From the original notes to the podcast:

Within Envisioning Real Utopias, Erik Olin Wright argues that a social economy could be promoted if the state, through its capacity to tax, provided funding for socially organised non-market production and that the institution of an unconditional basic income could be one such policy. By partially delinking income from employment earnings, an unconditional basic income would enable voluntary associations of all sorts to create new forms of meaningful and productive work in the social economy. The result would be economic democracy by creating conditions of social power, organised through civil society to establish social empowerment.

In his return to the Department of Political Economy and the University of Sydney, as an Honorary Professor, Erik Olin Wright revisits and further develops these arguments with crucial import for economic policy and envisioning anti-capitalism in and beyond Australia.

The post Erik Olin Wright on Unconditional Basic Income: Progressive Potentials and Neoliberal Traps appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“The distinguished sociologist explains why a basic income would not be a “disincentive” to work (unlike means-tested anti-poverty programs), argues that basic income does not “subsidize low wages” in a morally problematic way, discusses the potential impact of basic income on unions and progressive politics.”

Podcast via Against the Grain.

Why is this podcast important? Because various people challenge that the basic income would be a good thing for working people and the labor movement; here a progressive point of view from marxist sociologist Erik Wright that answers positively, should be read in conjunction with the book from US labor leader saying the same:

Description

” is a Professor in the prestigious Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — and a staunch advocate of a universal basic income.

Wright was interviewed on the April 5th edition of the Berkeley-based radio show Against the Grain. In a broadcast of approximately 50 minutes, the distinguished sociologist explains why a basic income would not be a “disincentive” to work (unlike means-tested anti-poverty programs), argues that basic income does not “subsidize low wages” in a morally problematic way, discusses the potential impact of basic income on unions and progressive politics, and differentiates his preferred version of a basic income from that of Charles Murray and others on the right — and more.

Overall, Wright presents a persuasive and compelling case that the radical left must take basic income seriously, while allaying worries that the policy could hurt workers and rebutting objections to its unconditionality.

Against the Grain describes itself as providing “in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.” (http://www.basicincome.org/news/2016/05/audio-sociologist-erik-olin-wright-on-basic-income/)

Transcript

“AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 APR 2016] “Today on Against the Grain, what if everyone was entitled to, was guaranteed, a basic income, so they didn’t have to work to live?

“I’m C.S. Soong. Erik Olin Wright, a sociologist and leading radical thinker, makes a case for an unconditional basic income—after these news headlines with Mark Mericle.” (c. 1:06)

[KPFA News Headlines omitted by scribe] (c. 5:45)

“From the studios of KPFA in Berkeley, California this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. My name is C.S. Soong.

“It may sound weird. It may sound utopian. But an unconditional basic income is what many people have been advocating for years. You would not have to work to get this income. Everyone would be entitled to it. And, in some scenarios, it’s enough to live on.

“So, what explains the appeal to many on the Left of the basic income? Why have some conservatives and libertarians embraced the idea? Would the economy collapse because most people would stop working? And to what extent would the adoption of an unconditional basic income facilitate or fuel a transition away from capitalism?

“Erik Olin Wright is a leading proponent of a basic income and a prominent radical scholar. He’s a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And his books include: Understanding Class; Alternatives to Capitalism; and Envisioning Real Utopias.

“When Erik Olin Wright joined me in KPFA’s Berkeley studios, I asked him when the notion of a basic income first caught his attention.” (c. 7:03)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 8:30)

C. S. SOONG: “So, in titling their paper The Capitalist Road to Communism, were they suggesting, then, that something could be done within the framework of capitalism to move society in a communist direction?” (c. 8:46)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: ” [SNIP] ” (c. 10:00)

C. S. SOONG: “So, what would an unconditional basic income, what would it, basically, entail?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Alright. Well, the first thing to note is that the idea of unconditional basic income comes in a variety of flavours. And, depending upon which flavour, it means different things.

“For some people, an unconditional basic income is really a bare minimum survival income. You know? To use a kind of metaphor, you don’t starve if you have a basic income.

