| New Civilization News: Marxism, Open Source and New Economy |
Category: Social System Design 14 comments
22 Sep 2004 @ 02:37 by othomas : Gift economy, Open source 22 Sep 2004 @ 09:14 by Lance @24.19.204.182 : Who created this oracle? >> Question .. why did the creators of this network want to give it to us? Perhaps when it becomes a common, indispensable part of our lives, the network can be monitored, metered and billed by the packet. Another question is who invented the Internet? 22 Sep 2004 @ 10:50 by ming : Gift economies It becomes easier to practice a gift economy the more ephemeral (light, cheap) the things we need are. It is harder to be altruistic if it requires a lot of hardship. But if the barrier is set low enough, most people would choose to do something nice for others. These days there are lots of people who think they can spare a computer to be a server that provides some public service. And if it doesn't get too big, the internet conectivity is easy to donate too. The same people might not feel comfortable if it required five servers, or if the bandwidth requirements were several megabits per second. But there's a threshold below which it is easy to provide services as a gift. I wrote this blogging software. In part because I wanted it myself. And it was not much harder to make it available to a few hundred other people at the same time. OK, I've also put a lot of work over the years into programming the facilities of NCN which is the particular "blogging collective" in question. Incidentally specifically to foster the spirit of freely working together for the common good. But the maintenance costs are so low that it is not a big issue what people actually use it for. This server has existed in one form or another since 1995. For a period of time, I paid heavily for keeping it running: a couple of thousand dollars a month. But today that isn't necessary. For that matter, the current server and the bandwidth are donated. Donated by somebody who has a lot of servers and bandwidth, and with whom I have a bit of goodwill. One server can do a helluva lot. There are several large non-profit sites on this server, and a few dozen commercial ones, and more than a hundred mailing lists, mail service for a bunch of people, streaming video, name services, and many other things. Like, yes, a couple of hundred blogs. Anyway, if it serves up 100,000 pageviews per day, and delivers 10,000 e-mails, that is still rather small potatoes. Part of what keeps the internet running is many instances of the same things. People who put up servers that deliver useful services. Maybe to explore some business idea, maybe because it is fun, or important, or it makes you look cool. And some of the people who give services away might have in mind trying to charge for them later on, or leveraging them into something else. But there are enough choices available that more and more things are moving towards being free. 22 Sep 2004 @ 11:09 by maxtobin : Love your reflections Ming **I need to have food to eat. So does 6 billion other people. What if somebody came up with ways of helping me fill that need on my own. You know, like the plans for a selfcontained hydroponic system I can have in the basement. Some nano-tech replicator would be better of course. But the point is that somebody can come up with a solution I can install locally, rather than me having to be perpetually hooked into a farming, factory, super-market system. A solution that puts the ball in my court. ** We in the Western world are over feed and under nourished! Hydroponics will never do it, the way nature intended us to be fed is the way we must be fed!! Other wise we will find greater and greater degenerate health circumstances. "Farming factory and supermarket system" is the major contributor to the human condition~~~ we are what we eat! Malnutrition is not just a third world problem (I saw a lot of malnourished folks in the US while I was there, and there are many here too), it is not so prevalent where the traditional food chain links grower to consumer in a short and more intimate or time honoured linkage. The future is opened to source and organic just as we was created!!! 22 Sep 2004 @ 12:08 by Peter Turland @82.3.32.71 : Marxism, Open Source and New Economy Nice article Ming, you address some of the difficult issues of self interest versus common interest. Everybody uses language in a self referential way - we cannot help it. One of the best examples for this being the term 'work' if work is defined as 'The expenditure of energy, to the benefit of others that cannot be achieved by machinary and automation' then not many people actually do any 'work'. If the real 'work' was shared out amongst the (sic) working population, then we could probably achieve the same amount of *real* wealth by working only a day a week each. What makes it even crazier people would probably do the real work for nothing out of boredom. Design it, build it (or grow it) and deliver it, the rest is information and we have computers to process that information. Most people seem to spend most of their lives rushing around going no where, in terms of being any real use to society in general. I spent twenty years driving a truck so I know what I am talking about. Peter 22 Sep 2004 @ 14:04 by ming : Going nowhere When I worked for a number of years in an L.A. downtown highrise, I'd look down at the freeways from out my window. And from 20 stories up it looks really non-sensical. There's a perpetual rush hour with six lanes in each direction. Most of those folks spend an hour each way getting where they're going. So, there are accountants and secretaries driving an hour east to be accountants and secretaries. And other accountants and secretaries drive an hour west at the same time, to do the