Beyond Disaster Capitalism — Jonny Gordon-Farleigh

“What if the expected responses during disasters either fail to occur or are only marginal? What if the temporary breakdown of social hierarchies allows for new ideas and systems to emerge? What if disasters resolve pre-existing conflicts? And what are the new political powers of this ‘community of sufferers’?”
The Blitz — Rebecca Solnit

“Some spread out to camp in forests, caves, and the countryside outside London. Many became so inured to falling bombs they chose to stay home and chance death for a good night’s sleep. Connelly says, “The people’s role in their own defense and destiny was downplayed in order to stress an old-fashioned division of leaders and led.”
Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change — Ashley Dawson

“Cities are not homogenous, though, they are sites of extreme class and race inequality — it’s always the most marginalised communities that are affected.”
ORDER HERE

Beside the Bombs: Building a New Life with Bare Hands
Jo Taylor

After the Angry Sea: Co-operatives Rebuilding After the Tsunami
Stirling Smith

EPIC Homes : Extraordinary People Impacting Community 
Nadhira Halim

The Mondragón Experience to the Preston Model
Julian Manley

Uneven Burns: California’s Climate-Fueled Wildfires
Robert Raymond

Book review: Crashed by Adam Tooze
Hanna Wheatley

The post Co-operating out of Crisis appeared first on P2P Foundation.

But can we really end scarcity?

We believe that the post-scarcity vision of the future is problematic because it reflects an understanding of technology and the economy that could worsen the problems it seeks to address. This is the bad news. Here’s why:

New technologies come to consumers as finished products that can be exchanged for money. What consumers often don’t understand is that the monetary exchange hides the fact that many of these technologies exist at the expense of other humans and local environments elsewhere in the global economy. The intuitive belief that technology can manifest from money alone, anthropologists tell us, is a culturally rooted notion which hides the fact that the scarcity experienced by some is linked to the abundance enjoyed only by a few.

Many people believe that issues of scarcity can be solved by using more efficient production methods. But this may overlook some of the unintended consequences of efficiency improvements. The Jevons Paradox, a key finding attributed to the 19^th century British economist Stanley Jevons, illustrates how efficiency improvements can lead to an absolute increase of consumption due to lower prices per unit and a subsequent increase in demand. For example, the invention of more efficient train engines allowed for cheaper transportation that catalyzed the industrial revolution. However, this did not reduce the rate of fossil fuel use; rather, it increased it.  When more efficient machines use less energy, they cost less, which often encourages us to use them more—resulting in a net increase in energy consumption.

Past experience tells us that super-efficient technologies typically encourage increased throughput of raw materials and energy, rather than reducing them. Data on the global use of energy and raw materials indicate that absolute efficiency has never occurred: both global energy use and global material use have increased threefold since the 1970s. Therefore, efficiency is better understood as a rearranging of resources expenditures, such that efficiency improvements in one end of the world economy increase resource expenditures in the other end.

The good news is that there are alternatives. The wide availability of networked computers has allowed new community-driven and open-source business models to emerge. For example, consider Wikipedia, a free and open encyclopedia that has displaced the Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Wikipedia is produced and maintained by a community of dispersed enthusiasts primarily driven by other motives than profit maximization.  Furthermore, in the realm of software, see the case of GNU/Linux on which the top 500 supercomputers and the majority of websites run, or the example of the Apache Web Server, the leading software in the web-server market. Wikipedia, Apache and GNU/Linux demonstrate how non-coercive cooperation around globally-shared resources (i.e. a commons) can produce artifacts as innovative, if not more, as those produced by industrial capitalism.

In the same way, the emergence of networked micro-factories are giving rise to new open-source business models in the realm of design and manufacturing. Such spaces can either be makerspaces, fab labs, or other co-working spaces, equipped with local manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing and CNC machines or traditional low-tech tools and crafts. Moreover, such spaces often offer collaborative environments where people can meet in person, socialize and co-create.

This is the context in which a new mode of production is emerging. This mode builds on the confluence of the digital commons of knowledge, software, and design with local manufacturing technologies.  It can be codified as “design global, manufacture local” following the logic that what is light (knowledge, design) becomes global, while what is heavy (machinery) is local, and ideally shared. Design global, manufacture local (DGML) demonstrates how a technology project can leverage the digital commons to engage the global community in its development, celebrating new forms of cooperation. Unlike large-scale industrial manufacturing, the DGML model emphasizes application that is small-scale, decentralized, resilient, and locally controlled. DGML could recognize the scarcities posed by finite resources and organize material activities accordingly. First, it minimizes the need to ship materials over long distances, because a considerable part of the manufacturing takes place locally. Local manufacturing also makes maintenance easier, and also encourages manufacturers to design products to last as long as possible. Last, DGML optimizes the sharing of knowledge and design as there are no patent costs to pay for.

There is already a rich tapestry of DGML initiatives happening in the global economy that do not need a unified physical basis because their members are located all over the world. For example, consider the L’Atelier Paysan  (France) and Farmhack (U.S.), communities that collaboratively build open-source agricultural machines for small-scale farming; or the Wikihouse project that democratizes the construction of sustainable, resource-light dwellings;  or the OpenBionics project that produces open source and low-cost designs for robotic and bionic devices; or the RepRap community that creates open-source designs for 3D printers that can be self-replicated.  Around these digital commons, new business opportunities are flourishing, while people engage in collaborative production driven by diverse motives.

So, what does this mean for the future of tomorrow’s businesses, the future of the global economy, and the future of the natural world?

First, it is important to acknowledge that within a single human being the “homo economicus”—the self-interested being programmed to maximize profits—will continue to co-exist with the “homo socialis”, a more altruistic being who loves to communicate, work for pleasure, and share. Our institutions are biased by design. They endorse certain behaviours over the others. In modern industrial capitalism, the foundation upon which our institutions have been established is that we are all homo economicus. Hence, for a “good” life, which is not always reflected in growth and other monetary indexes, we need to create institutions that would also harness and empower the homo socialis.

Second, the hidden social and environmental costs of technologies will have to be recognized. The so-called “digital society” is admittedly based on a material- and energy-intensive infrastructure. This is important to recognize so as not to further jeopardize the lives of current and future generations by unwittingly encouraging serious environmental instability and associated social problems.

