I think you are right that you, and pretty much everyone involved in p2pfoundation have strove to accomplish “clearing paths and getting out of the way” in quite a few different ways. So, this blog post was not a critique of p2pfoundation, or the greater network of people associated with us. In fact, if someone asked me what p2pfoundation does, and what it is about, I might use the post I made above to describe in part what it does. We have created a commons, and we’re trying very hard to start the conversations among all of the fractured people focusing on little areas here and there.

This post above was really just a way for people to think about how to ground their ideas about social change. This was about just coming right out and saying what I think in http://communitywiki.org/PlainTalk

I think that this could also be a clue for how to think about attracting funds to p2pfoundation. We have a great formula for starting conversations among diverse people, and giving them some useful background/theory-building, some channels for discussion, debate, and a commons of knowledge that connects people. To branch out past theorists, activists, and leading thinkers (but still include them as an integral part) I think we can think about how basically extend this connecting and community-driven discussion, and also apply what we are learning about cooperation, collaboration, and p2p/collective intelligence towards helping people solve problems, with very little overhead cost, and extremely high value. Our whole network of diverse experts could be part of this extension of it’s own self. We are already a highly decentralized network of people, connected mostly through communication, and stigmergic collaboration. I am starting to see how some of us could also work together with people from the “world at large” to apply our expertise and help solve problems, help people understand how to succeed in cooperation, collaboration, community fostering, employment of collective intelligence and emerging alternative economy models.

There will be no “plan” to do this, so this is really an offer to see how we might all cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate in this way when possible. I have ideas, some of which come from agile development, extreme programming, and pattern theory, and some that come from all of our work in p2p foundation, for thinking about how we could start to create supporting infrastructure, and working through existing emerging channels, to create an evolving ecology of people who can help others apply the knowledge we are crafting and collecting. There is a desperate need out there for knowledge about how to help people work better together, and how to change/retrofit systems from the bottom-up from the outside in, to become more self-sustaining, and less of a liability for the people who depend on them.

So, in this message, what I am proposing is that over time, a new growth within p2pfoundation could be fostered towards application, problem solving, working with existing conditions, using the commons we have created as a basis/foundation.

“Does the notion of give them ready and free, unfettered space, time, tools, infrastructure mean those things must be available at absolutely ZERO cost, or will it be ok (as far as sustaining the ‘movement’) to charge enough for cost recovery?”

I have grown to have a lot of respect for your point of view Patrick, because I am convinced that it is genuine and that you are really trying to puzzle your way through how to get people to understand the perspective you bring, and insight and solutions you have discovered.

For your question above, I think to myself “what is it that people in question themselves might want?” If you offer them tools and infrastructure, what are they telling you they want? When you start asking this question, you often get different answers depending on the people you are talking to. The important thing is to start the conversation and let it be driven by the people who would be doing whatever it is you are trying to convince them to do.

Michel

Does the notion of give them ready and free, unfettered space, time, tools, infrastructure mean those things must be available at absolutely ZERO cost, or will it be ok (as far as sustaining the ‘movement’) to charge enough for cost recovery?

Raoul Victor at http://Oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04638.html says “Open raw material”, “universal availability”, “no exchange”, “commons and possession, not property” require free/gratis access to material means of production and consumption. “Voluntary free aggregation” and “free cooperation” require (if universalized) free/gratis access to material means of consumption.

If it is ok to charge ‘cost’, then is it also ok (as far as growing the ‘movement’) to charge more than cost during times of true rivalry? Or in other words, does profit have a meaningful place in P2P? If so, what is the purpose (goal, destination) of charging price above cost? Who should receive that surplus, or how should it be distributed?

Franz Nahrada at http://Oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04615.html says Do you think the world is truly better if price equals cost? I just can say for the moment: I dont.

I buy your proposition that those who want to change things are part of a “long tail” and that there may be many more of us 😉 than we tend to believe. Inherently, the long tail is fractured and one knows little or nothing of the other.

One group of people, for instance, who would definitely be part of this long tail are the about 700 or so members of the “Soil and Health” Yahoo group started by Steve Solomon who is American but now lives in Tasmania. They are all homesteaders who are into a non-traditional kind of agriculture, growing things on their own land for their own use – and sometimes for sale.

I like your imperative of “getting out of the way”. We must learn to do that.

This reminds me of the work by Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson on what they call “Cultural Creatives” – the 50 million Americans (quarter of the population when they wrote the book) who are progressive and left leaning but are unaware that there are more people out there like themselves because the mainstream media is owned and run by those don’t represent their interests.

You may want to take a look – http://www.culturalcreatives.org/

I think the Net is providing a great opportunity by delivering the tools required to network, communicate and share that are needed to form bottom-up, self-organising communities that can bypass the mainstream institutions, including the media.