“Most progressives, who embrace the idea, think of it as a more generous idea, that a true unconditional basic income enables you to live at a culturally-acceptable decent standard of living, which would include, therefore, enough income to have recreation, but a kind of no frills version. So, you can perfectly, comfortably, get by with it. But, if you really want to live a more extravagant lifestyle, then you have to earn additional income one way or another.

“So, that’s how I like to think of it. Certainly, for the purposes that I defend an unconditional basic income, it’s above a survival level.” (c. 11:14)

C. S. SOONG: “And who, in your idea of a basic income, who provides this income and how often?”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Well, income means it’s a flow. So, it’s more of a practical than a principled question of whether it’s providing it, so to speak, on a weekly or monthly basis. Some versions give you an annual lump sum. I think that’s probably not prudent, just because of people’s incapacity to budget well.

“So, [chuckles] you know, you think of it as a paycheck. So, paychecks typically come on biweekly or monthly bases. It would be a flow of income along those lines. (c. 11:49)

“It’s provided by the state. And it’s paid for through taxation. [2] Everybody gets it, everybody. Bill Gates gets an unconditional basic income.”

C. S. SOONG: “It doesn’t depend on whether you work or any other criterion.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Right. Crucially, it doesn’t depend on how much money, how rich you are. The unconditionality has, both, a moral component—you don’t have to be a good person to get it—and it has an economic component—it’s not means tested.

“Now, of course, the taxes needed to pay for an unconditional basic income for Bill Gates are gonna go up by many orders of magnitude, more than the basic income he receives. So, Bill Gates would be a net contributor. And there’s lots of details about how that works.

“One should think of it in the same way we think of unconditional, or used to think, perhaps, of unconditional basic education. Everybody gets it. Some people are net contributors. That is, their taxes go up in order to pay for public education by more than they receive in public education. But that’s seen as okay because it’s a public good; and it makes for a better society, if everybody gets a basic education.

“Well, a basic income has a bit of that character. Everybody benefits from it, even if you’re a net contributor because it creates a different kind of society, a society in which everybody has enough to live a morally decent, or culturally acceptable, standard of living.” (c. 13:20)

C. S. SOONG: “So, what impact would an unconditional basic income have on people’s ability and inclination, really, to take a job, to go into the labour market and work for money?” (c. 13:37)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Well, let me first clarify one other detail about the design. And that is who gets it. So, we said it’s unconditional on means testing or on virtue. There is still the question of whether, for example, it’s a citizen’s income or a resident’s income. That is, anybody who lives in a country, anyone under the jurisdiction of a state should get it. And, if it’s a resident’s income, does it include undocumented workers?

“Now, to some extent these are practical questions, rather than principled questions. I mean practical in the political sense. It’s pretty hard to imagine an unconditional basic income ever passing, you know, even in pretty progressive places, that would include illegal residents. Everybody agrees that tourists shouldn’t get it. [chuckles] You know? [SNIP]

“I think, on principle, it should go to everybody who’s in the economy, in the labour market, in the labour force. That the question of how you deal with the illegal migrants is a separate question, which needs resolution. We need ways of dealing with that. But that the moral principle of an unconditional basic income is precisely that anybody who is on your territory participating in the economic life of your society should unconditionally have their basic needs met.

In the most fundamental sense, I think an unconditional basic income should be for everybody in the world. I mean I think you should have a goal of a basic income.” (c. 15:18)

C. S. SOONG: “Mm. M-hm. Yeah.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “And it should be globally distributed. Well, that’s certainly not on as a practical political move.” (c. 15:25)

C. S. SOONG: “Erik Olin Wright joins us in studio. He is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading radical thinker. I’m C.S. And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. And we are talking, today, about unconditional basic income, which Erik has written a lot about and thought a lot about.

