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The crisis we are now living through is essentially a value crisis, where . . . exchange value no longer adequately reflects use value, or, to put it in less cryptic terms, there is a general sensation that a lot of the real values that circulate in our economy cannot be adequately represented. – Adam Arvidsson

* Obtaining Economic Advantage through Serving and Sharing

“The future of advantage is radically different from the past for a simple reason: because it’s economically better. 20th century advantage focuses firms on simply extracting resources from people, communities and society — and then protecting what they extract. 21st century advantage focuses firms on creating new resources, and allocating them better. The former is useful only to shareholders and managers — but the latter is useful to people, communities, and society. The old Microsoft was useful to shareholders, but a lot less useful to society — and that’s exactly how Google and Apple attacked it, and won.”

– Umair Haque

In this new world, if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead. And those companies which seek to prohibit the manipulation and circulation of their content will find themselves cut off from the mechanisms which generate value in this new media economy. – Henry Jenkins

* On the Need for Treating Natural and Knowledge Commons Differently

“By commonwealth, I mean the wealth that no one has made, or the wealth that practically everyone has made. So it’s either nature – nobody made it, we all inherited it – or knowledge – everybody contributed to making it, but everyone’s contribution is small in relation to the total and depends on the contributions of others. In managing the commonwealth of nature, our big problem is that we tend to treat the truly scarce as if it were non-scarce. The opposite problem arises with the commonwealth of knowledge, in which we tend to treat what is truly not scarce as if it were.”

– Herman Daly

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the situation is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. – John Maynard Keynes

* The disappearing legitimacy of capitalism

“You know, there really is not much of a justification of capitalism anymore. The system is supposed to improve the conditions of the poor, thus making inequalities acceptable. It is no longer the case. It is supposed to produce greater security. It is no longer the case. It is supposed to sustain democracy. It is no longer the case. All the classic positive justifications are gone. Moral arguments are all that is left: working is good, one has to pay one’s debts – and there is no other way. We have reached a point where these two arguments are leading to the system’s self-destruction. The ship is sinking because of an overload of work and debt.”

– David Graeber

An economic system that requires ‘demand’ to be stimulated is skewed to begin with. I d say, we should stimulate production to make sure it meets needs. – Frank Vanaerschot

* The new logic of post-growth economies

“The post peak-oil age will be based on organisational principles that correspond to the steady state phase of mature ecosystems. As Howard Odum has summed it up: – “During growth, emphasis is on competition, and large differences in economic and energetic welfare develop; competitive exclusion, instability, poverty, and unequal wealth are characteristic. During steady state, competition is controlled and eliminated, being replaced with regulatory systems, high division and diversity of labour, uniform energy distributions, little change, and growth only for replacement purposes. Love of stable-system quality replaces love of net gain. Religious ethics adopt something closer to that of those primitive peoples that were formerly dominant in zones of the world with cultures based on the steady energy flows from the sun. Socialistic ideals about distribution are more consistent with steady state than growth.” (Odum 1974) In preparation for this coming world situation it would be wise to evaluate how resilience was maintained in pre-industrial societies before their violent incorporation to the evolving euro-centric global order.”

– John Earls

Our First Curve economy is dominated by hierarchical organizations focused on managing costs. In the Second Curve economy, business models focus on creating networks and value webs.

* Bill McKibben on the Carbon Bubble

“The oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons — five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground. Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela). If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything — including fund an endless campaigns of lies — to avoid coming to terms with its reality.”

When costs of participation are low enough, any motivation may be sufficient to lead to a contribution.- Michael Feldstein

* Competing ‘on top’ of the Commons

“One of the best ways to stimulate competition, innovation and lower prices is for participants in a market to honor the commons (a shared pool of resources, a minimal set of safety or performance standards) and then to compete “on top” of the commons. Instead of being able to reap easy profits from monopoly control over something everyone needs — say, a computer operating system like Windows — a company must work harder to “add value” in more specialized ways.”

– David Bollier

Peer production is viable when: 1. capital costs (needed for production) fall far enough and 2. coordination costs fall far enough. Cheap computing and communication reduce both of these exponentially, so peer production becomes inevitable. – Anomalous Presumption

* The Sharing Economy should be distinguished from the Monetary Economy

“… the quest for self-determination and meaningful and memorable experiences ultimately will hinge on people’s understanding that they are not merely consuming a product, but that they are actually participating in a meaningful social process not guided by an extrinsic logic (profit), something that rather has intrinsic, or ‘sovereign’ value. I don’t believe that these two can be fused into one

– Eric Kluitenberg, iDC archive

Working together as equals. Profiting from each others success. These two ideas represent a surprisingly radical redefinition of work. – Bernie DeKoven

* Market Logic vs. Network Logic

“The philosophy that undergirds exchange also contrasts sharply across forms. In markets the standard strategy is to drive the hardest possible bargain in the immediate exchange. In networks, the preferred option is often one of creating indebtedness and reliance over the long haul. Each approach thus devalues the other: prosperous market traders would be viewed as petty and untrustworthy shysters in networks, while successful participants in networks who carried those practices into competitive markets would be viewed as foolish and naive… In a market context, it is clear to everyone concerned when a debt has been discharged, but such matters and not nearly as obvious in networks.”

