Comments on: The Pirate Party’s solution for the global job crisis: valuing the swarm economy

By: happyseaurchin

happyseaurchin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:05:02 +0000

@shane: your stat suffers from the condition that nearly all stats do… i believe there are many on the planet now who work as long as 17 hours a day…

By: Shane

Shane — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 05:10:55 +0000

The issue is how to value labor that adds to the commons, particularly knowledge or software. It seems there are three choices: (A) No IP, (B) The current time-limited patent/copyright/tm system, or (C) a new model. Choice A does nothing to incentivize adding value to the commons, but maintains freedom and increases productivity in some cases – for example look at free software and the SaaS industry. Choice B creates incentives and time limits avoid the long-term anti-commons tragedy that would occur with perpetual IP. However, Choice B is subject government monkey business and restricts access/usage of knowledge. Additionally, people dislike IP in biotech where restricted rights on medical treatments seem cruel. Choice C is really a mystery. Can anyone envision a parsimonious legal contract that strikes the right balance? I have some ideas, but none that I like.

The article bounces around talking about basic income and work hours regulation, which is a completely different economic and political topic. Believe me, they cannot and should not be intertwined with solving the IP problem. That basic income would create unemployment only among inert workers is silly. Inert workers are passed along until they find suitable work in agriculture, steel, military etc. where the labor component is unavoidable. Well, this is true in US,CA,AU,HK,SG,CH,BS where welfare is meager, but probably not some parts of Europe.

I’m always surprised how work hours decreased in the 1800s from 17 hours per day to 10, but only from 10 to 8 in the last century – probably high taxes, regulation, holidays, vacations, schooling, etc. Or maybe it’s rampant consumerism!

By: happyseaurchin

happyseaurchin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:35:24 +0000

i prefer flocking
rather than swarming

there must be a better word
swarming indicates hive mind in some way
flocking conjures up starlings and swallows as well as geese migrating
what of fish schools or herds of antelope?

multi-agent modelling
mam

confluence is the more abstract metaphor
which also implies convergence of course

please shift from swarm 🙂

By: Sepp Hasslberger

Sepp Hasslberger — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:46:06 +0000

How we pay for a guaranteed basic income is entirely a question of how we look at money.

If we can take tens of billions of funds to give to the banks for *no* return in terms of the real economy, we certainly can give everyone a basic income for a fraction of that amount, with real return in terms of increased economic activity (people can spend again) and quality of life (they don’t have to live under the bridges any more).

It really depends whether we consider the abstraction of financial markets to have more importance than the real economy of people working, having a home, having to eat and to live and to enjoy. As long as the financial world is considered to be of paramount importance, we will throw all our resources in that direction. Finance should properly be at the *service* of the people economy, not the other way around.

By: Cheshiremythos

Cheshiremythos — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:54:17 +0000

The biggest questions that I can think of are how do we pay for it and/or how can we manage to enact this idea on a national or regional scale? The idea works great from a local perspective really because shipping food around is easy and you can use the unemployed locals to help build basic housing. I think it should be a bottom up organization personally, getting the local groups started and then finding surplus and where it is needed.

Despite asking the question of how to pay for it I think that we should be looking at how to cut out the idea of ‘cost’ altogether by working this into the idea of non-paid work (The farmers and builders should be the first people to get this swarm wage because they are the first contributors).

By: Sepp Hasslberger

Sepp Hasslberger — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:01:59 +0000

This is certainly an important discussion to have.

As industry is no longer the driving force in economics, and as there is less and less need for human contribution, the question indeed becomes: Where do we send the people that are left over? Nowhere to go, but into the swarm economy. And in order to do so, we need to provide for basic sustenance, a “basic, unconditional income for every citizen”, and reward only the individual’s contributions to actual for-profit economic activity.

Great article!