A comment by Marcin, added to the explanation by Stan Rhodes on the Peer Trust Network proposal’s origins.

Marcin Jakubowski:

“The Peer Trust Network System is an integrated approach- based on sound critique of the existing state of affairs – aimed at providing an integrated solution to contemporary ills related to resources and their distribution. The model addresses issues, directly or indirectly, including: wars, poverty, hunger, quality of life, human evolution, and others. This model merits serious consideration by anyone interested in a better world by means of a bottom-up, peer-based approach.

One of the underlying issues involved with this model is the creation of a productive, well-stewarded commons. This means success at inviting people to place property into a novel and revolutionary usage and benefit model. This is perhaps the model’s greatest challenge or weakness. Stan provides a beautiful picture of what can happen, but does not propose a well-defined incentive for people to join. My contribution here is aimed at arriving at clear incentives for joining.

First I start with 2 points:

POINT 1.

People today use private capital to generate further capital, typically in ways that compromise our very life support systems, and that contribute to further wealth inequality. “Them that gots, gets.” This is an attractive proposition for the haves. It works today because the prevailing economic mechanisms reward greed. Yes, the selfish agent goes through much inconvenience in the name of hard business – perhaps bureaucracy, overregulation, excessive taxation, slave labor, banking swindles such as high interest, or the destruction of ecosystems, among others. These inconveniences are by no means liked by any sane individual. However, the financial reward makes these pains worth the effort. Forget about future generations and the general good. “Forget my college idealism, I have to make money” is a commoon situation.

POINT 2.

There is a number of idealistic individuals out there as well – such as you if you are reading this – who do see the possibilties. But a commons, as Stan suggests (and according to principles of organizational and ecological soundness) – should be created bioregionally. Thus, unless people come together from remote regions and put resources and property in to create a localized Peer Trust Network (PTN) – for example as an instance of an ‘intentional community’, this is not likely to happen. In general, it is not likely that propertied PTNs will be created to any replicable, mainstreamable degree.

Thus, a clear incentive must be created for people to pool property into a Propertytrust.

This incentive must have the following features:

* It must guarantee that wealth will be returned to the contributor, therefore, the peertrust must have a productive capacity

* It must generate at least as much productivity, provision of needs, or meaning to the contributor as the property would in private form

Property management is at least as easy for the contributor within the peertrust as it would be in private hands.

A diverse collection of participants may invest in a property trust. These people will put serious commitment into sharing resources only if significant productivity may be guaranteed. For reasons of organizational complexity and for reasons of absence of open, integrated, ecological business models – this is impossible. The solution is the creation of building blocks for integrated, replicable, productive infrastructures.

Such a productive infrastructure may consist of digital and flexible production Fab Labs fueled by open design. This way, an entire, robust economy may be created to provide the wealth generation required by prospective entrants into a property trust. I believe simply that without such robust, low-cost, replicable production capacity, it is too expensive or complicated to generate a productive economy necessary for inviting people into a commons.

This is merely a restatement of the goals of OSE open product development, but phrased within the context of propertytrust creation.

I think that the details of the contract are secondary. Before discussing details of the contract, or of peer financial networks, we need to create the substance, peer production, that provides the foundation for the contracts, finances, and legal arrangements. How do we align our communication and work on this?”