– Walter Powell – “Niether Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization” 1990

We genuinely believe that radical sharing is a win-win for everyone. Expanding markets create new opportunities. – Tim Bray, Sun Microsystems

* From Profit-Maximization and Market-Orientation to Mission-Focused

Profit maximizing limits access to knowledge, by limiting it to paying customers. If anyone thinks this is just a side-effect of today’s market incentives, then we can put the situation differently: Profit maximizing doesn’t always limit access to knowledge, but is always ready to do so if it pays better. This proposition has a darker corollary: Profit maximizing doesn’t always favor untruth, but is always ready to do so if it would pay better. … Instead of hypnotically granting the primacy of markets in all sectors, as if there were no exceptions, we should remember that many organizations compromise profits or relinquish revenues in order to foster their missions, and that we all benefit from their dedication. Which institutions and sectors ought to do so, and how should we protect and support them to pursue their missions? Instead of smothering these questions for offending the religion of markets, we should open them for wider discussion.

– Peter Suber

The best people (to solve any given problem) don’t work for your organization. A corollary to this: if you don’t have the best people working for you, you will fail. Use transparency and the marketplace to find the best people located outside your organization. – John Robb

* Markets without Money

“Money is a very important and useful medium of exchange for high-value, tangible products. For small-value, intangible products, the costs tend to exceed the value of the transactions—especially when you add in the overhead associated with making payments at a distance. Fortunately, human beings are clever. We’ve begun to find a variety of substitutes for money that work better.”

– Tim Lee

Post-industrial modernization brings a fundamental shift in economic strategies, from maximizing material standards of living to maximizing well-being through life style changes. The “quality of experience” replaces the quantity of commodoties, as the prime criterion for making a good living – Alan Moore

* Monetization vs. Community value creation

“When you try and “monetize your users”, you accept the almost obscene assumption that people are meant to be pimped out, sold to the highest bidder, resources to be slashed, burned, and exploited. But that’s not how the edgeconomy works. Businesses need what connected consumers have to give more than connected consumers need what businesses have to sell.

Let’s put that a little more formally. Monetization is ugly because it blinds us to the truth that value must flow in many directions. That’s the essence of edge strategy, in fact.”

– Umair Haque

The Implicit Goal of Attention Economy is: to tightly intertwine everyone at the level of mind. But that involves individuals seeking, obtaining and/or paying attention. – Michael Goldhaber

* The New Social Capitalism

“Capitalism takes a narrow view of human nature, assuming that people are one dimensional beings concerned only with the pursuit of maximum profit. The concept of the free market, as generally understood, is based on this one- dimensional human being. Mainstream freemarket theory postulates that you are contributing to the society and the world in the best possible manner if you just concentrate on getting the most for yourself. […] The presence of our multi- dimensional personalities means that not every business should be bound to serve the single objective of profit maximization”

– Muhammad Yunus

The money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits. – Kevin Kelly

* Why Localization is Inevitable in a Resource-scarce World

“It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate change, the end of cheap oil, and policies to mitigate these two challenges. At first, the increase in freight costs will be bad news for developed and developing nations alike but, as adjustments in the patterns of trade occur, the result is likely to be decreased outsourcing with more manufacturing and food production jobs in North America and the European Union. The pattern of trade will change as increasing transportation costs outweigh traditional sources of comparative advantage, such as lower wages. The new geography of trade will not result from policy or treaties but from the impact of changing environmental conditions due to the growth of the human economy. … Many goods will be manufactured closer to where they are consumed, as supply chains become more regional and local.”

– Fred Curtis, David Ehrenfeld

The peer producers are their own consumers. They get a better product by tapping into the knowledge pool. And they get a product that exactly fits their needs because they help design it. – Eric Schonfeld

* Scaling Up From One Through Personal Fabrication Ecosystems

Scale up from one: Regular people and small manufacturing companies that lack investment capital will be able to set up low investment, “start small and scale up as it goes” businesses. Thanks to the low-cost Internet virtual storefronts, and the low cost of small-scale manufacturing for prototypes and custom goods, new companies can get started on a shoestring budget, yet sell their wares or services to niche, global marketplaces.

– Hod Lipson & Melba Kurman

Only 13% of consumers say they buy products because of their ads. Contrast that to 60% of small business owners in North America that say they use peer recommendations to make their buying decisions and over 70% of 18-35 year olds who report the same for their media purchases.” – Tara Hunt

* Replacing Modes of Production

“The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. … At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”

-Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy