware design, free,
repository / repositories, DIY"
Still, that is at odds somewhat with this other statement about this list in
practice:
"Re: [Open Manufacturing] Re: Public Perception (six areas?)"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/b9d6f3b894f18535
"Anyway, I feel Bryan is right in wanting to separate out some issues. Here
are six broad areas of exploration I see right now that have been discussed
on this list: ..."
So, there is at least some social confusion there (and I'm likely guilty
myself of adding to it).
Of course, long term, I personally would rather see people "manufacture"
emails as they see fit, but also ensure groups then have some way of tagging
emails and integrating them into their knowledge systems as the group sees
fit. (I can wonder if there is some physical manufacturing analogy? Zoning
laws? Building codes? Product safety standards? Import regulations?) But
even then, these sorts of issues will still come up within any group that is
trying to maintain some tagging scheme (certainly local town boards argue
over, say, zoning variances). As Clay Shirky says, these issues are more
inherent to group dynamics than they are inherent to the software groups use.
Anyway, if Marc's posts are not well received by some here (or even many. or
most), I'm just suggesting we take a moment to reflect on what the bigger
picture social issue is in terms of group goals and group process, rather
than just single any one person out right now for stepping over some
boundary that might (or might not :-) be hazily defined. :-)
I've certainly skated close to the edge there myself.
--Paul Fernhout