“So, yeah, back to this question of jobs and the necessity of having a job. So, if the basic income, the unconditional basic income gives you, provides you with, kind of, a culturally-acceptable no frills existence, then is the whole idea that people would no longer need to go out onto the labour market?” (c. 16:11)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “The idea is that you don’t need to go into the labour market to get your basic necessities. So, in the United States, roughly speaking—and, you know, it varies from place to place because of cost-of-living—but think of an unconditional basic income as being in the $12- to $15-thousand-dollars-a-year range, roughly speaking, which would mean if, um, two adults live together, they have a household income of $30,000. You’d have to think through the details of children. You know? Do you get a partial income? How do you do it? Again, those are important details. You can put those to the side.

“So, just take a couple. $30,000 dollars in most places in the United States, you can live okay.

“But most people probably want more income than $30,000. So, there’ll be at least some reason why many—I think most people—will want to gain additional earnings.

“With an unconditional basic income, as soon as you earn additional income, you start paying taxes on the additional. There’s no, the unconditional basic income isn’t taxed. It’d be, kind of, directly. If all you live on is the basic income, you don’t pay taxes, income taxes, on that. But you start paying taxes on any earnings above your basic income.

“The tax rates will be higher. You have to figure out exactly where the cut point is, where you become a net contributor, rather than a net beneficiary.

“But there’s no disincentive to work. That is you’re not—the first $10,000 you earn above your basic income is not gonna be taxed at 80%. You know, it’ll probably have a 15% or 20% income tax rate on the first $10,000 you earn above a basic income.

“So, the first thing to note is there is not a disincentive to work.

“And it’s only people whose life plans are consistent with $15- or $30 thousand, in a couple, whose life plans are consistent with that level of earnings who will say: That’s all I want.

“Now, there will be people, certainly, for whom that’s true.” (c. 18:15)

C.S. SOONG: “But, if they think that way, that is a disincentive to work. I mean a lot of people are worried that so many people will take themselves out of the labour market that the economy might even collapse.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “So, just to be kind of technically precise, a disincentive means you’re punished if you work. This would—”

C.S. SOONG: “Gotcha.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “—mean a lack of an incentive to work for them. Right? So, they don’t feel any incentive to work ‘cos they feel no need to work. But there’s no disincentive to work.

“With means tested anti-poverty programmes there’s an actual disincentive to work because you lose your benefits if you work.”

C.S. SOONG: “Right.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Okay. Well, there’s no disincentive, then, to work.

“Yeah, so a basic income is an unworkable plan if it’s the case that the large majority of people really have as their deepest longings to be couch potatoes.

“So, you know, if the human spirit, contrary to what many of us believe, is really profoundly lazy, in the sense that we don’t care about creativity—we don’t care about making a contribution to our world and leaving our stamp in some way or other, we really just wanna watch soap operas—so, if that is what we are at our essence—you give people $15,000 dollars and everybody stops working—the system collapses.

“Well, I’m being sarcastic. You know?”

C.S. SOONG: “Sure.”

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “This is a caricature. There will be some people, though, that will absolutely live a life of leisurely indulgence.

“Philippe Van Parijs, one of his earliest and terrific pieces on this is called ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’ ‘Should Surfers Be Fed?’ And it’s basically raising the standard big objection to basic income that it will mean that people who work hard and generate the income that gets taxed for a basic income will be subsidising beach bums.” (c. 20:13)

C.S. SOONG: “But you could, certainly, maybe, with a basic income you could be a beach bum; but you could also be productive in a way, that’s not profitable to you—right?—that doesn’t involve working for money.

“So, for example, you talk about, you’ve written about care-giving labour. And the fact is that many care-givers are not compensated at all. Well, this will allow them to do work. And, you know, this is not couch potato work. So, they’ll do work. That kind of work, they won’t have a job for money, for pay. And, so, how does that work in the context of basic income and to what extent is that a positive thing in your eyes?” (c. 20:53)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Of course, it’s an absolutely positive thing. [SNIP] And it would lead to an absolute expansion and enrichment of the arts.” (c. 23:46)

C.S. SOONG: “What about the situation of paid workers? [SNIP] ” (c. 23:47)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: ” [SNIP] “(c. 26:01)

C.S. SOONG: “I’m C.S. This is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. Erik Olin Wright joins me. He is Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And he’s author of many books, including Understanding Class, Envisioning Real Utopias, and Alternatives to Capitalism: proposals for a democratic economy with Robin Hahnel.