Finally, a new network of interconnected commons-based businesses will continue to emerge, where sharing is not used to maximize profits, but to create new forms of businesses that would empower much more sharing, caring, and collaboration globally. As the global community becomes more aware of how their abundance is dependent on other human beings and the stability of environments, more and more will see commons-based businesses as the way of the future.

Vasilis Kostakis is a Senior Researcher at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, and he is affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

Andreas Roos is a PhD student in the interdisciplinary field of Human Ecology at Lund.

Originally published at HBR.org

Photo by longan drink

The post New Technologies Won’t Reduce Scarcity, but Here’s Something That Might appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Economic Man vs Humanity: a Puppet Rap Battle

An economist, a songwriter and a puppet designer walked into a recording studio.

What came out? An economics puppet rap battle, of course.

In a one-of-a-kind collaboration, puppet designer Emma Powell, musician Simon Panrucker, and renegade economist Kate Raworth have created a surreal musical puppet adventure to challenge the heart of outdated economic thinking.

Their 7-minute video stars puppets pitched in a rap battle with their economics professor. The project’s aim is to equip economics students and teachers with a playful but insightful critique of Rational Economic Man, the outdated depiction of humanity at the heart of mainstream economic thought.

A synopsis of the storyline:

Dissatisfied with the model of man presented in their economics lesson, three students visit their professor and embark on a rap battle to debate the very nature of humankind. While the professor argues that Economic Man – a rational, self-interested, money-driven being – serves the theory well, the students counter that a more nuanced portrait reflecting community, generosity and uncertainty is now essential. A musical puppet adventure challenging the heart of outdated economic thinking ensues.

Kate Raworth is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21^st century economist (Penguin Random House, 2017). ‘One of the most dangerous stories at the heart of 20th century economics is the depiction of humanity as rational economic man’ she says, ‘He stands alone, with money in his hand, ego in his heart, a calculator in his head and nature at his feet. In making this video, we wanted to make clear – as playfully as possible – that this absurd portrait is deeply out of date.’

The project was funded by the Network for Social Change and the video is being disseminated widely online. A full set of the lyrics is available for teachers and students who want to bring the details of the debate to life in the classroom.

Twitter: @KateRaworth    Facebook: facebook.com/doughnuteconomics    Website: www.kateraworth.com

The post Video of the day: Puppets take on Economic Man appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Elena Martínez Vicente is a product designer, specialized in designing better processes and more understandable products for humans. She was a designer with the P2PValue project and has extensive experience collaborating with commons, communities and P2P projects, including an ongoing collaboration with the P2P Foundation on our publications and the Commons Transition Primer.

Silvia and Elena are team members in  P2P Models, a research project examining the infrastructure, governance and economy of decentralized, democratic organizations, with a particular focus on value allocation and distribution.

We asked them to tell us about their experiences working in the commons, in academia,  and in the broader world.

Elena, Silvia, tell us a bit about your backgrounds, interests and how you came to be involved in the P2P Models project.

Elena: Since 2006, I have worked as an Interaction Designer in the private sector, also working for NGOs and cooperation projects in general, whenever I had a chance. From my days as a student, and intermittently, I have been in and out of activist groups, feminist and commons communities. It is not until 2016 that I could finally dedicate my entire time at work to “designing for the good ones”. Since then, I have been trying to translate difficult concepts for the common(s) people through infographics, post, illustrations and simple designs. I also try to bring some sanity to free software, since often in large projects, very good intentions are left on the wayside because it is “a pain in the ass” to use them as these projects do not give the right importance to design and user experience.

Silvia: Really, I was never in touch with these themes before, in fact, I think I always avoided using technology in general (I’m now more concerned about how important and powerful this kind of knowledge is). I was always very confused about what to study. I have a lot of diverse interests: dancing, carpentry, philosophy…and although now I find it positive, at that time I felt pressure to “find my speciality”. What I knew, was I liked to write and I was interested in social issues and this led me to Anthropology. Partly because of diverse life experiences, years later I started a master’s degree in Gender Studies and Development Cooperation in Madrid, which offered an internship in Colombia. This experience reinforced my liking for research. When I was back in Madrid, a friend told me about this job opportunity and I did not hesitate to try it.

Can you describe what P2P Models is about? Who else is on the team, and what stage is the project in right now?

Silvia: I am still understanding what this project is about…hahaha. I’m lucky enough to have some master classes with Samer, our principal investigator, to know more about the tech part. I have a much clearer image about the social side of the project. We want to better understand how the governance and the distribution of value work happens in the CBPP (Commons Based Peer Production Communities), in order to know how blockchain could be useful for them. Fortunately, we have a sociologist-computer scientist in our team, David Rozas, who can be the link between the social and the tech part. We are 7 people in total, with different backgrounds and education but with activism in common. Also, we have a lot of collaborators and advisors who help us. We are at the beginning of the project, still taking off, maybe in the most challenging stage or where we should take more important decisions.

Elena: P2PModels is a research project full of difficult tech concepts so it is a beautiful challenge for me. Basically, we can summarize it in a question: Could we advance to a Commons Transition with blockchain?

The project has three main branches to build decentralized, democratic and distributed organizations. We intend to collaborate with international communities to learn from them and to think about technologies that could help to improve the lives of the people who work in these communities.

The people involved are Samer Hassan, principal investigator, David Rozas and Silvia in the sociological part right now, Sem and Antonio as tech advisors and Geno, our word-translator for humans. And, we are hiring tech unicorns and project managers too.

What are some of the projects being studied?

Elena: Right now, we are centered in designing better processes within the team, building the basis as a group and rethinking our team culture. A very important (and invisible) task. In terms of productive work, we almost have the pilot communities, for the ethnographic research. Secondly we are working on the brand, the new website and the communication strategy. We are just a few people doing a lot of stuff!

Silvia: That is one of the important decisions we should take and we are still thinking about it. We have drawn up the criteria to choose which projects could be interesting to study, and it seems like in the next months we can start some provisional social research but as I said, this is also under construction! We are full of verve, and we want to take on a lot of case studies but we have to be aware of our capabilities, in terms of time etcetera.

