Before the Corona outbreak, and with the help of Jose Ramos, the lead editor of an upcoming book about cosmo-local production, I had been reviewing the literature on historical rhythms and cycles to set the stage for the current ‘chaotic transition’ and ‘what comes next’. 

In short, I have come to two important conclusions: 

1. society moves from relative stable stages, through chaotic transitions, which are real mutations both in human consciousness and in socio-economic structures 
2. this change is non-linear and moves through internal or external shocks. 

Clearly, Corona is such a shock, partly exo-genous, i.e. a unpredictable outside factor, but also partly endo-genous (internal factor), since our devastating ecological practices are an important part of pandemic generation. It’s a double whammy which both endangers human life and creates a double shock to the economic system (both demand and supply driven, this is quite unprecedented, as economic crisis usually alternate between one and the other). Corona is not going to be sufficient for a full transition, but it will be a Great Accelerator, which has already changed so much in such a short time. I am not predicting that the results will be uniformly positive (accelerating the green/p2p/commons transition), or negative (Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine). Think about what happened after the fall of Rome to see a mixture of radical changes.

Nevertheless, here are some preliminary conclusions: 

1) The market plays almost no role in finding solutions in such crisis moments, and 90% of big and small companies would go bankrupt without state support (right now, big banks are pressing big pharma to price-gouge even more the vital medicines in the US!). Of course, this is not to belittle the many SME’s which are rooted in their communities and doing their best to somehow contribute to them, but the proper ‘capitalist’ multinational and financial entities would have created a situation in which the poor would have been condemned to die for lack of affordable testing and medicines, thereby endangering the population as a whole.

2) The nation-states are weak and the leaders have made mistakes, but they have turned out to be to be an absolutely indispensable institution to avoid chaotic reactions from a fragmented social field, and to discipline the market so that everyone is not put in even graver danger.

3) The current multilateral regime has been useful, (WHO), but also rather weak and ineffectual, at least insufficient to the task. Many people have died because of the weakness of factors 2 and 3, but paradoxically, an enormously larger amount would have died without them; all in all, they are playing a vital role and after initial delays and mistakes, most of them adapted to relatively sensible policies. We should not entertain any illusions that the abolishing of state forms would be anything else than a grave disaster in this context.

4) We have seen an extraordinary civic spirit and collaborative mobilisation of civil society which has been vital in the adaptation to the crisis, and to mitigate market and state failures; countless local and trans-local groups have been set in motion to create technical and scientific commons capable to rapidly produce medical devices that the market had not in stock and the state failed to order in time. Without valves and ventilators, the sick die; without masks, medical personnel gets infected and citizens continue to infect each other at too rapid rates; without mass testing we cannot move from mitigation to suppression; in all these efforts, civil society groups have taken the lead.

5) What has been emerging through p2p/commons/open source efforts are the seeds of new institutions for trans-local, trans-national responses, which can at this stage, not replace, but greatly strengthen the nation-state/multilateral regime, insufficient to the task as they may be (we will need a much stronger trans-national, not inter-national, multilateral institutions in the future, which can guarantee that the human economy works within planetary boundaries and acceptable social equity parameters, as ecological and social justice are strongly dependent on each other).

This regime, which is now still dominant and necessary, can order around market players, as they are now doing through new legislation that both saves and coerces/mobilizes market players. But most of all, it needs to work with, and help mobilize, the collective intelligence of trans-local and trans-national expertise, the latter of which strongly needs to become effective. This process towards ‘partner state’ practices and public-commons protocols will not be automatic, and will be an alternative to a coercive and authoritarian state-centric model, which could be one of the negative outcomes of this crisis.

So what is the role of the commons movement ?

1) One is to show and demonstrate what we can do, as we have already done through the multitude of open source efforts to market and state failures as well as mutual aid self-organizing.

2) Use the opportunity of this pedagogical catastrophe to strive for structural adaptations and reforms. In other words, we can’t just be local and tribal, we must be trans-local, and work at every level of institutional life, in order to transform institutions and proposes commons-centric reforms and transformative policies.

Corona is a serious crisis, but the climate is a much more serious one. In a paradoxical way, the global mobilization against Corona, despite the weakness and mistakes, has shown what can be done, and how fast institutions can adapt and change their choices once our life, and thus their legitimacy, is at stake. This bodes well for climate change adaption and ecological transformation. But make no mistake, this is just one of the crises we will need. The deep transformation that we need for this bifurcation, requires a ‘mutation of consciousness’ on a par with the ones we had in the 11th and 16th century in Europe. Though this time it will need to be global and fairly ‘simultaneous’. We are not there yet, but we’re definitely seeing strong premises for it, and for which this crisis acted as a revealer. This is just the first of the pedagogical catastrophes that will force the necessary transformations to a new stable system that lives within the confines of nature and realizes its interdependence with all other life forms. It will need to escape the historical cycle of pulsation between extractive regimes leading to ecological crisis, and the regenerative responses that human societies have always brought. Instead, we will need to move to a steady-state economic and social regime that can last many centuries and millennia.

More Information

If you like our analysis, please read our draft:

• The temporal context for the cosmo-local transition can be found here

If you want to learn more about the role of the commons in transitions, and our commons-centric approach, see:

• What You Should Read To Understand the Commons

Originally published in Liminal News

Origami image by Dany_Sternfeld 

The post Corona and the Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Just like you, there are others frustrated by “business-as-usual”.  They are frustrated by the “lip service” provided to stakeholders.  Like when a company says “employees are our greatest asset” but means the opposite.  

By contrast, there are organisations where stakeholders have an actual stake.  These include: 

• Companies using equity crowdfunding
• Co-operatives, where members are owners and 
• Community Co-ownership structures 

The best way for these people to meet, share ideas, expertise and discuss issues / challenges is via this first-of-a-kind event: Common Wealth.

Where and When?

