The Consumer Capital Cooperative Partnership (CCCP)

[Patrick Anderson]

Originally posted to http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/f4bbbef96b81d1df


For those of you interested in my ideas of Consumer Ownership,

Here is the FAQ that used to be hosted at
http://EcoComics.org/faq.html that probably best explains what I'm
trying to explain with regards to Consumer Ownership and treating
Profit as an investment from the Consumer who paid it:

Related terms or aliases: Communityism, Cooperatism, EcoComics,
Personal Sovereignty Foundation, General Public Lease, GNU's Not Usury
General Public Law, User Owner, User Owned, Consumer Owned, Capital
Club, Consumer Capital Cooperative Contract, and probably a few
others.

http://P2PFoundation.net/Category:User_Owned might also help explain,
though it is quite a mess right now, and contains part of an older
version of this FAQ.

I've written much more than this, but it may be more confusing than
clarifying. I will try to solidify and simplify the contract, then
post it here later.


----
Q: What is this all about?
A: Incorporation is the original and only valid purpose of government,
but consumers and citizens lose control over time because divisible
ownership in physical sources does not flow to those who pay prices or
taxes above the real costs of producing those objectives.


Q: So you are saying corporations should take over the government?
You're a bit late. They're already in control!
A: Well, we must make new corporations that treat any price above cost
as an investment from the user that paid it so every consumer becomes
part owner in the physical sources required for that production. Once
that is running, and once we have a currency backed by (issued
against) those physical sources, then allowing money to buy votes will
not be a problem, as it will simply be each owner exerting the weight
they acheived as measured by others in the community that were willing
to pay for the skills that person offered.


Q: What's the big deal about ownership?
A: Owners rule. Private property already insures privacy, but humans
also need public property to maximize their economic efficiency.
Representative government is one way to manage joint holdings, and
collective private ownership is another way. The advantage of
collective private ownership is the opportunity for the initial
investors to add any constraint as a "Term of Use" for that property
while retaining full control.


Q: Constraint? Are you saying freedom must be restricted?
A: It is power that must be bridled so that freedom and abundance can
grow through cooperation. Usury (misdirected profit) relies upon
artificial scarcity through power to concentrate larger individual
gains while retarding communal growth. This is the same pattern
described by the Nash Equilibrium and can be resolved through a
legally binding inter-owner trade agreement that insures each consumer
grows according to the amount they are willing to invest as measured
by the price above cost (profit) that they pay.


Q: The market has already chosen capitalism.
A: The same could be said of feudalism during that age. The future
will prove or disprove the point, but only if we can get booted. An
ecocomics simulation could also help verify or disprove the claim.


Q: What do you mean 'booted'?
A: There must be some initial investment in physical sources by those
who are willing to apply this contract.


Q: What claim is being made? That an owner can apply arbitrary
restrictions to their property?
A: The claim is that freedom is determined by access to sources and
that access is determined by ownership. Instead of condemning private
ownership, we show how it may be used to apply an agreement that
insures the plea for growth (a consumer's payment of price above cost
= what is usually called profit) is treated as an investment from that
very same user - so control remains in (flows to) the hands of the
users, even while their choices and membership are dynamic.


Q: Isn't scarcity an integral part of a vibrant economy?
A: Scarcity only increases profit, never wages nor product. Treating
profit as user investment removes that faulty incentive from owner
options while very likely increasing wage since the consumer already
pays wages + profit in normal capitalism, while this contract drives
profit toward zero as price meets cost.


Q: But who will invest without profit?
A: Citizens already invest in public utilities through taxes expecting
only product, never profit. Likewise, commercial product consumers
also expect (and receive) only product while paying those costs plus
the externality of usury.


Q: Why are you trying to protect the consumer instead of the worker?
A: We are all consumers.