Blockchain-enabled projects are meant to be about decentralizing power, but treat this in a technical way. How do you see this project addressing other issues about decentralizing power, taking into account gender, race, class…?

Silvia: Thank you for asking this question. We strongly believe that the decentralization of power is possible beyond the technical part. Because of that we are giving the same value to both the tech and social sides of the project. Personally­, I’m really focussed on bringing a gender perspective to the project, of course an intersectional one. We are going to put all our efforts into this in order to carry out gender-mainstreaming in the project, starting first within our team and our own culture. We believe strongly that “the personal technical is political”.

Elena: Decentralizing power is the foundation, in your own dynamics and in your relationships as a working group. And it is true, I can see a lot of white men people talking and talking about decentralizing power in both blockchain and the commons. What they do not ask about is their own race, class or gender privileges of being there, maybe they have some women people behind doing the invisible work? Are their personal relationships unequal? Great speeches, theories and papers are useless without considering this.

Communities involved in contributory accounting have different concepts of value and value tracking. Can we avoid the mindset that says that the only value worth tracking is exchange value?

Elena: We have to try it!! It is a partial way, inherited from capitalism and therefore a patriarchal way to see value. People contribute in different ways to the group. What about emotional value? I always work better with people who take care of me and who I love. I do not know if this type of value can be tracked, but we all know that it is there, we cannot ignore it and try to measure and track all the facts.

Silvia: Yes, I think we can. Feminist economy has been doing this, challenging the heterodox economy, for many years. It is a matter of having the will and developing a broader outlook. It is not easy, I have never worked before in tech and I am still struggling with how to apply my knowledge in this field. I assume it is going to be a very creative process.

What about invisible or affective work? Can these be tracked and measured?

Elena: Affective and invisible work is the base of all groups and society. I am not interested in measuring them, but maybe we could try to train in empathy, listening and learning a little more. In Spain, for example, assemblies, work meetings… are often held at 8 p.m. This is absolutely incompatible with the caring done outside of work, and nobody seems to mind. This makes people that have to care disappear from decision making and groups. In my opinion, it is a capitalist heritage that we need to rethink.

Silvia: I don’t know if it is a matter of measuring. The feminists working in development cooperation, for example, have done a really good job with time, using surveys or calculating the contributions of domestic and affective work to the GDP. On the other hand, I think a very important first step is to consolidate the idea of invisible and affective work as the base of life, and understanding how without it, there is nothing else. This kind of work must not be in the periphery, waiting to be measured or recognized; we have to put it in the center, as Amaia Pérez Orozco explains so well.

Although commons based peer production is an emancipating way of pooling our productive capacities, these communities are often dominated by male, white, economically privileged individuals. What is the role of “peer to peer” in confronting these disparities?  

Silvia: We cannot be so innocent in thinking that in “peer to peer” production there are no power relationships. These commons based initiatives have a lot of potential, challenging capitalism and exploring new ways to build economy, but of course they have to implement a lot of mechanisms to avoid reproducing patriarchy, racism, and other structures of domination. It is still necessary to make the struggle against knowledge- or power-inequality a priority in these communities.

Elena: P2P communities have made important advances in decentralizing power but, like Silvia said, we cannot think that everything is already done, because in most cases, we’re all white, first world people. We have to make an effort to introduce measures that help us to re-think and re-design real peer to peer values. I am not an expert, but I can still see, typically, a white, upper-class man doing free software or exchanging p2p value.

Silvia, how does your background in feminism and anthropology fit into the project? How do these affect Commons and P2P practices, in academia and “in the real world”?

Silvia: Well, the entire group has expressed from the beginning how important the social branch of the project was for them. They have helped me to overcome this “imposter syndrome” I had (I know the theory, however, I am still in the empowerment process…). Well, I think a new person on a team always enriches it. Because of my background, maybe I can give some different perspectives to achieve this non-techno-determinism view that the project wants to maintain. This maybe goes more for the academic part. On the other hand, I think my inexperience in tech makes me a good translator and mediator with the “real world”.

Elena, you have done design work on a number of P2P-related projects. Are there specific challenges you try to address in communicating this field? How can ideas like P2P and the Commons be represented visually, and especially to non-academics?

Elena: I am always thinking that we should be capable of talking about commons with the mainstream, and one way to make this possible is with design and communication.

Academic people have the ability to make a simple concept complicated. In this way, we need journalists and designers who translate these complicated minds, papers and concepts to the people. People can easily understand the value of urban gardens in their neighborhood, or the way energy cooperatives are an advantage for the environment and your pocket, but books or essays about p2p communities are very complicated and full of difficult concepts. In that sense, the Commons Transition Primer we did last year is an excellent advance. In the last few years, feminism has done this with excellent results, so, we should try, shouldn’t we?

We talk about a Commons Transition. Do the two of you see this taking place? If so, how?

Silvia: Well, to be fair, I would not say that this would be a transition, but a return to the past. Women have being doing Commons and alternative initiatives for centuries, the novelty now is the inclusion of some technologies like blockchain. I do not dare to make predictions… Deep down, what I would like is that this happens in a coherent way with the bases of the Commons, that is with equity, solidarity and an awareness of interdependence.

Elena: Step by step, I can see little advances in people’s mentalities, or in local politics. For example, recently the Madrid council has received a UN Public Service prize for a collaborative free software platform called Decide Madrid. It is an excellent sign and means that our work and efforts working in the commons are important and can provoke social change.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Silvia: I would like to give special thanks to my colleague Elena. From the beginning I’ve felt her sorority, and it is really a pleasure to share my workspace with such an experienced person and woman. It is great to have her support and knowledge in this uncertain and masculinized sector.

Elena:

 Elena Martínez Vicente studied Fine Arts in the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, where she spent her final two years enjoying a grant in Venice, Italy.

Silvia Díaz Molina studied Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. After two years living in Vienna (Austria), participating in different volunteer work and activism, she joined the Gender Studies and Development Cooperation Master’s Degree at the Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales, because of which she had the opportunity to do an internship in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), where she wrote her thesis about “Afro-descendant women from the Colombian Caribbean, sexual violence and the construction of memories about the armed conflict”. In April 2018, she became part of the P2PModels project as a researcher, developing the social side of the project.