Date and time

Thu 27th Feb 2020, 9:00 am – Fri 28th Feb 2020, 5:00 pm

Show more dates for this event

Location

Online: Via Zoom Webinar. In Person: UTS Business School, Dr Chau Chak Wing Building
14-28 Ultimo Rd, Ultimo NSW 2007, Australia

Get tickets here.

Is This For You?

Stakeholders with an actual stake (shared ownership) impacts day-to-day operations, competitive advantage, governance, local economic development and more.  The people dealing with these issues will be at Common Wealth.

Aligned investments in “stakeholders with an actual stake” brings down risks and localises returns.  But, it also raises new issues at each stage of the business cycle i.e initial capital raising, growth funding and exit.  The people raising funds and innovating in this space will be at Common Wealth.

Common Wealth is the place to explore these dynamics with pioneering like-minded people.  

Is this the type of crowd that you want to spend time with?  If the answer is “yes”, then join in the conversation.

Day 1: Conversations Worth Sharing: Live To Webinar

Day 1 of Common Wealth is an in-person gathering of the Speakers at UTS Centre for Business and Social Innovation.  

Speakers present live to each other (with some imbedded media).  Their presentation is made via Zoom Webinar, so you can tune in from across the world and participate too.

PLEASE NOTE: The Zoom Webinar Details will be emailed to you separately after ticket purchase.  This may take up to 24-48 hours.  

PLEASE NOTE: If you want to watch a specific speaker you must choose the right session time.

• Session Pass = 2-hour session = $20 = 4 Speakers
  
• Whole Day Pass = 8 hours = $60 = 16 Speakers
  

Who Is Talking on Thursday – 27/2/20

Turning Ideas Into Action: Day 2 – 28/2/2020

A series of strictly limited Round Tables is on Day 2 (28/2/2020) of Common Wealth.

> Equity Crowd Funding: 9:30am – 11:30am  (<5 Tickets left)

Hosted by the CFIA (Crowd Funding Institute of Australia) this industry-centric, equity crowdfunding round table will dissect what has worked and what needs to change with the current regime.  Most, if not all, the current licensed platforms and regulators will attend.

> Co-operation Between Co-operatives: 12:30pm – 2:30pm (<5 Tickets left)

Hosted by The BCCM (Business Council of Co-ops and Mutuals) this industry discussion will focus on how to Co-operate between the emerging and existing sector for everyone’s benefit.> Sydney Commons Lab: 3:00 – 5:00pm (SOLD OUT)

Hosted by Tirrania Suhood and Dr Jose Ramos this roundtable will centre on the creation of Sydney Commons Lab in 2020.  This proposed “civic institution” would promote commons-development, support with policy recommendations and provide a network for commons-oriented initiatives.

Socialising may occur post-event.

Reposted from the original event page. Get tickets here.

Lead image: lighthouse by barnyz

The post Frustrated with “Business as Usual”? Try Common Wealth appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Description

A new way of thinking is emerging for developing strategic pathways for local to planetary economic and ecological viability. This way of thinking centres around the ideas of “peer to peer production”, “the commons”, and “cosmo-localism”. This course will give participants emerging strategies to address critical development challenges using new cosmo-local and commons-based production strategies and thinking. Cosmo-local development describes the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production and self-organization. It augurs in an era in which the legacy of human creativity is at the disposal and service of those with the most needs, and in which our systems of production can be sustained within planetary ecological boundaries.

Over 15 cases will be presented on a variety of topics and themes, including:

• Examples in agriculture, for examples Farm Hack, Le A’terlier Paysans and FarmBot
• Examples in manufacturing, including Open Motors, AbilityMade and OpenROV
• Examples in medicine and health, including Fold-it and the Open Insulin Project
• Examples in housing construction, including Hexayurt and Wikihouse
• Examples in the circular economy, including Precious Plastic
• Examples in urban development, including Fabcity and Ghent city as commons
• Examples in water management, including Hack the Water Crisis (Stop Reset Go)
• Examples in crypto-programming, including Holochain
• Examples in disaster response, including Field Ready

The course is run in the format of ‘action learning’. This means that participants will form into groups (5-8 people) based on topics that are meaningful to them, and will engage in a problem solving (anticipatory innovation) process through-out the course. Participant will be introduced to the key ideas and guided through the problem solving in a step by step format, so that the ideas are applied in the context of real development challenges. The course is a unique offering combining anticipatory innovation and systemic futures design thinking that will give participants renewed leverage in generating ideas for positive social change.

Objectives of Course:

• Learn from 15+ examples and cases
• Learn concepts in

1. Peer Production
2. The Commons
3. Cosmo-local production

• Understand cosmo-localism as both

1. A seed form that can be applied and scaled from social enterprise
2. A political economic vision which provides new policy pathways

• Develop networks and connections with others that carry forward momentum
• Develop process skills in applying these models in the context of specific development and organisational challenges

Expected Outcomes of Course:

• A new set of concepts and understanding for development
• An understanding of how these strategies are applied
• A set of examples and cases that clarify how they function
• Ideas developed in the workshop that can be carried forward into the world
• Inclusion in an extended network of people interested in these new development strategies
• A cosmo-local production design canvas that will provide a template for applying the ideas elsewhere (this will be a simple to use canvas that can be printed in an A2 or bigger paper that will be linked to the course content)

The course is being run by Dr. Jose Ramos (Action Foresight), in conjunction with Prof. Shishir Kumar Jha and Raji Ajwani (Indian Institute of Technology – Mumbai) and Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation).

