The following questions were formulated by Mike Riddell in the comments field of another article.
I will respond, but feel free to come up with your own responses
BerkShares, the Berkshires region of Massachusetts’ local currency
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?”
RE #1:
I don’t believe a Commons should be defined as a marketplace at all. This doesn’t mean I’m against marketplaces its just that the Commons is better regarded as the landscape upon which a marketplace as well as other activities can take place.
For me hence things like transaction spaces and money creation both should NOT be narrowly held or controlled… and similarly form landscapes.
Leveling The Transaction Landscape: Technology and the Campfire
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2011/04/leveling-transaction-landscape.html
Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/decision-technologies-currencies-and.html
Mike you ask:
“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?”
I agree with Tom above, the commons is not a marketplace. It’s either a abundant digital commons that does not need an allocation mechanism and certainly not a market since there is no tension between supply and demand; or it is a physical commons needing reciprocity, but not market mechanisms as otherwise it would be a market and not a commons; but such a commons may need some kind of allocation mechanism and thus some kind of accounting.
A special case I think is the open value accounting system of Sensorica, which wants to measure and value commons contributions and indirectly link them to possible a posteriori market realization, through a social contract based on a fair return. In this case, commoners are still contributing to the commons without direct link to their labor as exchange value, but will get a return if the derivative activities bring in income. This is much to be preferred to a re-commodification of the commons.
Thank-you for the responses.
I too agree with Tom’s idea that the marketplace is one activity that takes place on the landscape of the commons.
Thanks for sharing the Sensorica platform. Accounting for different contributions by using one single metric is clearly required since measuring inputs is easier than measuring outputs. But what are the rules of the game? How are free-riders prevented from gaming the system and thus destroying trust and therefore value? Can it be scaled?
How does one achieve mass-participation in the P2P economy?
What are we expecting from consumers/citizens that are used to operating in a market economy.
Do we need a transition or hybrid economy to take us from the market economy into the P2P economy?
The Sensorica social contract is perfect for the internet, but what about the masses of unemployed resources that exist in the real world – people, spare capacity, empty buildings and so on.
Those resources (the value of which currently perishes if not employed) need to be ‘liquified’ then integrated into an open value network and matched with the needs of the network. That’s where a market mechanism can match together the community’s unmet needs – it’s simply a re-allocation of resources that are being wasted.
Am I barking up the wrong tree in my belief that markets can be better?
Sensorica is not meant for just online collaboration, it’s geared towards a open hardware platform. Tiberius B. should be able to explain you more details. See already http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Value_Network in http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:P2P_Accounting, the section which keeps track of similar projects. I may be wrong, but I believe that Sensorica’s system has a peer review aspect to avoid free-riding.
In general, you must know my own position: I believe in a simultaneous transformation of civil society through the commons, of the market, into a commons-friendly ethical economy which integrates externalities, and of the state into a partner state which commonifies public services and enables and empowers social production. But within the ethical enterpreneurial coalitions which gravitate around the commons, experiments with post-market dynamics can be attempted and grown. The idea is to give people freedom to choose the various dynamics, including those types of markets which do not destroy the biosphere and respect human justice.
Markets should not be identified with infinite capital accumulation, they pre-existed and will continue to exist after capitalism.
Moving to your second question:
<. “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? >
Personal information is just one of the value forms that will be important. But I believe it is unwise to store it all in one place. Personal information should be the property of the persons, which can create access rules both individually and collectively. It would make sense to create common pools, co-property of the persons that agree to it, which could create all kinds of collective benefits, including perhaps creating a return income. Imagine a nondominium a la Kleiner, that would gradually create a rent and/or basic income for its members.
My view is that
1. a commons isn’t primarily a market place, although some market functions can be connected with it. A commons is really a resource that isn’t enclosed and that is therefore accessible to all “commoners” or as we would today call them, “users”
2. If the value or, in this case, the information would all be stored in one place and be kept under lock and key, I believe it would no longer qualify as a commons. Whatever is the subject of a commons should be kept available for all users, whether they be persons, businesses or government, but use should be regulated, it should be subject to certain rules…
3. a market, in my view, can by definition not be a commons. Resources that are treated as a commons can be used in markets external to the commons, but this presumes that one or more of the user of the commons ALSO have some business activity serving a market. We should distinguish in this case between the resource that is used as a commons and the use of which is subject to rules of the commons, and the use that is made of a valuable once acquired by a user, to bring it to market. Let’s take the example of sheep grazing on common land. The grassland is part of the commons and the owner of the sheep is allowed to graze his sheep under certain conditions. But the sheep is the owner’s to do with as he wishes and he can either give away or sell the milk, the wool, the meat, and the lambs. He cannot, however cut the grass and sell it unless that is permitted by the rules of the commons.
4. It is argued that Bitcoin or a similar currency could be part of a commons as credit can be given for activities that benefit the commons. I do not think this is a valid argument at all. If the currency is an object of investment, it is part of a market, not part of a commons. Even granting credit “for improving the commons” is a business activity, a tit-for-tat. Either credit is available to all without conditions, or it isn’t. If not, it is part of a financial market, not part of a commons. If investors bring $$$ into the currency then that is part of a financial market as well. I would say it is a stretch of the imagination to call that a currency for the commons.
Mike in your question 4 “Bitcoin doesn’t solve any social problems” you imagine a whole new currency which not remotely like Bitcoin. the most important difference is that your currency is issued as needed – not according to some schedule, which very much affects how the value is perceived.
You might want to be careful about making units available for the wolves…
May I thank everyone for their responses – I absorb them with great interest.