Lead image by Gaelx, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0; text image by Janita Top, Unsplash

The post Elena Martinez and Silvia Díaz of P2P Models on Blockchain, Feminism and Affective P2P appeared first on P2P Foundation.

She oversees all of the program’s scaling initiatives, and has been supporting Up & Go’s development, its overall strategy and cooperative member engagement. In this interview we talk about the Up&Go platform, the history, the challenges and their ambitions.

“What the cooperatives are doing on Up and Go is they’re sharing best practices, they’re learning from each other, they’re creating a space where they can see each other as professionals, and learn from each other…things like, the best recipes for organic soap, or, how to clean this one thing that is so complicated. They’re creating policies and standards, developing policies that are innovative. For the first time, cooperatives developed a cancellation policy that was able to be enforced via Up and Go, and everyone thought that was a great idea. So I think there’s more potential for collaboration and improvements of each others’ systems when they come together an operate under one umbrella. There’s also challenges, of course, right? But I think there’s more beauty in the collaboration than in the competition that we could see.” Maru Bautista, Up and Go.

Martijn Arets is an international platform expert, entrepreneur, and part-time researcher at Utrecht University. The last six years he explored the platform economy by doing over 400 interviews in 13 countries, addressing the drawbacks which need to be resolved in order to reach the platform economy’s full potential and establish a sustainable model. At the Utrecht University, he is doing research on chances and obstacles of platform cooperatives and on platform society: new chances for inclusiveness through platforms. Martijn shares his insights, analyses, and thoughts through articles, videos, and books, as well as through presentations at (international) congresses.

Maru Bautista is the Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, New York. For the past 5 years, she has worked with her team and the Sunset Park community to strengthen immigrant-led worker cooperatives in New York City. She oversees all of the program’s scaling initiatives, and has been supporting Up & Go’s development, its overall strategy and cooperative member engagement. She is chair of the Board of the Democracy at Work Institute and a board member of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. She has a M.A. in International Development from the New School in NYC. When not at work, she is in a park or a playground with her two year old daughter.

For more information, visit: Up and Go

Reposted from Youtube

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In Part III, we would like to delve more deeply. We believe that the diversity of the commons, which may appear confusing at first, can be seen as embodiments of other ways of being and a deeper set of ontological principles. This is precisely what the authors of Part III try to show us in different contexts. In the opening chapters, Étienne LeRoy realizes, after studying land use and property rights systems in Africa for thirty years, that he was in fact studying the commons; the tensions between formal legality and social functionality and legitimacy are illuminating.

Andrea Nightingale then provides a fascinating ethnographic account of how people on the coast of Scotland become and live as fishers through commons. What are the subjective experiences and cultural dimensions of this identity? Anne Salmond in her essay describes the relationships between some indigenous Maori communities, their fishery practices, and the ocean – and how their commoning has come into conflict with the politics and law of the New Zealand state. The other authors of Part III also draw on an anthropological perspective. They focus on commoning as a process of subjectification, outlining the factors, conditions, and ways of thinking that affect our actions as commoners – that is, the kinds of people that we are constantly becoming.

Bringing into focus this constant process of becoming is important. It helps emphasize our innate propensity to cooperate with each other and to seek stable social arrangements. As human beings, we are embedded in many and diverse relationships, and we depend on them. They forge our subjectivities. If the processes we are involved in are primarily mediated by money and can be easily measured and calculated, then we become traders or transactionists. We experience ourselves as customers or producers and come to build an identity and culture around those practices. We constantly deliver things, or things are delivered to us, and we become suppliers or recipients of services – often switching roles several times a day. Pressed into using market-oriented infrastructures and social habits, we practice the role of homo economicus daily, like actors rehearsing their roles or musicians practicing their parts, often driven by institutional priorities, political considerations, media spectacles, and the artistically contrived illusions of advertising.

If the stories of Part II have any lessons, it is that we must practice commoning; after all, it is only commoning itself that makes us commoners. And this “practice” cannot be achieved once and for all; it must be re-enacted time and again, and become a living, pulsating element of social life and culture.

In describing the attitudes, customs and actions of the people who manage common resources, solve problems, and defend their collective rights together – as Nigel Gibson does for the shack dwellers in South Africa – the authors of Part III help us more fully understand a point made in Intermezzo I – that (mature) commons point toward some very different ways of knowing, seeing, being and acting. All this requires a certain amount of perseverance because commoning is a process of constantly trying things out and putting them into practice. It requires the opportunity to make mistakes, to scrap ideas, to consult with others, and to start over, time and again. Commoning needs time and support – not least, and especially, from the realm of politics. It requires protected spaces for experimenting, for developing a sense of independence and confidence, and for acknowledging skepticism and resistance.

Furthermore, people must have psychic room and time for processing (both intellectually and emotionally) what is happening in a particular circumstance so that something different can emerge from the interpersonal relationships and the specific relationships between human beings and nature (or other resources). People must have space to make sense of their problems and circumstances, and be able to experiment in finding solutions, without the coercive threat of enclosure. This is an important political challenge: to retain open spaces for commoning. Simply having such spaces free from the threat of market enclosure – whether an open Internet, legally recognized forest commons or protection for lifeforms as shared wealth, not patented commodities – is an important political challenge. Some things must be kept as “nobody’s (private) property” – but many people’s responsibility. Eventually, this struggle, if it succeeds in creating a new and stable commons, produces its own treasured world of feelings that are experienced by its creators as entirely natural and self-evident.

This perspective on the commons requires that we adopt a different intellectual approach and methodology than one that focuses on inventing or changing laws in existing institutional structures to achieve healthier forests, cleaner bodies of water, more stable fish stocks, and so on. This very idea presumes that experts armed with sufficient authority and resources can generate, through a complex calculus, the results they wish. The struggle for a free, fair and sustainable future must always begin with the question of how we wish to live together, and how this communal life is to be designed so that nobody feels taken advantage of. This implies always asking: Who is affected? Who is responsible? Who can shape things, and for what reasons? Who can say no? Who can support or obstruct things, and why? Such questions inevitably lead to larger questions about the whole economic and social system.

