last word of my previous reply should read: “to the commons”

dear Mike, I reposted your questions for the broader community to reply to, on February 3.

In the meantime, I start responding to the first question, and feel free to prompt me to continue the conversation.

You ask: “1. “A commons isn’t just a marketplace”. What other key functional components would you expect? A currency? An accounting system? A payments mechanism? A social network?”

But that is to my mind a wrong quesiton. A commons is NOT a marketplace. A commons is either a local scarce resource that doesn’t want to be a market, managed by the community a la Ostrom; or a abundant digital resource which by definition does not need and can’t have market dynamics. But a commons, a core abundant resources, can be linked to a market. For example, the Linux code commons can be linked to a market for services that build scarce value on top of the abundant commons. That marketplace may be a capitalist market (IBM, Red Hat), or could be a fair and ethical marketplace that is more structurally linked to the market.

Michel – as you know, with colleagues I am developing a software platform that I hope in the end will help protect and defend the commons.

So in the context of good OS design theory where i know you are hard to beat, i have some questions the answers of which will me improve what I’m working on.

By the way, if what I’m doing is a mad idea it’s a mad idea that’s funded which is important in the sense that it’s an idea whose time has come.

My questions:

1. “A commons isn’t just a marketplace”. What other key functional components would you expect? A currency? An accounting system? A payments mechanism? A social network?

2. “Contribution to the common pool”. You say an institution should be created to protect the value. I think that ‘value’ is personal information (and that this personal information is the new commons). Imagine if this information were stored “all in one place” and kept under lock and key by this institution acting on behalf of the community so that business and govt couldn’t get their hands on it without first paying for it, what constitution would this institution need to have in order to satisfy your requirements? Would a co-op model work?

3. “market exchange excludes people without market power”. Imagine for a moment that the system was designed to reward inclusiveness, so in other words the more users that were connected, sharing and trading the more valuable the system (and thus the community) became, and the healthier, wealthier and happier it’s users/inhabitants became. And if the only way to bring about such a utopian dream were via the markets, would that turn you against such a system? (You’ve got to remember here, I’m from Manchester – the home of Free Trade!!!)

4. “Bitcoin doesn’t solve any social problems”. Imagine if in your community, people agreed the terms upon which they would give each other credit and the terms of issuance were something along the lines of “you only get credit from us the community for activities that contribute to the common good”. Imagine if a network of connected community hubs had an unlimited supply of such credits, and were able to issue them to members of the community in exchange for a measured contribution to the common good. Imagine then that such credits could be stored somewhere safely before being exchanged in the community’s marketplace, then wouldn’t this flow of credit – this current – represent the community’s currency? And imagine that because this currency was very sustainable, very purposeful and very inclusive, that because of its ability to make the community a better place, demand to join the community increased and so its stock began to rise. Then because the stock was rising, speculators from New York City started buying the stock off individuals that were willing to exchange it for $$$$US. Wouldn’t it then be the case that the inflow of $US would increase demand for the community credit, thus producing demand for contribution to the community’s common good? And wouldn’t the suited and booted pin-striped swindlers be happy with the fact that (a) they’ve made a good $financial return for the time they’ve held the stock (b) demonstrated (because the credits are a unit of account) to their own stock-holders that rather than being sleazy speculators in it for a quick buck, they are in fact sustainable, purposeful, inclusive long-term investors that produce a social dividend that can be measured, and (c) the currency is an asset class all of its own – a ‘safe-haven’ that’s better than Switzerland becuase the community currency isn’t prone to inflation (it’s only ever earned into existence for contribution to the common good) nor deflation (the supply of the currency is only limited by the community’s willingness to earn more of it). So if you’ve imagined all that – have you not just imagined a social stock exchange where individuals can sell their credit to investors for real world $cash? In other words – A Bitcoin for Good?

Sorry if this is a bit long but i do appreciate your perspective on such issues and promise not to waste your time!

Thanks, Mike.