About the presenter

José Maria Ramos is interim research coordinator for the P2P Foundation, director of the boutique foresight consultancy Action Foresight, is Senior Consulting Editor for the Journal of Futures Studies, and is Senior Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He has taught and lectured on futures studies, public policy and social innovation at the National University of Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy), Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), Leuphana University (Germany), the University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia) and Victoria University (Australia). He has over 50 publications in journals, magazines and books spanning economic, cultural and political change, futures studies, public policy and social innovation. He has also co-founded numerous civil society organizations, a social forum, a maker lab, an advocacy group for commons governance, and a peer to peer leadership development group for mutant futurists. He holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature, a Masters degree in Strategic Foresight, and a Ph.D. in critical globalisation studies. He has a passion for the coupling of foresight and action, which has included both theoretical work through published articles, consulting work for federal, state and municipal governments, as well as citizen experiments in methodological innovation. He is originally from California of Mexican ancestry. Born in Oakland, he grew up in a very multi-cultural suburb of Los Angeles. After living in Japan and Taiwan, where he studied Japanese and Mandarin, he moved to Melbourne Australia to be with his wife, De Chantal. They have two children, son Ethan and daughter Rafaela. His other great passion is in considering who we are as planetary beings, which includes his ethnographic study of alternative globalizations, writings on planetary stigmergy, and research on cosmo-localization. This line of work connects him to the truth that we are all brothers and sisters inter-dependent with our planet and each other for our survival and wellbeing – our shared commons.

Workshop Schedule

Module Activities DAY 1

Day one (morning)

Deep dive into p2p / cosmo-local ideas and examples.

15+ case studies and examples from around the world

Content: Farm Hack, Le A’terlier Paysans and FarmBot, Open Motors, AbilityMade and OpenROV, Fold-it and the Open Insulin Project, Hexayurt and Wikihouse, Precious Plastic, Fabcity and Ghent city as commons, Hack the Water Crisis (Stop Reset Go), Holochain, Field Ready

LUNCH

Day one (afternoon)

Presentation of principles of cosmo-local production and commons based development.

Content

• The theory of the p2p economy.
• Foundational concepts.
• The theory of commons governance.
• Foundational concepts.

Lectures followed by discussion and Q&A.

Open discussion on participant reflections.

Dive into some of issues and challenges people are grappling with. Break into groups and begin to explore the nature of the problems and issues that they are facing.

DAY 2

Day two (morning) Re-articulation of the key ideas and then groups jump into practical and applied group work.

Content: The anticipatory experimentation method (AEM) steps 1-2

Identify the “used future” and develop a preferred future

LUNCH

Day two (afternoon)

Developing the proposal, articulating ideas to solve the local issues and problems, and developing ideas for real world experimentation.

Content:

• The anticipatory experimentation method (AEM)

steps 3-4

• Ideating solutions and real-world experiments

Presentations and discussing next steps as a network

What is cosmo-localism?

Cosmo-localization describes the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production. It augurs an era in which the legacy of human creativity is at the disposal and service of those in need within ecological planetary boundaries. It is based on the ethical premise, drawing from cosmopolitanism, that people and communities should be universally empowered with the heritage of human ingenuity that allow them to more effectively create livelihoods and solve problems in their local environments, and that, reciprocally, local production and innovation should support the wellbeing of our planetary commons.

“Cosmo-localization is a new paradigm for the production and distribution of value that combines the universal sharing of knowledge (cosmo), but the ‘subsidiarity’ of production as close as possible to the place of need (‘local’), essentially through distributed local manufacturing and voluntary mutualization. The general idea is not to impede technological progress though intellectual property, in an era of climate change where we cannot afford the 20-year lag in innovation due to patents; and to radically diminish the physical cost of transport through local production. Cosmo-localization is based on the belief that the mutualization of provisioning systems can radically diminish the human footprint on natural resources, which need to be preserved for future generations and all beings of the planet.” Michel Bauwens

“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.” –Vasilis Kostakis and Andreas Roos, Harvard Business Review

More information

Links to cosmo-localization:

• Peer Production and the Commons

• From redistributive urban commons to cosmo-local production commons

• Cosmo-Localization And Leadership For The Future

• Cosmo-localism and the Anthropocene

The post Futures of Production Through Cosmo-Local and Commons-Based Design appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Abstract

In the abstract we argue:

“Our main hypothesis in this paper is that in the current conjuncture, we are moving towards a ‘dominance’ of a ‘commons’ format for societal development. The commons format assumes a ‘third’ mode of development that indicates civil society and community as critical initiators and guardians of common value. The emerging commons model should be distinguished from both the regulation of capitalism by social-democracy, and state-centric Soviet types of socialism. Just as a full-fledged capitalist system could be seen as starting with the seed forms developed in the medieval city-states, so a future commons-centric society can be hypothesized from currently emerging commons-based seed forms. We believe that just as the revolutions bringing full-fledged capitalism were preceded by the development of capitalists and their seed forms, so a commons-based systemic change is necessarily the result of commoners developing their own seed forms. Therefore, the creation of a systemic ecology of the commons becomes an essential strategy for social change. The key approach for emancipation is no longer a redistribution of market value, or a state-centric appropriation of productive assets, but an interweaving of commons-based production and redistribution.”

KEYWORDS: Post-capitalism, commons, value exchange systems, Marxism and the radical left, social transformation

Extract

Here is an extract from the paper below. A preprint version can be found here.

“We thus see commons as thriving through interdependence across multiple scales and dimensions, with myriad communities enacting themselves as commoners who engage in the active creation, defence and management of their commons, but not to the exclusion of others. It might be said that in terms of epistemology, the emerging foundations of the commons perspective shares a radical perspective on the dynamic interconnections that exist between a multitude of forms, as well as a process orienta- tion (Bollier and Helfrich 2015). Arturo Escobar (2015, 355) discusses this relational dynamic as a ‘pluriverse … made up of a multiplicity of mutually entangled and co- constituting but distinct worlds’. Given this, there is a broader political, ecologic and economic context which needs to come with commoning.

First, we do not see any room for exclusionist approaches in our definition of commoning. Historically, labour movements centred on the White European male were exclusionist in orientation (for example the White Australia Policy had its origins in labour movements, and in the United States the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was also supported by labour unions), and in the current era we see, for example, the United States ‘alt-right’ that has emerged as a nativistic construction with an even more virulent form of exclusionism. In contrast to such an exclusionary understanding, our view might be understood as ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’, in which the activity of one particular group needs to do no harm to, complement, or even support the well-being of people universally, not just one group to the exclusion of another. As such, in this paper we put forward the idea of cosmo-localization, the notion that one community of produc- tive commoning on one part of the planet also can and should support other commu- nities of production and commoning in other parts of the world, through the development of a global design commons that democratizes production.