“And I, and Erik, want you to know that many of Erik’s books are available for free online. We’ve put a link on our web page at KPFA.org. Just go to KPFA.org/programs and click on Against the Grain; and you’ll find a link to Erik’s website, where you’ll find PDF links to many of his publications.

“So, essentially, what you’re saying is that workers have more power, they have greater leverage in relation to employers under a system with unconditional basic income. And is that part of the reason? Well, how big a part of the reason that you support unconditional basic income is this? That there are unequal power relations in society and that an important goal of movement for social justice ought to be to adjust and transform those power relations.” (c. 27:22)

DR. ERIK OLIN WRIGHT: “Yes, certainly. [SNIP] ” (c. 29:10)” (https://lumpenproletariat.org/2016/04/05/sociologist-dr-erik-olin-wright-on-a-guaranteed-income-for-all/)

More Information

• partial transcript, https://lumpenproletariat.org/2016/04/05/sociologist-dr-erik-olin-wright-on-a-guaranteed-income-for-all/

Photo by rosalux-stiftung

The post Erik Olin Wright on models for a Post-Capitalist Unconditional Basic Income appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Wouter Tebbens, from the Free Knowledge Institute, interviews our colleague David Bollier. You can find the original here.

On October 1st I had an interview with David Bollier. Given his decade long work on the commons, as researcher and activist, author of books like Viral Spiral and in particular his work on Laws and the Commons, I thought that his perspective would be meaningful for our research in the DiDIY project. In particular for our work on rights and responsibilities, but also more in general to the various workpackages that make up the project.

Bollier’s previous work on law for the commons was his book Green Governance (2013), co-authored with Burns Weston, professor of Law at the University of Iowa, on the Commons Law Project. More recently, Bollier wrote a memo “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”

That memo starts «Although it is customary for mainstream economists and politicians to consider the commons a failed management regime – the “tragedy of the commons” – it is in fact a pervasive and highly generative system for meeting people’s needs. More: commons tend to function in more culturally satisfying, ecologically responsible ways, which is more than can be said for conventional markets and government systems.«

In the context of the DiDIY project we’re exploring the legal and ethical challenges, among other dimensions, to see how these challenges could best be addressed. In particular because the rise of low-cost digital fabrication technologies and microelectronics have made it possible for people to engage in small scale (as small as 1) production of advanced goods and solutions connected to the Internet. As this new world is unfolding, we are witnessing many of the legal foundations based on technologies from years or centuries ago are being challenged. In short new legal foundations might benefit from a commons perspective.

And let’s be honest, taking the commons perspective isn’t very strange. The paradigm of the commons, and its governance models, are in the elevator again, after centuries of repression and oblivion. Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 for her lifelong research on the commons; the Internet is based on open standard protocols that are governed as a commons, while the Encyclopedia Brittanica stopped the presses in 2012, opening the way for the commons-based Wikipedia. And let’s not forget the Free Software movement (a.k.a. Open Source) that has been growing steadily over the last 30 years, so much that there’s hardly any computer user that doesn’t use any piece of it.

Also the rise of 3D printing was spurred when in 2005 the first issued patent of fused filament printing expired, and in particular because of a project called RepRap, a project that started sharing its design files and instructions under a free license. Something we can now call Open Source Hardware, which forms part of the digital commons. When we talk about low-cost digital fabrication technologies and microelectronics, RepRap and Arduino are one of the first examples that come to mind, both of which use commons governance models and free licenses.

As a matter of fact in the Knowledge Framework that we’re developing at the DiDIY project, to define what Digital DIY really is, the sharing of knowledge is considered foundational for what Digital DIY really is about. And we acknowledge that while not all Digital DIYnecessarily has to be adhere to open source principles, it certainly is often the case.

The questions that we have refer to what norms can we develop to address the challenges. Activities like engaging in self-repair may challenge various exclusive rights like patents. We agree that fair use exemptions may apply and we might need to reclaim the right to repair (see my post here). But however intuitive this claim, it doesn’t really solve the bigger question of protecting the commons – in this case the hardware design commons.