same thing. What a ridiculous waste. And they're all sort of stressed and hurried and think they're working hard. Yet the sum of many of the busy things they do is about zero. 23 Sep 2004 @ 16:27 by qmal : Opening scources After reading this log I see your vision just a little more clearly and you are indeed far along on where and how to apply those pressures and I spoke of on the previous log. I gathered some of these ideas and visions that you speak up here from studying your NCN logs and architecture but this clarifies it considerably. The idea of an information central, and all is quite interesting ...excellent. I've previously been considering a number of things to develop personal self sustainability and possibly then, if functional, release that program to the community somehow. So this log furthers my understanding more yet. Design something and release the information that could help people build with that and spread that. I think your right when people figure out how to do everything that corporations are currently bringing to the world that the corporation as it monetary entity will just dissipate. I was saying; apply pressures in the right places. You are already and evolutionary trigger designer. My father helped to start V I T A, Volunteers In Technical Assistance, a group of engineers and other people that design easy to build technology and then take it into the Third World. As a child I had experience and several occasions of actually doing that, going into the Third World to teach people simple technology. It was started in 1961 and they designed simple things like solar cookers that would boil water in five minutes made with aluminum foil, wood and cardboard. Ram pumps that use a lot of water flowing down to pump a little water uphill. Their current project is a low Earth satellite system to bring Internet telephone and other technologies into remote Third World areas. Their objective is not to undercut the corporate world, but just to help people, but I think it probably would do that by default. If people in the third world already have and collectively operated Internet, cell phone and other technologies it's an area the corporate world will not be able to move in so easily. Another project they did was a wind turbines with variable pitch blades, which had only 18 moving parts, it's still in development. The plans for all these things are open source. They have an infrastructure to spread them out. My mom has helped to start a 50 acre co housing community with organic farm called East Lake Commons. This is relatively successful so far. Its designers are members of NCN. I hope I will be able to contribute to the world in these areas as well in some way eventually. I will try a few things perhaps. I'd been around these ideas quite a bit and have tried some of them and the real world. I have already tried a few things like trying to bypass money with simple trade on a personal scale ,but as you say, trade gets a little difficult as far as converting it into very usable things real world, largely because there's not enough and people on board. It got a little frustrating. But I think you're correct, enough people on board, product, services and goods and that system would work quite well. When I was in business I would do a lot of trade, I would trade automotive services for variety of other services, sometimes goods. For instance say like a band that needed work on their van I would trade the work for performance at my sound stage, and then I would get a video of them, which was one of my hobbies at the time. Hard to cover overhead but everybody involved would be satisfied so it was a good thing. Have you heard of the Ithaca dollar system? Your right taking it into the home usable stuff you can do your self. Recently I have been examining the idea of getting off the grid. I am using part of my place here to mass raw materials that I can use possibly to develop some of these ideas and projects. And that's also why I joined global ideas bank when I heard about it. I want the book too. I have started a few projects at home like garden, green house; also I am planning a rooftop garden, and solar electric grid incorporating both car and boat. I guess the next step if I complete that would be to try to talk my neighbors in to a similar set up as well, as a plan of action. I thought about building electric cars or becoming a solar cell distributor /in installer. But I think I am way over trying to run anything like a business. With 30 or $40,000 worth solar cells on my roof I could produce more than enough power for myself and get some to my neighbors. They are already paying $400,000 for larger houses with tiny yards. They could pay 450,000 and never pay and another power bill again as well as have a cooler house and less pollution. And reduce fossil fuel dependency. Just a couple of ideas I have been thinking/ doing. I know what you mean about going nowhere fast. The inefficiencies of the freeway and many things in society. Everywhere you look at current society there some kind of dumb energy arrangement in play. I look across the street and see houses with the huge roofs, that absorb the sun's energy all day long and the owners in turn pay to pump the heat out of their houses. Cars sitting on the freeway with their air conditioners on full are doing the same, idle energy use. The idea that we have to travel all the time to accomplish gatherment of sustaining goods and needs is almost as ridiculous. Everyone has giant refrigerators at their house with expensive defrost features. Large ovens and kitchens which release heat into the house and then the owners in turn have to pay to pump the heat out. Like building the huge roads, which soak up sun all day just because everyone has to get on the freeway at the same time. Idle energy consumptive existence matrix thing going on in a big way today. Going nowhere fast with lot of energy usage is great for the interests that structure ,support that function but it's quite ridiculous from a usability and sustainability perspective. But its convenient, what a farce and most draining and debilitating of our own energies. Really cool Ming, your vision on open source. 