Second, given the ecological crisis that we face, commoning cannot be reductively defined in terms of one community’s activity if it runs counter to the overall health of the whole. A planetary ethos, a view that takes the health of our planetary life support systems as central, needs to guide what it means to enact a commons – the activity of a particular group needs to complement and support the general well-being of planetary life support systems.

Third, commons need to be aligned with a post-capitalist political program. Both nativism and ecological crisis need to be understood as, in certain ways, products of capitalism. Anti-globalization was indeed at first a radical green-left position, as demonstrated by the alliance of ‘Teamsters and Turtles’ at the Battle of Seattle and the wider global protest circuit (Kaldor 2000). For the good part of two decades these demands and cries for transformation have been largely ignored by our neoliberal policy makers, leading to both reactionary populism and a deepening ecological crisis (Ramos 2017a).

This paper begins with a simple depiction of the birth of a ‘civic/civil’ oriented commons, which has emerged concurrently and in the aftermath of the demise of state-socialism and the neoliberal assault. We then provide a theory of change – our proposition is that transformation and phase transition is based on the emergence of seed forms. We provide several historical examples, and we discuss the emergence of the commons as one such seed form. To provide a theoretical and ontological foundation for understanding the emergence of the commons as a seed form within a macrological time-scale, we discuss the work of Alan Page Fiske (1991) and Kojin Karatani (2014) and the implications of their work for an ecology of the commons and reformulation of the left. We then segue into a short discussion on this ecology of the commons as a response to civilizational overshoot and collapse. Within this context of civilizational crisis and the aforementioned theory of change, we trace the general outline of the transition, and describe the emergence of cosmo-localism, Design Global/Manufacture Local (DGML) strategies as a key element of the commons shift. In conceptualizing the practical elements of this proposed ecology of the commons, we present the German Energiewende as a proto-model for state-community co- creation, and a template for future possibilities. We then look broadly across the ontological forms of the city, the nation-state, and global transnational structures as emerging constituent and co-creative elements of such an ecology of the commons. We end with some implications for the left and the challenge of transforming the dark energies of populism.”

The post Re-Imagining the Left Through the Lens of Post-Capitalist Commons‎‎ appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The Lab was founded and is led by Gabriella Gómez-Mont, as the experimental arm / creative think tank of the Mexico City government, reporting to the Mayor. It is highly innovative in its techniques and strategies for urban development.

“The Lab is a place to reflect about all things city and to explore other social scripts and urban futures for the largest megalopolis in the western hemisphere, working across diverse areas, such as urban creativity, mobility, governance, civic tech, public space, etc. In addition, the Lab searches to create links between civil society and government, constantly shifting shape to accommodate multidisciplinary collaborations, insisting on the importance of political and public imagination in the execution of its experiments.”

During the week I worked with the Lab’s Open City team, Gabriela (Gaby) Rios Landa, Valentina Delgado, Bernardo Rivera Muñozcano and Nicole Mey. I came away super impressed by their work, commitment and creativity. The work I was asked to do was highly varied and engaged a number of my specializations:

1. To run a visioning workshop with Lab people and key stakeholders to develop a vision for an Open City for CDMX, that could help guide city development in an inclusive and participatory way.
2. To deliver a talk on “Democratizing Design” in which I discussed some current “revolutions” in design and cosmo-localization from the perspective of the P2P Foundation.
3. To run a design session to develop an anticipatory governance strategy for the application of artificial intelligence in CDMX.
4. In addition I gave presentations to the Open City team on co-governance and the city as commons, vision mapping and the anticipatory experimentation (bridge) method.

Needless to say it was a big week!

Visioning

For the visioning workshop, we started by using a technique called “vision cycles”, which is a way of mapping the history of an issue, but in such a way as to discover the previous visions that have informed development (what might be considered “used futures”) as well the current vision and its effects, and what ideas for the future are emerging. After this we did a short visualisation process that helped everyone to picture the future city in their minds eye. We then used the integrated visioning method first developed by Sohail Inayatullah, where we looked at the preferred future, the future that was disowned, and then developed an integrated future.

One of the insights from the session is that cities have many selves, and it is worth interrogating what are a city’s dominant selves and what selves have been disowned. When a self is disowned and has no avenue for expression its behaviour shows up as undermining, disruptive, agitative. If the contradictions between the dominant self of a city and its disowned self is not resolved, then conflict can ensue. The integrated visioning method provides a way of seeing that can appreciate how the integration of the dominant and disowned selves of a city can lead to more wholistic or wiser development.

Anticipatory Governance

With an issue like artificial intelligence, there is not only great uncertainty regarding the potential impact on society, there is also definitional ambiguity as AI crosses many definitional boundaries (is it machine learning, neural networks, algorithms, robots, automation, etc), and the speed of the issue seems to be accelerating. Given this, the Lab was tasked with developing a set of policies for how this polymorphous issue is managed and governed. For this they asked me to apply the Causal Layered Analysis method of Sohail Inayatullah, and then to use the Anticipatory Governance Design Framework I have developed to provide the building blocks that can form an Anticipatory Governance framework for artificial intelligence. Needless to say the workshop was rich, exploring some of the core assumptions, worldviews and attitudes guiding people’s thinking, and new myth and metaphors that provides genuinely empowering pathways.

Presentations

In addition to this I gave presentation on some of my favourite subjects.