Says David: «I have found that one of the biggest problems in “digital law” is “jumping the tracks” of the conventional policy discourse — a move that is essential in developing a richer commons-based orientation and logic. It is a difficult task because mainstream policy considers its categories of discussion to be self-evident and non-controversial (as it quietly limits the scope of debate). Commoning, collective “property” and “social norms as law,” are generally “incomprehensible” to the guardians of state law, which is not an accident. State law wants to focus on individual property rights, market exchange and state regulatory authority — and not a reformulation of governance and individual sovereignty.

To develop a functional commons law therefore requires one to “go meta” — to step outside of the existing foundational structures and discourse, and to develop a different language and even ask “what is law?”

I think that we commoners — free culture, open design, open source hackers and countless others — need to self-consciously imagine and assert a new body of “law” that is based not only on conventional state law but also on social norms and architectures of code. In short, a new typology of law itself. (Old-style law will never make an adequate account of the fluid, informal and dynamic social “rules” that any community will negotiate and embrace as its unwritten ethic.)»

While the digital commons uses a smart hack – of copyright-based licenses that enable the sharing based on exclusive copyrights, such as the copyleft GPL – David expresses also criticism on the libertarian position of many of the free/open leaders. «Here is where the commons discourse may help sharpen the implications of the two worlds — e.g., libertarian freedom tends to devolve into capitalist centralization and consolidation, as we’ve seen on the Internet; commoning tends to enshrine a more durable form of “freedom.” Can commoners put forth a strong counter-narrative along these lines?»

David presents in his memo about 60 projects that illustrate the infrastructure and organisational prototypes that are being formed to lay the foundations of such new commons oriented society. The examples are set forth in a wiki at the Commons Transition Plan website. We discuss some of the more important ones.

Online collaborative communities

Digital platforms are also incubating some innovative new organizational forms. One of the

most intriguing is the Open Value Network (OVN), which has been described as an “operating system for a new kind of organization” and a “pilot project for the new economy.” OVNs consist of digital platforms that facilitate new modes of open, decentralized and self-organized social governance, production and livelihoods.

Two of the leading OVN projects, Sensorica and Enspiral, are organized in ways that let anyone to contribute to the project, and be rewarded based on their contributions, as measured by actual contributions, experience and other collectively determined criteria.

Unlike “conventional commons” that tend to eschew market-based activity, open value networks have no reservations about engaging with markets; OVNs simply wish to maintain their organizational and cultural integrity as commons-based peer producers. This means open, horizontal and large-scale cooperation and coordination; responsible stewardship of the shared wealth and assets while allowing individual access, use, authorship and ownership of resources “where appropriate”; careful accounting of individual “inputs and outcomes” via a common ledger system; and the distribution of fair rewards based on individual contributions to the project.

Some notable keywords for describing OVNs: equipotentiality, anti-credentialism, self-selection, communal validation and holoptism.

Sensori.ca is in particular an interesting case for DiDIY, as it’s community/business performs research and development of open source hardware in sensor systems.

Open Cooperatives

Sometimes the convergence is new territory to both parties: digital commons trying to protect their shared resources are starting to engage with the co-operative movement in trying to develop new organizational models for cooperatives – “open co-operatives.” One example is the «omni-commons» network of the Cooperative Integral Catalana (CIC), which sees itself as a strategic

intermediary for commoners in dealing with state taxes and regulations and with complex legal and bureaucratic issues. CIC also provides financial support to such enterprises. Some CIC members and other partners are now launching FairCoop and FairCoin in an audacious attempt to invent a new global financial system. Las Indias, rooted in the Basque Country is another example, which has a guild-like structure producing digital commons, allowing new members to work in their network of cooperatives after an initial acquaintance period.

Michel Bauwens, the Belgian peer-to-peer theorist and co-founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, who partners with Bollier in the Commons Strategy Group, has built a strategic alliance with CIC and FairCoop. Bauwens considers crucial the building up of political and economic structures that empower people to make a living participating in the commons (see video interview).