Thinking like this and taking this approach moves us away from linear concepts of development. It cultivates a more helpful set of “pluriversal perspectives,” in the words of Arturo Escobar – the theme of his essay. This idea helps reveal that many struggles to defend territories and resources managed as commons are, in fact, ontological debates. Political and policy debates often dismiss the other’s worldview as “irrational” when the actual conflicts are fundamentally directed against the worldviews engendered by commoning.

Because each commons is forged by unique forces and circumstances, it is perilous to overgeneralize about commons by claiming a faux taxonomy of institutions, products or results. There are too many floating variables. Evolutionary scientist David Sloan Wilson, who vividly describes his collaboration with Elinor Ostrom in the final years of her life, refers to the many contingencies at play in the functioning of commons, something that receives support from institutional economics, complexity theory and evolutionary biology. Biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber takes this idea one step further at the end of this volume when he writes about reality itself as a commons that is a dynamic matrix of relationships that are alive. “Creative aliveness” is a fundamental dimension of commons, he writes: “Therein slumbers the opportunity to arrive at a new, relational understanding of the world, which encompasses not only structures, algorithms, and causalities, but also the actions and feelings of the actors, and that is thus no longer a dualism.”

Seen in this light, the commons opens up new opportunities for pursuing genuine freedom to shape one’s own sense of being, identity and purpose in the present moment. Unlike the asocial, individualist fantasies celebrated by market culture, a serious commitment to freedom requires enduring human relationships, a commitment to nature and place, and concrete social actions developed together. Any real emancipation in the future will depend upon the creative energies and innovations that flow from such freedom.

Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.

Photo by Bring Back Words

The post Patterns of Commoning: The Internal Dimensions of the External World: On Commons and Commoning appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“Faced with a systemic crisis of the mainstream economy, there is an abundance of initiatives, but a systemic crisis can only be solved by equally systemic alternatives. How to fit them together in a fundamental transformative change, and which elements need to be combined to obtain vital synergies – this is the crucial aspect addressed in this important book.” » Michel Bauwens – Expert in Peer to Peer and Commons economy and Founder of The P2P Foundation

Emmanuel Mossay, the co-author of Shifting Economy, has written the following introductory text specially for the P2PF blog. It is followed by the book’s Preface, written by Mark Eyskens. You can download the book in PDF through this link: Shifting Economy

What is Shifting Economy?

Shifting Economy is a road book to start a new business, or redesign existing business, with the nature & human beings at the heart of the business models.

You will discover an alternative ocean to the blue and the red one. The green ocean is based on the cooperation.

Follow the 20 models & methodologies to become a “commoner”. These tools will show you some ways to:

• understand the cultural shifts of the new economy
• link macro future trends with your projects
• draw the sustainability journey for your organization
• define new business models
• build agile alliances with citizens, public and private stakeholders with 7 levels of shared values co-creation
• get ready for the arrival of AI and robots
• fine-tune the “speed” of your actions according to the complexity of your company
• learn how become bilingual old/new economy
• discover the growing industries
• find the money to convert expenses into sustainable investments

Please download, use, share, comment Shifting Economy.

Preface, by Mark Eyskens

Homo sapiens is now evolving into post economy. The New Economy must manage scarcity and affluence, a dual problem that is not integrated into the main classical economic theories. There will be an important shock between opulence, described by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society, and scarcity on planet Earth. The only planet we have. There is no planet B.

The West grew strongly particularly at the beginning of industrialization, thanks to dualism, an old paradigm stemming from Plato. This logic of contradictions, was very useful because it forced the Westerners to make choices between “either/or”, between alternatives, between right or wrong in order to progress and to act. The steam engine is a good example, invented three centuries earlier in China as a piece of entertainment, but installed only in the eighteenth century at the heart of the industry in Europe by Westerners. Platonic dualism is at the core of creativity but was and still is at the origin of many conflicts and even wars which ranked the 20th century as the bloodiest of the human history.

Asian wisdom however teaches us another different basic paradigm: the Yin and Yang principle: the complementarity of dual oppositions which merge into a synthesis. In Chinese writing moreover, there is a single ideogram for the words « crisis » and « opportunity ».

This concept matches perfectly with the discovery of quantum physics that light is both a wave and a beam of particles, the photons. Niels Bohr, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, summarized this insight by the Latin phrase “Contraria complementa sunt”, replacing the old “either/or” logic by the revolutionary “and/and” principle, that frees the way to cooperative solutions.

This awareness is progressively rising in Western thinking and will have far reaching consequences. It will lead us to a new holistic approach, exploring the hidden energies of diversity, divergence, oppositions and promoting synthesis and all kinds of creative compromises, in a world of interdependence, where national governments are too small for the big problems and too big for the small ones. Economic praxis has already adopted what is coined as: « Coopetition », when competition and cooperation are no longer exclusive along Darwinian principles but complementary, even inclusive according to quantum mechanical rules.

The rising of this inclusive, global approach is a challenge for political and economic leaders facing local populism emerging from fears and misunderstanding of what is going on in the global world of today and the world village of tomorrow. The nationalistic definition of “people” has become obsolete. The “people” has become a “population” with multicultural features in most countries. Nationalism and populism are perfectly understandable but they have become counterproductive because no longer future oriented. Protectionism is the economic and cultural translation of nationalism. To a certain extent protectionism existed already before economics and politics, even before human beings: the first membranes protecting living cells, stressed in our bodies. This selfish vitalism is still attractive but suicidal in a changed world as soon as ego nationalists propose to build walls instead of bridges.

In times of growing complexity democracy is caught between web and spider. Some citizens are saying “We have a vote, but we do not have a voice”. This is a serious warning addressed to politicians. Societal problems are extremely complex and the decision making process is most opaque. Governments, authorities “they” decide, they rule, they legislate, they impose…

There is a far reaching “they-ification” of politics, which makes governing impersonal, abstract and looking like a non figurative painting. We need to reinvent democracy by introducing elements of participative decision making, by informing and explaining and replacing demagogues by pedagogues. Most important is to modify the democratic voting systems. One model could be the promoting of «point voting», an electoral system by which each voter would get a plural number of votes, for instance ten votes, which he could freely cast and spread over different parties and candidates according to the intensity of his preferences. This would lead to a fine tuning of the voters choices. Also at the micro-economic level of enterprises and companies democratic cooperation between all stakeholders, transcending their exclusive interests, is at stake in the post economic era. Still more Herculean is the task of organizing steadily ways and means of international, possibly worldwide economic and political government.