Co-governance and the city as commons. This was more a conversation than a presentation, and to be honest they taught me much more than I was able to teach them. This conversation was one of the biggest learnings for me. First of all they were already familiar with the work of Christian Iaione and Sheila Foster (and others) on the urban commons. In particular while they appreciated the perspective on the urban commons, they questioned its translatability from the Bologna / Barcelona / Ghent context (small-medium sized cities, politically empowered population in Europe) to CDMX (24 million people, highly stratified between wealthy / empowered and poor / marginalised). They also felt that the spirit of CDMX resists monolithic prescriptions and wondered where / what opportunities exist for heterotopic futures, plural futures within the city … rather than a single / monolithic city vision. CDMX exhibits spatial diversity, a city with myriad groups, colonias, spaces, but also exhibits temporal diversity, where the pre-colombian civilization is layered and meshed into the colombian and global / neoliberal – thereby resisting the monoculture of linear time. The future cannot just be framed in modernist terms, it needs an ecology of visions.

Dovetailing with this is the concern with the somewhat trendy roll out of smart / digital city strategies that have the intention of making a city open and participatory, but which some felt have the opposite effect, they empower the people that already have power in a place like Mexico City. It became clear to me from the conversation that a truely “Open City” can only be one where core inequalities are dealt with. Poor people struggling to survive will never experience a city as “open” so long as they must toil for less than a living wage, and in which suburb by suburb segregation has been all but institutionalised along wealth lines. In this context CDMX’s historic crowdsourcing of their constitution was an important precedent, and in which Universal Basic Income was put forward (however apparently could not get through the legislative process).

In this context I also presented the core principle of implicated commons-governance, recently developed in this paper with Michel Bauwens, which I consider to have simple but radical implications for democratization of all aspects of life. (pre-print can be viewed here).

“This notion of ‘common concern’ serves to expand the scope of what is a commons and who is a commoner. In the case of planetary life support systems, the value of this as a commons is fundamentally implicit in that it does not appear valuable to a community until it is activated by virtue of a contextual shift. For an issue as fundamental as climate change, it is the personal awakening that we all share an atmosphere with seven billion other humans (and countless species) as a commons of concern. Through the accident of circumstance each of us have been ‘plied into’ this shared concern of the twenty-first century. The planet’s atmosphere has thus shifted from an implicit commons to an explicit commons. Our atmosphere has become a matter of survival for all, and suddenly people have become commoners to the extent that they see how they are entangled into this shared concern, with a concomitant responsibility for action. This implies a radical democratization of planetary governance.”

This principle of implicated commons-governance did resonate with them and we had a long discussion on how this might be applied in CDMX.

Vision Mapping and the Anticipatory Experimentation (bridge) Method. I also presented my work on vision mapping, the combination of visioning processes and online editable mapping based on open street maps and the map interface. One of the Lab teams were already using OSM for a project and there was considerable overlap in the use of participatory methods to map urban geographies and imaginaries. As well I presented on the anticipatory experimentation (bridge) method, which was very consistent with the overall approach to the Lab, as they are explicitly an experimental arm of the city government tasked with charting new pathways for CDMX’s urban futures.

Cosmo-localization

I presented on cosmo-localisation at a coworking space called wework, hosted by FabCity CDMX and Futurologi, where I got to meet Oscar Velasquez and Igna Tovar. With around 50-60 people I had chance to show off my bad spanish and my perfect spanglish. I spoke on a theme I’ve been developing with my colleagues through the P2P Foundation.

I described cosmo-localization as:

“… the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production. It is based on the ethical premise, drawing from cosmopolitanism, that people and communities should be universally empowered with the heritage of human ingenuity that allow them to more effectively create livelihoods and solve problems in their local environments, and that, reciprocally, local production and innovation should support the wellbeing of our planetary commons.” 

I worked on the themes of deep mutualization in the context of the anthropocene. Slides are here. Audio here.

Later that week I did a podcast with Inga Tovar where we discussed design global manufacture local / cosmo-localization, a collaboration between Centro Uni and Futurologi. This was a more relaxed conversation on the subject, conducted exclusively in spanglish (I attempted to speak in Spanish for the audience but had to revert to english again and again and get Inga to offer translations).  Audio here. 

Impressions and reflections

Overall I came away very impressed with the city of Mexico as a whole. From crowdsourcing a new constitution (perhaps the biggest experiment of this kind to-date), to becoming one of the first Latin American regions to make itself LGBT friendly, to its attempts to create a universal basic income, and of course the work of the Lab, CDMX, despite its many social problems, is an oasis of intelligence and progressive politics. I got the feeling that the city is on the cusp of a renaissance and potential transformation. That is my hope for the city’s many people, most who struggle day by day for survival.

For CDMX the promise of commons governance and Cosmo-localization is really about the ability of Mexico city’s poor to be enfranchised rather than marginalised at a number of levels. In terms of co-governance and the urban commons, it is the principle that those that have a stake in the development of CDMX need to be given the practical ability and tools for making decisions about their city. In terms of cosmo-localization it is liberating the potential for any enterprising community to be able to produce was they need for their wellbeing and livelihoods.

My own interest in working in CDMX stems from family history. My mom was born in the Colonia Roma, and she spent her first 12 years there before immigrating to the US with her mother and sisters. I grew up hearing stories with CDMX as the backdrop, not all pretty ones either. For my mom and her family, life was hard, they were very very poor, and they struggled day in and day out for survival. This has a distinct imprint on my sense of identity. Despite my relative privilege as a travelling consulting futurist, for the purposes of CDMX I know that I am the son of a mother who came from the harshest poverty, and that in another life I am one of “los de abajo”. For my mom and her family, “moving up” for them was working as maids for the wealthy in central Mexico city. It feels as if, because we suffered from inequality and the stigma of poverty, it is something that we know too well must be addressed to fulfil the promise of the city. The disowned must be integrated into the future of the city for all to flourish.

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In this paper, we explore novel ways for decentralized economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with, competitive markets at a global scale utilizing decentralized technologies such as Blockchain.

Article: The Wolf and the Caribou: Coexistence of Decentralized Economies and Competitive Markets. By Andreas Freund and Danielle Stanko. J. Risk Financial Manag. 2018, 11(2), 26

Michel Bauwens: There are several interesting aspects to this article. First the authors are from Tata Industries, who are reportedly very concerned about the future of their industrial verticals and actively looking for successor systems. Second this article is very liberal in quoting the work of the P2P Foundation about the institutionalization of peer production. And third, it examines how our models fit with the emerging possibilities of the blockchain , tokens and programmable organizations, i.e. ‘Distributed Autonomous Organizations’.