Blockchain based distributed applications

Blockchain technologies such as pioneered by Bitcoin are now laying the foundations for really decentralised network based infraestructures. «Although Bitcoin itself has been designed to serve familiar capitalist functions (tax avoidance, private accumulation through speculation), the blockchain ledger is significant because it can enable highly reliable, versatile forms of collective action on open networks.» French-Italian researcher Primavera Di Filippi is investigating the concept of “governance-by-design” as it relates to online distributed architectures at Harvard Law School. One of her interests is a project called Ethereum. This is a blockchain based distributed platform, run by its peers, on top of which one can run distributed applications, SmartContracts and more. When it was crowdfunded in 2014 I was among the first to participate in its so called «genesis sale», precisely because the interesting new opportunities – and challenges – it promises to bring. By taking out intermediaries and trusted third parties it promises to unleash so much value.

One of the new concepts is Smart Contracts which are coded and computer executed contracts. According to the agreed smart contract, when certain conditions are met, it will execute the agreed-upon actions, for example, pay the agreed-upon amount when a product is handed over to the buyer, upon confirmation by the shipping company. Middlemen like eBay could be bypassed through this so called «trustless» technology – because of the decentralised blockchain. A more interesting example is cited by David. «Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt has proposed using blockchain technology to create distributed networks of solar power on residential houses coordinated as commons. The ledger would keep track of how much energy a given homeowner generates and shares with others, and consumes. In effect the system would enable the efficient organization of decentralized solar grids and a “green currency” that could serve as a medium of exchange within solar microgrids or networks, helping to propel adoption of solar panels.»¹ Also electronic voting could be done in a safe and auditable way, on top of such distributed ledger.

A recently released report suggests that blockchain technology could provide a critical infrastructure for building what are called “distributed collaborative organizations” (sometimes “distributed autonomous organizations”). These are essentially self-organized online commons. A DCO could use blockchain technology to give its members specified rights within the organization, which could be managed and guaranteed by the blockchain. This set of rights, in turn, can be linked to the conventional legal system to make those rights legally cognizable.»

Commons based licenses

The free licenses as pioneered by the Free Software movement, flipping «all rights reserved» into «all rights reversed», based on current copyright legislation have been used in virtually all domains of knowledge by now. From software, to data, content of all forms, learning materials, hardware designs and diagrams etc. Typically free/open licenses guarantee the existence of four freedoms, 1) to use for any purpose, 2) to study how it works and adapt it to your needs, 3) to copy and share, and 4) to distribute modified versions. These licenses are arguably the basis for the commons governance in collaborative peer production communities generating their commons resources.

However, as David points out, we have seen how major companies, from IBM to Google and Facebook simply exploit these digital commons to have free of charge resources to make their corporate controlled platforms more valuable. Bauwens and the P2P Foundation consider that the commoners don’t protect their self-built resources well enough and have been working on so called «commons reciprocity licenses». Dimitry Kleiner introduced in an essay published in 2007 the first of this kind of license, the CopyFarLeft, which basically intends to protect the commons from market appropriation by non-commoners. In short, it is a modified CC BY-NC-SA license that allows commercial usage only when 1) You may exercise the rights granted in Section 3 for commercial purposes only if:

• you are a worker-owned business or worker-owned collective; and
• all financial gain, surplus, profits and benefits produced by the business or collective are distributed among the worker-owners

I remember that when FKI co-organised the Free Culture Forum in 2009 we debated with Kleiner the possible implications of such license. The Free Software and the Free Culture movements have not adopted the suggested license, probably because a large part of their constituency are not «worker-owners» clause and therefore they would fall out of that commons.

Kleiner and Bauwens worked together to draft a next version, the Peer Production License (PPL). This kind of licenses makes sense for worker-owner collectives willing to produce digital commons, where there is no need to be compatible with existing types of free/open digital commons, such as Wikipedia. Otherwise license incompatibility will occur, which can only be solved if there is political will inside the communities to change license conditions. Remember that Wikipedia was initially licensed under the GNU FDL, and only after the FSF changed the FDL’s conditions through a new version, could the Wikipedia be double licensed also under the CC BY SA license.