On a much larger scale the European institutions also suffer of several functional problems and have to cope with great challenges. A European Fiscal Community should be created according to the principle “no representation without taxation.” Today the EU Parliament has no taxation power, so it is difficult to implement new strategies and new legislation. We need also to simplify and clarify the taxation systems. Budgetary expenses with respect to defence, security, energy, development policy, integration of immigrants, research, digital communication… should be Europeanized. A strong European public budget is needed. The EU Institutions budget equals 1% versus 27% in the USA for the federal expenses.

The Euro-zone, in order to cope with distortions of competition among member states, has to impose severe measures of austerity implying the reduction of public spending, of wages, of all kinds of allowances. The management of exchange rates by individual countries is no longer possible inside a monetary zone. Austerity measures being considered as an “internal devaluation” make the European Union unpopular and may lead to economic deflation. Only an efficient budgetary policy conducted by the EU could stabilize the Euro-zone.

Europe should unite in front of the ongoing scientific and technological revolutions.

History of mankind has indeed been steered by discoveries and scientific innovations, starting with the discovery of fire, 300.000 year ago.

Today scientific inventions are overwhelming in all domains. The acronym B.I.N.C. is useful in summarizing the ongoing scientific revolutions:

• Biogenetics, fabulous progress of medicine, average life span of 100, 150, 200 years??
• Information technology (computer apps, AI, virtual reality and physical robots, 3-D printing). Emergence of the “robo sapiens”.
• Nanotechnology. Tomorrow, we will be able to speak to every citizen on earth in our own language, and understand all the worlds’ languages thanks to nano computers (wireless or implanted in our own body).
• Cognitive science, human brain research and manipulation. The socio-economic consequences of the tsunami of scientific and technological innovations will be overwhelming and dramatic for the world community and the members of mankind.

Digitalization and robotization will considerably reduce working time, wage earners will be replaced by independent employees, the existence of world markets will go hand in hand with home work, multinationals will compete but also cooperate in lot of domains, intellectual property will no longer be protected, interconnectivity will eliminate all kind of intermediaries on the markets, e-commerce will take over from shopping. AIRBNB, Uberisation, circular economy, pooling, personal manufacturing, on line open courses, worldwide universities will spread, cash payments will disappear.

The development of solar and nuclear fusion energy will completely change the worldwide economic and political power balance. Wealth will be transformed in welfare and the pursuit of happiness will become a societal goal. A post-economic era would emerge

Nevertheless a lot of shadows of progress will have to be dealt with: demography, aging, climate, food scarcity, AMR (antimicrobial resistance), weapons of mass destruction, the difficulty to transform multiculturality in interculturality …

It goes without saying that the ongoing tsunami of scientific and technological innovations will revolutionize the world community for better and for worse. As a consequence the ultimate question will be and is already the question of ethics. How to transform all these changes into human progress? How should we manage ethics in politics, in economy, in business? And what’s the “right ethic”? Who is deciding on those values? Which are the rules applicable for everyone? Do we stick and apply to the lowest common denominator?

Buddha, Jesus Christ, Kant and other moral leaders said: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself”. But is this rule sufficient to improve human life on earth?

The guideline of SHIFTING ECONOMY is the quest of purpose in economy, the quest of ethics in business – with tools that can be used on the field. It is also an invitation to all decision-makers to imagine and implement new dreams to connect human beings, and transform the grief of the planetary village into human happiness.

Mark Eyskens
Professor Emeritus Economics and former Prime Minister of Belgium

Download Shifting Economy

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One of the best ways to express our underlying philosophy is here very well expressed by John Ringland, who, using complexity theory insights, distinguishes ‘generative cooperative networks’ from ‘generative adversarial networks’.

We recommend reading the following text carefully, for an understanding of these dynamics.

From GAN’s, via GHN’s, to GCN’s?

John Ringland: It is no accident that as a civilisation the sophistication of our adversarial capacities far exceeds the sophistication of our cooperative capacities. Our historical path and current situation have made it this way, but the balance is changing.

There are two main generative processes underlying biological and cultural evolution and more broadly the evolution of any population of interacting adaptive agents.

A GAN (generative adversarial network) generates more sophisticated means of coercing and exploiting each other; based on the capacity to control. E.g. a nationalist arms race generating advanced military-industrial-media complexes, and all that comes with these.

A GCN (generative cooperative network) generates more sophisticated means of understanding and supporting each other; based on the capacity to nurture. E.g. a peaceful society generating harmonious networks of unified groups aligned around common needs and goals, and all that comes with these.

• GAN → power over, held together by competitive interactions.
• GCN → power with, held together by common needs and goals.

Real world systems are a complex mixture of these two principles. For instance, in a forest each multi-cellular organism is a highly refined GCN comprised of trillions of cells. Advanced organisms also live in complex family or social groups which are also GCNs but less tightly integrated. There may also be weak inter-species cooperative networks. Aside from these, all organisms and species are engaged in a competition to satisfy their basic needs; resulting in a wider context GAN within which the many GCNs are embedded.

Throughout biological evolution the primary integrating principle was GCNs. It was cooperative networks that gave rise to higher levels of organisation, eventually resulting in tightly integrated collectives such as multi-cellular organisms.

However in a human cultural context a new integrative principle has emerged, which is primarily GAN with a veneer of GCN. I will call these GHNs (generative hierarchical networks). These were famously described by Machiavelli but had been evolving for aeons before him. This principle creates organisations based on internal competition rather than cooperation. It is a structure formed from interlocking fear and distrust, leading to coerced conformity to ‘authority’. There need be no shared goal, in fact the collective may act against the interests of most of its members because lower levels of the hierarchy are controlled by the upper levels.

Much of the human world is a complex tapestry of GHNs, such as empires, monarchies, governments, armies, bureaucracies, corporations, etc. A GHN is a GAN based organising principle, through which we have organised into a GAN dominated world, wracked with conflict and strife. A GHN can induce conformity but it has side effects, such as breaking social solidarity, weakening the ability to align around common goals and thereby destroying our capacity to engage cooperatively.