However, in doing so, it also does something very problematic in our view, ie it assumes that the current wave of crypto projects conform to these generative, commons-based vision of our economy, while they clearly don’t. While current crypto-based projects are interesting new models, most of them are extractive to people and the planet, and use the commons and open source in the context of achieving value capture. Without a clear distinction between generative and extractive economic modes, we justify the worst excesses of the current crypto-based economy.

Abstract

Andreas Freund and Danielle Stanko: “Starting with BitTorrent and then Bitcoin, decentralized technologies have been on the rise over the last 15+ years, gaining significant momentum in the last 2+ years with the advent of platform ecosystems such as the Blockchain platform Ethereum. New projects have evolved from decentralized games to marketplaces to open funding models to decentralized autonomous organizations. The hype around cryptocurrency and the valuation of innovative projects drove the market cap of cryptocurrencies to over a trillion dollars at one point in 2017. These high valued technologies are now enabling something new: globally scaled and decentralized business models. Despite their valuation and the hype, these new business ecosystems are frail. This is not only because the underlying technology is rapidly evolving, but also because competitive markets see a profit opportunity in exponential cryptocurrency returns. This extracts value from these ecosystems, which could lead to their collapse, if unchecked. In this paper, we explore novel ways for decentralized economies to protect themselves from, and coexist with, competitive markets at a global scale utilizing decentralized technologies such as Blockchain.”

Excerpt

“Based on available research, decentralized socioeconomic models, also often referred to as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) or Commons6 structure typically have three main components (Giotitsas and Ramos 2017; Filippi et al. 2007):

• Entrepreneurial Common (EC): An EC is the commercial interface with external ecosystems and gives funds it raised from selling goods and services or other activities such as investments in other ecosystems in the form of tokens to the For-Benefit Common (FBC) and receives goods & services to market and sell from the Production Common (PC) in return. This requires exchange between an EC token and Fiat and a PC token that is governed by the FBC. Tokens generally represent a unit of value as defined by the participants of a DAO, and there may be many tokens within a DAO. In addition, the EC is responsible for financial and monetary policy in the DAO since issuing a token is effectively creating a currency with all the accompanying complexities. We will discuss this in more detail when we discuss our proposals for the coexistence of decentralized economies and competitive markets;

• Production Common (PC): A p2p group that produces goods and services collaboratively based on the purpose of the ecosystem as established in the FBC. A participant’s contributions are valued in PC tokens which can be exchanged to EC tokens or other tokens through an exchange utility, as detailed out in one of our four proposals below. Assets created in this common are held in common by the FBC with claims rights by the contributors based on their value contribution to the asset in order to enable a fair sharing of value generated both commercially and through reputation;

• For-Benefit Common (FBC): The FBC is the governance common that is responsible for setting the DAO vision and impact goals, sets consensus rules and incentives for the DAO commons, sets the exchange rules for the EC and PC Tokens within the commons and externally to other ecosystem tokens and fiat, sets the ownership/membership and sharing rules for the DAO commons, defines and enforces reputation also in relation to non-DAO reputation measurement and management models, sets collaboration and giving rules with internal and external entities, and acts as the interface to not-for-benefit entities etc.

This three-zone model is designed to

• Insulate the economically vulnerable FBC and PC from extractive external markets through the EC commons by limiting token exchanges between the common markets that have direct interfaces to competitive markets.

• Enable social impact results through the FBC without a strong dependency on market results. The FBC decides the use of funds coming from the EC. As a result it is independent of “shareholder value” as defined by external and extractive markets; therefore it is accountable to the PC and EC participants.

• Allows the EC to focus on raising funds for both the FBC and PC either through selling products and services or raising funds for future products and services and social impact efforts.

• Enables the PC to focus on core competencies to create new products and services aligned with the overall DAO values independent of the EC.

It is worth noting that decentralized economies as described above typically have three characteristics in common (Commons Transition Primer 2018, Commons-Based Peer Production Directory 2018, 2017):

• Open Value Accounting: An accounting system that allows one to record not only tangible assets and assess their value in a unit of value measure, but also to record tangible and intangible value contributions from participants to an asset and subsequent value translation into a unit of value measure such as a token in a decentralized socioeconomic model;

• Decentralized Commons Market: A decentralized marketplace for the free exchange of assets and services governed by business rules established by a governing commons through participant consensus. The decentralized marketplace is transparent and has verifiable and marketplace transactions. In order to motivate participation in a decentralized commons market (DCM), a DCM has an incentive model for both tangible and intangible value contributions and open asset ownership representation through a set of defined unit of value measures such as tokens. The rules for DAO membership and voting are normally based on consensus processes;

• DCM Reciprocity: Reciprocity in this context means that the return on investment beyond a certain value7 is capped but not frozen by requiring reciprocity contributions to the DCM in the form of tangible or intangible value contributions that equal or exceed returns. Example: For a return of a 100 token investment in a DCM asset beyond say 10 tokens, an actor needs to make a value contribution after applying an exchange rate of token to utility token quantifiably equivalent to 1 utility or 1 reputation token for every token earned beyond 10 tokens.

As we will see below, this is in stark contrast to competitive markets.

Central to making the three zoned model operate is effective governance. There is an evolving literature on the governance of decentralized markets discussing issues and challenges creating inefficiencies and potentially additional costs as well as benefits and efficiencies.” (http://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/11/2/26/htm)

Photo by reynermedia

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It is such a crucial time in human history. It feels as if we are capable of transforming our world, and at the same time we are at the edge of the abyss. In my analysis, governance is at the heart of the great challenges we face – whether or not our societies can protect and create that which we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing, our multifaceted commons. We are at a crossroads. Will we live in a world of oligarchs, where antiquated systems, monied interests, elites and corruption undermine our capacity for wise and effective social navigation? Or will the aspirations for distributed, participatory and contributory decision-making create a world of deep democracy and transparency where citizens have real lateral power in forging equitable and sustainable pathways?

