I have a little theory, and I don’t yet have aname for it. This theory is basically that solutions for yet-to-be human problems of existence tend to emerge among humans on smaller local scales prior to the widespread emergence of the problem(s) they will solve.

So, in the case of what we are talking about, we see that people on the fringe are already exploring these ideas, but it is not yet clear what widespread conditions will emerge, and when, to make them gain “critical mass” and ultimately reach a “tipping point”.

I can take a guess, and say that it will be a combination of basic global human systems (governance, economics, basic human sustainence) and ecosystem problems that will make it more and more apparent that current human systems are failing in certain ways. We can see right now for instance, the rising price of oil, and the extinction of more and more species, the breakdown in standards in global trade, potential diseases, water shortages, global warming, war, famine, etc. People who have been following this stuff for the past 50 years will not be surprised as each of these problems rears it’s head on a global scale, but many others who have not following will be surprised. People who anticipated these global scale breakdowns will already be working on potential plausible solutions, and the best of those will be implemented.

When will all of this happen? Futurist Colin Mason wrote the book “2030 spike” to basically project that all of the problems mentined above will come to a head at the same time then, if we don’t start doing something about them now. However, I beleive for some problems, right now, today, we are approaching the point where people can start to build the critical mass of networks of people with applicable solutions of the types we discuss here.

Is it possible to envision the actual CONSUMERS or USERS as the authors of the contract and also as the investors and therefore owners of the hardware and direct controllers of the community?

If you look at the most important social contract for ‘virtual’ materials (software, genetics, mechanical design, audio, video, text, etc.) – the GNU GPL, you see it is built for the purpose of protecting USER Freedom.

Consumers are sometimes willing to invest. They are certainly willing to pay (in various forms, including putting up with advertising).

We could write a contract and then start a new business that agreed to use that contract as a kind of operational constitution. The contract would distribute control by insuring every user gains real, divisible ownership in the corporation when paying price above cost (what is usually profit) by treating that profit as that consumer’s investment in corporate shares – so that governance never need be representative because the users would always be in collective control. The consumers would be investing for product, not profit.

This seems to solve many issues at once, since we wouldn’t need to worry about many of the details we currently fret over if the farm/factory/servers were simply OWNED by the consumers that use them, because they would always act in their own self interests, but maybe I’m missing something…

as an aside, I’d like to re-introduce the three-fold forms of the peer economy.

The sharing economy, centered on individual expression, creating weaker links amongst the individuals involved, and therefore needing third party platforms, which seem to be proprietary. The particular social contract is ‘let me share, and I allow you to sell my attention, so the platform is sustainable.

The commons economy, centered around producing common projects, strong enough to create their own platforms, but creating an ecology of businesses around the commons. The underlying social contract seems to be: it is okay to profit, but not to appropriate, and in return, we expect some kind of benefit sharing (NOT revenue-sharing!!), i.e. you companies are expected to sustain the commons from which you profit.

Finally, the crowdsourcing mode, I’m still thinking about that one.