A Commons Based Reciprocity License (CBRL) could be an instrument for designers and developers to share their works while assuring commercial rights for the community. It can work on a small scale. But in order to avoid incompatibilities, I would argue, that it could work on a much bigger scale, once global communities have global economic structures, such as the open cooperatives like FairCoop is setting up. Then commercial benefits could be divided among the participating members according to the formulas used by an Open Value Network. Then I can foresee viral effects taking place as we have seen in the usual copyleft licenses underpinning large parts of the Free Software ecosystem.

Network effect and Antitrust legislation

«Many have observed», says David, «that digital networks are subject to the so-called “power law”, in which a handful of players dominate a given online-space» In other words, the network effect applies. With the increase of the number of users or nodes in the network, the value created rises exponentially. This feature explains why most people still use a particular kind of Office suite on their PCs, not because it’s the best or has an especially high value for money compared to other Free Software variants. This is also the reason why the EC brought a case against Microsoft for its dominant position and finally ordered it to offer its operating system without Windows Mediaplayer (so-called unbundling), making server protocol information available and imposing several fines totalling 1.637 million Euro. EC Commissioner Neelie Kroes stated: «The Commission must do its part…..It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology – jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession».

What can be inferred from this example is that the network effects in digital networks can facilitate first movers to dominate a market against the interest of the public. Antitrust or competition laws can and should be helpful in restoring the market. We should observe that digital networks of an open nature, using Open Standards and Free Software don’t have this problem, as any party can participate in the market on equal conditions (notice the Internet Protocols, that can be implemented by anyone). David suggests that new types of antitrust legal doctrines should be developed to, for example, convert dominant platforms into a public utility. Facebook could be a candidate for that, possibly Twitter and many others. Possibly this is an idea we should keep in mind for the Internet of Things, where many proprietary standards are evolving that have the potential to stiffle competition and diversified innovation. We can then imagine that antitrust legislation might be used to force owners of dominant protocols to standardise them as Open Standards, leveling the playing field for any actor.

Unconditional Basic Income

While more and more people engage in contributing to the digital commons and access to knowledge in general is exponentially rising, this doesn’t necessarily generate an income for them. Sure, participants in the Free Software ecosystem have shown that they can make a living providing value added services in the market (such as training, consultancy, custom-made development etc). But Wikipedians don’t typically have that possibility. Additionally, when technological innovations make production more efficient, less labour is needed, and more unemployment results. Basic Income schemes are one of the ways to solve this and are experimented with in a growing number of places.

As an American, David is envious of Europe for its initiatives in this area. However, the first example is the Alaska Permanent Fund, a state-chartered trust that is authorized to collect, manage and distribute revenues from oil drilled on state land, on behalf of Alaska residents. Each household gets a dividend of between $1,000 to $2,000 per year from corporations that extract oil on Alaska state lands. It is still unclear what the best way forward will be, to organise this at the local level, nationally, globally, by the state or by communities and where exactly the funds for such dividend could come from. Therefore it is interesting to see various different models being experimented with these days. Rather different is the openUDC project (UDC stands for Universal Dividend Currency), which generates an equal monthly dividend for each member from a slow increase of the monetary mass.

We may conclude that our society is in transformation on virtually all fronts. New ways of producing value come with new organisational models and need a new social contract, new structures of norms and new laws. While David focuses more at the social side, a person like Jeremy Rifkin reaches similar conclusions from economic analysis. Rifkin argues in his latest book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society that people and things will be connected in one global Internet of Things, driving marginal costs down to zero, and spawning a hybrid economy partially capitalist, partially commons. Therefore commons laws will become more important, on the one hand based in community norms and governance systems and on the other, creative hacks of law synchronised with the existing legal system.

I’ll have to stop here for now, but recommend anyone to read David Bollier’s memo “Reinventing Law for the Commons.”

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