Some of my initial ideas on this were put together in this book chapter on the Futures of Governance. Overtime with others I’ve begun to formulate some more general ideas for how governance works across commoning activities, such as through a recent paper co-authored with Michel Bauwens on an Ecology of the Commons.

This is a shared journey and an ongoing exploration for all of us in this movement. Together with Dr. Michelle Maloney, founder of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance and the New Economy Network Australia (NENA), we have developed this one day course called “Transforming Governance for People and Planet” as both an introduction to thinking about the futures of governance and democracy, and as an opportunity to work on synthesis. How do we make sense of the many contexts, threads, innovations in a way that can provide orientation and empowerment in terms of how we see ourselves, individually and collectively, as agents of change?

So in the course we will explore the outline of shifts taking place from a global perspective, current challenges, and the many new innovations, experiments and pathways that are harbingers of change. From the community meeting to the office and work environment, to our local municipal, state and federal systems, and to the global system, we know the context has shifted and the stage has been set for dramatic changes. We will ask the question to participants, at what scale and where do we want to play? The course will provide an overview of the big trends in governance and provide ways in which participants can consider how they want to participate and shape the future. The course intents to bring forth ideas for transforming governance in plain language, with strategies that anyone can use to empower themselves and their communities.

This workshop will present and explore:

• the idea of the “commons” as a framework for rethinking governance;
• how the commons framework provides answers to the critical challenges we face in areas such as: resource management, ecological protection / rights of nature, addressing oligarchy, protecting digital / knowledge commons, humanising and democratising our work and community life, etc;
• an overview of critical historical shifts that bring into relief the great transitions we are experiencing in the early 21st century;
• examples from around the world that demonstrate transformations in governance, and which point to new futures – the many new innovations, experiments and pathways that are emerging around the world in response to our challenges;
• a deep questioning of when our democracies protect and build the commons, and when they undermine them, and what strategies we might take as societies to ensure healthy democracies that protect and build our commons.

Specific topics that will be covered include:

• bioregional governance
• commons governance
• workplace democracy and decentralised decision making
• liquid democracy (and other e-democracy systems)
• rights of nature / Earth jurisprudence
• urban collaborative governance
• peer to peer / digital commons governance
• participatory and contributory democracy
• overcoming the challenges of oligarchy / plutocracy
• global / planetary governance
• anticipatory governance

The workshop will be run as a mix of presentations, audio-visual content, interactive discussions, games and self-guided reflection.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have a general understanding of the big shifts and issues in governance, and the ways in which they can participate in our great transitions and in shaping the future.

For those interested in registering info is HERE

* Several scholarships are available for students and others who wish to attend. Contact us for details.

For more information: Jose Ramos – [email protected]

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP PRESENTERS

• Dr. Jose Ramos, writer, futurist and director of Action Foresight, brings over 15 years’ experience writing about cultural, political and economic change and designing, teaching and facilitating courses on social change, strategic foresight, commons governance and socio-political transformation.
• Dr Michelle Maloney, lawyer and National Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA) has been working for 25 years at the intersection of ecological and social justice, and is passionate about building Earth centred law, governance and ethics.

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To read the full Vision and Pathways report (bringing together four years of research and engagement on how to rapidly cut southern Australian cities’ greenhouse gas emissions), click on the image below.

The post Two Action Pathways: Green Growth vs Commons Transition appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Australian cities need to reduce their emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change, potentially profoundly impacting our future lifestyles.

A fantastic new report by Dr Seona Candy, Kirsten Larsen and Jennifer Sheridan, University of Melbourne, following our own Commons Transition templates. They were assisted by our colleagues in the Commons Transiton Coalition (Australia) Jose Ramos and Darren Sharp. The following was originally published in the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit publication.

It’s 2040.

As you wake and look outside, things might not look hugely different to 2017 – there aren’t any hoverboards or sky highways – but Australian cities have managed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent.

And how your day unfolds will look very different depending on how we reached this point.

As you step outside some changes are obvious. Renewable energy is now everywhere. You pass bladeless wind turbines, and solar farms on city skyscapers. On your way, you walk through an urban farm and the concrete jungle is greener with roof and vertical gardens throughout the city. But you’ve had to make some concessions in terms of privacy and lifestyle.

So what’s changed? And how did we get here?

These are just some of the questions explored in the final report from the Visions and Pathways 2040 research project which looks at how we can rapidly reduce Australian cities’ emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change as we approach the end of what’s being called the ‘critical decade’.

WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY

The report finds that exactly how we achieve emissions reductions will have a profound impact on what life in Australia is like in the future. Many of the technologies required to get us to a greener future already exist – but what’s important is how we apply them and who drives the change.

Over the last four years, through research, workshops and engagement activities, the project has drawn on input from over 250 experts across industry, government, academia and civil society to determine how Australian cities could reach this goal. But also to design what these future cities might look like.

This group of experts came together because they can see Australia is not on track to achieve even its stated emissions reductions targets. These targets have been put in place by successive governments who have repeatedly weakened the numbers and the criteria – and still we cannot meet them.

Since the removal of the carbon price, Australia’s emissions have started to increase again. We are going the wrong way.

The Australian political context means the multitude of technical pathways are clear, but the cultural, political and economic pathways are not. The Action Pathways in our report consider the forces of change that might be required to achieve the drastic greenhouse gas emissions reductions we seek.

Many of the technologies required to get us to a greener future already exists. Picture: Amy Bracks/VEIL 2015

But how do we trigger political changes of this magnitude, and what is our own potential power in progressing these?

TWO PATHWAYS

The team designed two scenarios to demonstrate these positive outcomes – ‘Green Growth’ and a ‘Commons Transition’.