24 Sep 2004 @ 05:04 by Conversations with Dina @202.68.147.168 : Link Bytes [trackback]: Some links, 24 Sep 2004 @ 11:36 by ming : Ithaca Hours It should be perfectly feasible to build an alternative currency that works. Particularly because the national currencies by their design are heavily weighted towards benefitting those who have a much bigger stock of them than they need, and most of all the people who've maneuvered themselves into having the monoply on manufacturing them. As opposed to being designed to benefit those who do good work and who desire to exchange it for other good work. Most existing alternative currency systems and barter systems unfortunately don't accomplish much more than being an idealistic demonstration of the fact that one can make alternative currencies. In practicality they mostly end up being sort of inferior substitutes for "real" money. Something that people grudgingly will accept, in small quantities, if you really don't have any cash. Or, at best, a symbol of local pride and benevolence, like accepting rebate coupons that benefit a local school. So, those currencies are now mostly known as complementary currencies, rather than alternative currencies. Because they aren't yet an alternative for when you need to buy a house or a new car. But I sure hope the currency designers will keep trying. Being paid for work and exchanging for goods is only one portion of what money does. So, while several alternative currencies apparently provide superior ways of doing that, they don't yet supply alternatives to what really makes the economy run. The part about making big things happen out of nothing, without doing any real work. 27 Sep 2004 @ 08:06 by Align With The Uni-v.e.r.s.e. @68.3.7.187 : Here, Here, and what about.... Xpertweb and C.H.A.L.I.C.E. ming? What about re-invigorating NCN with some code that networks the existing members together a la RYZE, then figuring out the "proactive money" (chalice) economical 'core' to truly power a new tribe? The Uni-v.e.r.s.e. will do this.....eventually. You could do it quicker! 27 Sep 2004 @ 22:14 by ming : Economic Networking Yeah, I haven't forgotten. Waiting for the right kind of lightning to hit me, I guess. 21 Oct 2004 @ 13:07 by Faré @192.103.2.70 : Transaction costs The expressions that are begging to be entered is that of "transaction costs", and the more general one of "information costs". You're right that (putting aside government privileges for big firms with centralized human resources management), firms exist largely because it is inefficient for people to go look for those to whom they could work most profitably -- i.e. marketing and other administrative costs for your own proficiencies bear a cost. Becoming the salaried worker of a firm is a way to outsource these costs. You could also imaginably have an impresario or some other agency, if your proficiencies were specific enough to mandate individual marketing. In any case, government meddling (aka labor laws) certainly play a role in forcing people to remain "wage slaves", but (many) firms would exist not-withstanding, because they are mutually beneficial to all concerned. 21 Oct 2004 @ 13:11 by Faré @192.103.2.70 : Currencies Alternative currencies, such as e-gold.com, exist. Problem is, by mandating their monopoly currency as "legal tender", mandating accountancy and wage payment according to state regulations in said currencies, levying taxes based on such currency, prosecuting purveyors of alternative currencies (such as the "SEL" in France, and numerous examples in many countries), States enforce use of their own currencies on their territories, even though said currencies are managed in catastrophic ways (see the 1929 crisis, or more recently, the Argentinian crisis, or more generally, inflation). 21 Oct 2004 @ 23:10 by ming : Transactions So, essentially if there were a universal way for individuals or small groups to operate with lower transaction costs, and more flexibility and potential for reaching the right people, so they could do those transactions - then the whole picture might easily change. I suppose the question to solve is how we can cooperate effectively, without it having to be in a corporate employer employee relationship. There obviously are some advantages in scale. But also lots of waste in the bureacracy and slow tempo. So if many people can figure out how to cooperate where it is useful, while remaining flexible, and without introducing unnecessary bureaucracy - then we might have something. The right kind of currency might be a key component in greasing such a machinery. A currency geared specifically towards cooperation between the many. But, yeah, there are some obstacles. Not the least being that nobody quite has figured out how to do that. Other entries in Social System Design 12 Mar 2008 @ 17:14: The Vital Necessity for Agreement 6 Aug 2007 @ 11:40: America The Vindictive 13 Jun 2007 @ 17:47: Scale of confront, including mechanics of polarization 15 Jul 2006 @ 16:05: Global Assembly Progress Report 2 Jun 2006 @ 14:11: Boring or Specific? 19 Apr 2006 @ 12:52: The Global Social Reality 10 Feb 2006 @ 08:13: The true you 7 Jan 2006 @ 12:57: The Unworkable Practice of Permanent Leadership 5 Jan 2006 @ 14:00: Humanity against the Machine 8 Dec 2005 @ 19:57: 5. REVELATION, the Wrong Reality, AUTOMATIC CONTROLS.
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