The phenomenon we call ‘capitalism’ is a decentralised GHN, pitting everyone against everyone in a competitive struggle for survival. Most people spend most of their lives engaged in adversarial interactions and this has become the norm, thus GCNs such as local communities and families steadily weaken and decay in such a climate.

Most of our language (and culture as a whole) is a product of adversarial competition. The field of NVC (Non violent communication) sheds light on just how adversarial our language and communication styles are. In NVC this is referred to as speaking ‘jackal’. This is the language of a culture that has evolved via primarily GAN processes. It is a language of judgement, projection, denial of the other’s perspective, imposing one’s own perspective, coercion, deception, manipulation, etc. It is a language born from power struggle.

In a GAN any predictable behaviour will be used against you. Your virtues if you are known to be virtuousness. Your deviousness if you are known to be devious. Your lust if you are known to be lustful. Your trauma coping strategies if you are known to be traumatised. In particular, what is most predicable is basic needs and the various strategies we use to meet these needs. These get ‘gamed’ the most.

In a GAN based society, one generation’s model citizen is the next generation’s tool. If a society encourages patriotism, this becomes a point of leverage to drive populations into war. If a society encourages hard work, these hard workers become more and more enslaved. If a society encourages trust and faith, these become gullible fools for all kinds of deceptions. Etc. With each experience of exploitation we adapt our behaviour to protect ourselves, but soon this too becomes predictable and is used as a point of leverage to control us.

Due to this arms-race-effect within GAN’s, our interactions have become far removed from the level of basic needs and what it takes to meet these. Hence most people in this world strive endlessly and yet remain deeply unsatisfied. Satisfying basic needs becomes the hardest of all for many: on the physical level this results in mass starvation amidst plenty of food, on the social level in mass alienation in a crowded world, and on the psychological level in mass despair amidst so much potential hope.

A GAN based culture arises from an arms race of tactics for exploitation and control. The more sophisticated such a culture becomes the more exploitative and controlling it becomes, and the more casualties there are.

Thus a GAN culture sows the seeds of its own demise:

1. The oppressive situation breaks the solidarity that legitimises the power structure, leading to fracturing and polarisation of the collective.A GCN based culture arises from a cooperative sharing of tactics for understanding and supporting each other.
2. The more sophisticated such a culture becomes the more understanding and supportive it becomes, and the more beneficiaries there are.
3. Thus a GCN culture sows the seeds of its own thriving.
4. The nurturing situation strengthens the solidarity that legitimises the relational structure, leading to unification and alignment within the collective.

An extremely overbalanced GCN can also sow the seeds of its own demise, by losing the capacity to engage effectively in adversarial situations (which will inevitably arise). For example, a tribe becoming so peaceful they forget how to fight, and are soon attacked and destroyed by another tribe.

A dynamic balance of GCN and GAN is required. For instance, in a rational discussion, i.e. a collaborative working towards ‘truth’ (and many other situations):

• GANs put things to the test.
• GCNs give things what they need to exist.
• Too much GAN and we end up with a rigid dogmatic structure, where alternatives are stamped out.
• Too much GCN and we end up with a profusion of incoherent structures, where energy is wasted exploring every conceivable alternative no matter how improbable.

Shifting from GAN to GCN turns conflict into creative tension, and power-over into power-with.

The old world has been primarily a GAN, but there is the potential that the new world may be primarily a GCN. This shift from GAN to GCN may be a useful way of understanding the approaching transition. The process of navigating and traversing the transition phase is Uplift. Uplift raises us out of the GAN we are in and into a higher order GCN.

The central question is: how can we enable and encourage the formation of GCNs within the existing GAN? How could these bubbles form, grow, merge and eventually shift the whole civilisation towards a more cooperative generative process.

Another important question is: what is it that GANs create in abundance, which can be used as a resource to enable future GCNs? They create disillusioned, alienated, frustrated individuals who know there is something wrong with the world but feel powerless to do anything about it; creating a dire lack of meaning, belonging, trust, hope, etc. This is a growing motivation for change.” (email, January 2018)

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The post What the P2P Foundation is about: shifting from Generative Adversarial Networks to Generative Cooperative Networks appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This article seeks to respond to an important issue that arises a lot in the conversations and spaces in which I participate. Moreover, I think it is timely and important in relation to the divisiveness made apparent by the recent election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

There is a general usage in our language (which doesn’t necessarily indicate a cognitive consensus) that cooperation and competition are opposites or mutually exclusive. More importantly, there is a conviction that competition and cooperation are somehow ontologically “real,” which is to say that they exist, i.e. that they are a property of the system being observed, rather than a property of the observer.

An alternative viewpoint, however, and one that I find crucial, is that the presence of cooperation or competition is in the eye of the beholder.

We will look at three examples:

1. Predator/Prey interactions
2. Sports
3. The Nation-State system

Predator/Prey

An example from complex systems is illustrative. Take an ecology of predators and prey with complex systems dynamics between, say, wolves, sheep, and grass. There are several competitions happening here.

• sheep compete for grass
• wolves compete to eat sheep
• sheep compete to not be eaten by wolves
• grass competes to not be eaten by sheep

However, out of this complex system we get Lotka-Volterra cycles of the rise and fall of populations. An increase in grass can feed an increase in sheep which, in turn, can feed an increase in wolves. An increase in wolves results in less sheep, which takes pressure off of the grass, but subsequently puts more pressure on the wolf population as food becomes scarce. Populations rise and fall over time, a dance across time. These dynamics have been extended to any system containing resources and consumers of those resources, such as economics. The parts of a systems are always cooperating to maintain the system as a whole in the midst of larger systems and dynamics.

Sports

Another useful example is the dynamic between sports teams in competitive sports. Certainly we are all familiar with the arena in which one sports team competes against another in a match where there is only one winner and one loser. Beneath the surface however there are other complex dynamics occurring.

The resources for both teams are not infinite: financial resources, time, attention, etc. Many resources are in scarce supply. The ecology of sports teams and individual players seeks to maintain its popularity and importance inside larger systems. Sports desires our attention; it requires our resources, and it takes actions in order to achieve those goals, e.g. to keep sponsorships alive, and to keep salaries high. Even when competing, sports teams strive to bolster and sustain the network. Even a simple chess game between friends, while seeming competitive, may serve broader goals of companionship and time spent. When we zoom out from a limited viewpoint, we can see that competitions serve cooperative ends.