Q: But how can you claim workers won't be exploited when they are not
the owners, and therefore have no control?
A: Those workers are also consumers of their own needs. We must
protect their ability to consume, but working is not a need in itself
- it is a hurdle to be eliminated on our road to leisure.


Q: Are you claiming unemployment is good?
A: When the owners of physical sources are the only consumers of those
objects there is never a concern about automating that production
because to do so only decreases the cost of production while eliminate
the drudgery of work. But when the owners are a random set of initial
investors seeking to keep profit as some sort of reward, the workers
become human resources to be exploited as though they were just
another input of production.


Q: We already have competition; there are no true monopolys.
A: It is true that monopoly is rarely perfect, but neither is
competition. Profit also measures monopoly, otherwise why would a
consumer ever pay more than cost?


Q: If profit is the problem, then why do non-profits not prevail?
A: The payment of profit is not a problem in itself, as it is simply
an inverse measure of development. The payment of profit should be
allowed; it is only the misapplication of that payment that keeps each
user from growing. The trouble is a general form of usury caused by
the misappropriation of profit by owners which then constructs the
inverted incentive of artificial scarcity. Non-profit corporations do
not solve this problem either because the profit is still not treated
as user investment, but is instead "turned into" wages or invested by
the current owners in whatever way they see fit as so-called
'representatives' of the users instead of control flowing to those
users as real ownership which would allow them to replace board
members that attempted to overpay themselves and also implements
direct democracy with vote weighted by holdings.


Q: May I charge money for Free Objects?
A: Yes, the GNU General Public Law is a "'commercial grade'" free (as
in freedom) trade agreement.


Q: How much may I charge?
A: There is no limit. Some sort of auction system might help maximize
resource utilization to keep object prices above cost only during high
demand.


Q: As an owner, how much of the price can I claim as costs (including
wages)?
A: There is no limit. Profit is separated from wages as the number of
owners per physical source increases. Workers are then hired by the
collecitve owners explicitly instead of the labor being 'assumed' by
some of the owners who may otherwise overpay themselves.


Q: Can I apply the GNU General Public Law to a physical source such as
a rototiller and then rent it to customers?
A: Yes, in this case the 'Object' becomes the ephemeral 'Objective' of
that User or the rivalrous slice of time as the duration of that rent.
Allowing users to bid against each other for time slots will maximize
profit (the winning user's investment).


Q: So if a car factory were under such a contract, anyone could just
wander in off the street and try to build their own automobile?
A: No, no. Shareholders will protect their investments from strangers
and/or vandals and normal wear as usual by requiring a rent floor be
paid - even if the renter is a part owner, and may also require such
things as tests or insurance to qualify. The restrictions each group
of owners impose over that particular physical source are arbitrary
and there is no limit, but the currency issued against those physical
sources will decrease as non-owning users assess those objects as
being not worth the claimed costs.


Q: Why are you doing this, why not just maximize you own profit?
A: Because if we don't stop these profiteering feudalists they will
eventually hire vassals to come take all of our resources for the
purpose of stopping our production. That is the ultimate problem with
allowing any form of usury: it finally creates war to destroy capital
for the purpose of further increasing usury.


Q: Why would owners tie their own hands in this way to forgo profit?
A: So the physical sources of production (such as land, water, plants,
animals, buildings, tools) that they need for production are available
to them without paying tribute to another. It is the price we pay for
freedom through cooperation.


Q: But isn't profit the prime motivator of human society?
A: Product is the only valid purpose of production. A portion of
price, interest and rent are initially meaningful and useful for
reclaiming the labor expended, resources lent or opportunity lost, but
these are almost always taken to far, and at the instant that an owner
is paid just because they won't let the users have "at cost" access to
the sources, they have begun 'earning' usury. Most humans only expect
to get paid for the work they do, but after they begin hiring
employees, and as their business grows, the owners usually find there
is much to be made (taken) by disallowing source access. We must
eliminate those externalizing actions before the beast destroys the
entire earth in the name of progress.