The first Green Growth scenario points to the role city governments, driven by community and stakeholder action, can play in discouraging organisations and businesses that are not explicitly and proactively decarbonising. This social and political mobilisation could help drive out the complicit acceptance and corruption preventing rapid reduction in fossil fuel use and development.

The Commons Transition scenario paints a new picture that re-empowers the citizen movement already evident in sweeping social changes in cities around the world. It draws on leading innovations in sharing and shareable cities; peer-to-peer, Open Design Distributed Manufacturing, cooperatives and platform cooperative movements, as well as some new, more radical cultural, political and economic initiatives.

These new movements are already gaining momentum. Citizen groups in countries like Spain, Iceland, Taiwan, Korea and Italy have not just challenged power, but also forged new political contracts that place citizens at the centre of city decision-making.

To ensure future cities achieve the necessary emissions reductions, we modelled them using the CSIRO-developed Australian Stocks and Flows Framework, which factors in not just for cities as they stand in 2040, but also the pathway that might get us there.

CONSUMING AND EMITTING

We took a consumption-based approach including both direct and indirect emissions. Direct emissions, like your car’s exhaust or burning gas to heat your house, occur within city boundaries. Indirect or embodied emissions are associated with the production of goods and services that support our urban lifestyles but are usually generated outside the city, like food, household appliances and electricity.

According to our research, direct emissions make up around 16 per cent of overall city emissions, equivalent to 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2013.

Changes to urban lifestyles like more active transport, reducing landfill waste, switching to electric transport coupled with clean electricity generation, as well as improving the design of our buildings, results in a reduction of these direct emissions of around 60 per cent by 2040 for both pathways.

The results indicate, though, that the majority of emissions related to a city lifestyle are produced outside city boundaries. Electricity generation contributes almost 50 per cent of the carbon footprint of southern Australian cities, with heavy industry and agriculture contributing around 12 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

To significantly reduce city emissions, our report shows the accelerated replacement of fossil fuel power stations with 100 per cent clean generation technologies must be a priority. There’s also an urgent need to reduce heavy industry and agricultural production through recycling, lowering consumption of red meat and reducing exports, which account for the majority of indirect emissions in these sectors.

Changes to urban lifestyles like more active transport and switching to electric cars will have an impact. Picture: Amy Bracks/VEIL 2015

To achieve overall emissions reductions of 80 per cent by 2040 and in the critical short term, we also need to switch from forest clearing to forest preservation and regeneration, and rapidly increase other land uses that can sequester carbon (capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide) like agricultural production systems and urban forestry.

IMAGINING A GREENER FUTURE

Emissions reductions of this scale can be achieved, but will require – and drive – massive transformation of our cities and even our societies, economies and politics.

Importantly, the report emphasises the important role of cities as cultural and political leaders – understanding, supporting and demanding change in production sectors and land-use outside the cities – as well as making the changes needed themselves.

The need for early and radical changes to land-use and management for carbon sequestration to ‘buy time’ for structural change, points to a critical role city dwellers can play as consumers of forestry, agricultural and food products, as well as directly in urban forestry.

To believe that these scenarios and action pathways are possible, any of them – let alone the ones we actually want – requires a leap of imagination. To make them possible requires a corresponding leap of determination.

The Visions and Pathways 2040 project challenges all of us – leaders and citizens alike – to be determined and prioritise reducing emissions before it’s too late, and points to the pathways that might just be able to get us there.

The project was led by the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne, and included researchers from Swinburne University and University of New South Wales. It was funded by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living. Download the report from the Visions and Pathways 2040 website.

Photo by RW Sinclair

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Darren Sharp: A new research report and engagement project explores how Australian cities can achieve rapid decarbonization and increased resilience in the face of climate change. The report, “Visions and Pathways 2040: Scenarios and Pathways to Low Carbon Living,” was led by the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne and funded by the CRC for Low Carbon Living. It describes two pathways for cities — Commons Transition and Green Growth — to achieve drastic greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The report paints a new narrative with re-empowered citizens at the vanguard of sweeping social changes already underway in cities around the world.

The vision for the Commons Transition pathway includes rapidly reducing consumption and shifting power structures to democratic and participative communities. The pathway to accomplish this vision, the report states, is for “citizens and communities to create and apply new ways of providing for themselves, building sophistication in how they manage these systems for the common good as peers. Governance and institutions adapt and evolve to operate as a ‘Partner State’ facilitating commons management.”

The Commons Transition Action Pathway attempts to imagine how a post-growth social model might work. How might people live with sufficiency? This pathway suggests that universal access to basic assets like housing and food, and open design distributed manufacturing, provide some answers. The importance of technology in the pathway relates to how successfully cooperative ownership models can be deployed to provide alternatives to platform monopolies like Uber, TaskRabbit, and Airbnb, which leverage data commodification, value extraction, and precarious labor through rent-seeking business models. The technology stack of this scenario rests on data sovereignty, commons-based peer production, and platform cooperativism which provide the elements for an ethical alternative to platform monopolies.

The Green Growth Action pathway explores how political changes of the required magnitude might be triggered by action in cities, within the current economic and political framework. The vision, as outlined in the report, is to ensure “the right policies are in place to incentivize corporate innovation for rapid decarbonization — government and business working together, within the current economic and neoliberal paradigm.” The pathway is for cities to lead, building political pressure to drive changes to state and national policy.

These emerging narratives and movements demonstrate that citizen-led solutions to city challenges along with democratic forms of community ownership and co-governance can drive actions to achieve sustainable urban transformation.

Jose Ramos and I co-wrote the “Commons Transition Action Pathway” drawing on the work of Michel Bauwens, Peer to Peer Foundation, Commons Transiton, Shareable’s “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons,” urban commons scholars Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione, as well as open design distributed manufacturing, platform cooperatives, and municipalist coalitions taking shape across Europe. Thanks to the report project leadership team: Kirsten Larsen, Seona Candy, Jennifer Sheridan and Chris Ryan. The project has developed tools to facilitate use of these scenarios for individuals and organizations. 

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