The Nation-State System

Another place where competition and cooperation occur simultaneously is in the nation-state system, i.e the realm of international politics. This does not refer to competition and cooperation between states, however. Instead we are talking about a level of understanding that shows that even when states are apparently competing (even when they are at war), their activity, seen through another lens, is fundamentally one of cooperation.

A quote from Hedley Bull is instructive:

“[States’] goal [is] the preservation of the system and society of states itself. Whatever the divisions among them, modern states have been united in the belief that they are the principal actors in world politics and the chief bearers of rights and duties within it. The society of states has sought to ensure that it will remain the prevailing form of universal political organisation, in fact and in right.”

— Hedley Bull, “The Anarchical Society,” 1977, p. 16

For some scholars, this is demonstrably evident with regard to the 1936 anarchist revolution in Spain. Foreign powers, both capitalists and communists, many of whom were already in direct conflict, cooperated to eliminate the success of Spanish anarchism because it was not merely a threat to individual states themselves but, more importantly, a threat to the entire nation-state system’s validity as the dominant means of managing peoples (internally) and international order (externally).

Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently

The crucial consequence of the perspective that I have attempted to illustrate above is this.

Even when we are in conflict with an opponent, there is some cooperative dynamic that is occurring by our acting in relation to that opponent.

For example, in society and politics, when social groups oppose each other with hatred and violence, there are those who benefit. The media and the arms industry supply us with both the pens AND the swords for us to keep the merry-go-round revolving. In addition, the larger system that defines the terms of participation, benefits whenever players slip themselves into predefined slots that the system knows how to handle: predator; prey.

The solution then is neither to disavow competition in favor of cooperation, nor disavow cooperation in favor of competition, but, instead, to realize that:

Competition and Cooperation have no independent existence, i.e. they are not objective properties of the world. Competition and Cooperation are called-forth into being, into the world, only as a function of the way in which we choose to observe a domain.

Consequently, the challenge for us all is to be more cognizant, open and aware, of the contexts in which competition and cooperation are highlighted by our choices. The responsibility lies squarely in ourselves.

In other words:

Competition is Cooperation: See Differently

To engage with the original please go to Competition IS Cooperation: Seeing Differently by Paul B. Hartzog

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A community land trust is generally a not for profit entity, that owns property. The property can be developed for residential purposes, but the land trust enforces restrictions on equity and resale price. These restrictions maintain affordability.

With thirty properties in its portfolio, Cooperation Jackson seems poised to begin meeting the needs of Jackson residents in need of affordable housing.  Yet there are glitches.

First is the lack of regulation by the state government.

Lack of regulation?  How can that be a problem?

Kali pointed out that states some states have time tested a legal framework for community land trusts. Mississippi does not.  The lack of legislation and regulation makes beginning development easy. But once the land trust begins development, entrenched interests from real estate developers to local zoning officials will take notice.  Lack of legislation and regulation makes challenging or stopping the project easy.

The second glitch is raising the funding to develop the properties.

The community land trust movement in America was developed by those who were historically denied access to credit. Cooperation Jackson funds their operation by developing urban farming and other small business operations on their current properties. But the derived income does not provide enough to develop affordable housing.

Cooperation Jackson has plans to create a community development bank to fund affordable home construction. It may require the participation of anchor institutions as well as foundations and social entrepreneurs who believe in the promise of inclusive and affordable property in Jackson, Mississippi.

Extracted from: http://www.cooperationjackson.org/http://www.cooperationjackson.org/intro

Cooperation Jackson is an emerging vehicle for sustainable community development, economic democracy, and community ownership.

Our vision is to develop a cooperative network based in Jackson, Mississippi that will consist of four interconnected and interdependent institutions: an emerging federation of local worker cooperatives, a developing cooperative incubator, a cooperative education and training center (the Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy and Development), and a cooperative bank or financial institution.

Economic democracy provides economic empowerment for all workers, distributors, suppliers, consumers, communities and the general public by promoting universal access to common resources, democratizing the ownership of the means of production, and democratizing all the essential processes of production and distribution through worker self-management and sustainable consumption.

Solidarity economy includes a wide array of economic practices and initiatives that share common values – cooperation and sharing, social responsibility, sustainability, equity and justice. Instead of enforcing a culture of cutthroat competition, it builds cultures and communities of cooperation.

http://www.cooperationjackson.org/current-initiatives/

Community Wealth Building Initiative

As an emerging network of cooperative enterprises, Cooperation Jackson is striving to reduce the income and equity gaps that exist in our community, as well as address the severe unemployment and underemployment, low wages, inadequate health coverage, and substandard housing that plague our community. One of the primary strategies we are pursuing in the attempt to reduce these gaps and address these issues is a comprehensive place-based development initiative centered around creating worker-owned cooperative enterprises that partner with and serve the supply chain or service needs of the various Anchor institutions in our community. We call this our “Community Wealth Building Initiative.”

http://www.cooperationjackson.org/sustainable-communities-initiative/

Our Vision of Sustainable Community Development

We will accomplish all of the aforementioned outcomes by establishing the following institutions:

1. Community Land Trust (CLT): Cooperation Jackson will purchase a number of vacant lots, abandoned homes and commercial facilities primarily in West Jackson currently owned by the State of Mississippi, the City of Jackson, and private owners, organizing them into a Community Land Trust. The purpose of holding them in a trust is to ensure that they are removed from the speculative market and dedicated for sustainable communal endeavors.

2. Community Development Corporation (CDC): Cooperation Jackson will create a Community Development Corporation or CDC to help develop new low-income housing to sustain working class communities and affordable commercial facilities to support the development of cooperative enterprises in Jackson.

3. Housing Co-operative: Cooperation Jackson will turn a significant portion of the land and properties acquired and held by the CLT into an “Eco-Village” Housing Cooperative. The Housing Cooperative will provide quality affordable housing and stable rents to help sustain and build vibrant working class communities in Jackson. It will also create a significant degree of its own energy and waste management infrastructure to ensure that it can more effectively and efficiently utilize alternative sources of energy and eliminate waste by creating a comprehensive “zero-waste” recycling program.

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