https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Kardan&feedformat=atomP2P Foundation - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T11:06:22ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.40.1https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Distributed_Biological_Manufacturing&diff=58615Distributed Biological Manufacturing2012-01-23T00:54:06Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>Put forward by Rob Carlson in http://www.synthesis.cc/Biol_Tech_2050.pdf<br />
<br />
By 2050, argues Carlson, we will have renewable manufacturing which means that biology will be used to produce many of the physical things we use today. And because of the declining cost of manufacuring and miniaturization, such production will be localized.<br />
<br />
Summary of the argument: "''The concept is pretty straightforward: Biology is all around us, is often more resource and energy efficient than human industrial processes, and is becoming the subject of an engineering discipline. Because the tools and skills are ubiquitous, biological engineering will be practiced everywhere. There will always be applications where biology isn't the right technology, but where organisms or enzyme systems in tubes can be engineered to produce materials, drugs, and fuels, they will be''."<br />
<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
From Rob Carlson's [http://www.synthesis.cc/World_In_2050.html Biology in 2050]:<br />
<br />
"Increased resource efficiency and biomaterials are only the first steps in a revolution in manufacturing. Beyond using biology as a model for the structure and function of industrial production, the year 2050 will see humans utilizing biology as the means of production itself.<br />
<br />
Whereas most manufacturing today is highly centralized and materials are transported considerable distances throughout the assembly process, in the year 2050 human industry will use distributed and renewable manufacturing based upon biology. Renewable manufacturing means that biology will be used to produce many of the physical things we use every day. In early implementation, the organism of choice will likely be yeast or a bacterium. The physical infrastructure for this type of manufacturing is inherently flexible: it is essentially the vats, pumps, and fluid handling capacity found in any brewery. Production runs for different products would merely involve seeding a vat with a yeast strain containing the appropriate genetic instructions and then providing raw materials. To be sure, there will always be applications and environments where biological fabrication is not the best option, and it is not clear how complex the fabrication task can be, but biology is capable of fabrication feats not emulatable by any current or envisioned human technology. In some ways, this scheme sounds a bit like Eric Drexler’s nanotechnological assemblers[7], except that we already have functional nanotechnology – it’s called biology.<br />
<br />
The transformation to an economy based on biological manufacturing will occur as technical manipulations become easier with practice and through a proliferation of workers with the appropriate skills. Biological engineering will proceed from profession, to vocation, to avocation, because the availability of inexpensive, quality DNA sequencing and synthesis equipment will allow participation by anyone who wants to learn the details. In 2050, following the fine tradition of hacking automobiles and computers, garage biology hacking will be well underway.<br />
<br />
<br />
As the “coding” infrastructure for understanding, troubleshooting, and, ultimately, designing biology develops, DNA sequencers and synthesizers will become less expensive, faster, and ever simpler to use. These critical technologies will first move from academic labs and large biotechnology companies to small businesses, and eventually to the home garage and kitchen. Many standard laboratory techniques that once required a doctorate’s worth of knowledge and experience to execute correctly are now used by undergraduates in a research setting with kits containing color-coded bottles of reagents. The recipes are easy to follow. This change in technology represents a democratization of sorts, and it illustrates the likely changes in labor structure that will accompany the blossoming of biological technology. <br />
<br />
The course of labor in biological technology can be charted by looking at the experience of the computer and internet industries. Many start-up companies in Silicon Valley have become contract engineering efforts, funded by venture capital, where workers sign on with the expectation that the company will be sold within a few years, whereupon they will find a new assignment. The leading edge of the biological technology revolution could soon look the same. However, unlike today’s integrated circuits, where manufacturing infrastructure costs have now reached upwards of 1 billion dollars per facility, the infrastructure costs for renewable biological manufacturing will continue to decline. Life, and all the evolutionarily developed technology it utilizes, operates at essentially room temperature, fueled by sugars. Renewable, biological manufacturing will take place anywhere someone wants to set up a vat or plant a seed.<br />
<br />
Distributed biological manufacturing will be all the more flexible because the commodity in biotechnology is today becoming information rather than things. While it is still often necessary to exchange samples through the mail, the genomics industry has already begun to derive income from selling solely information about gene expression. In a few decades it will be the genomic sequence that is sent between labs, there to be re-synthesized and expressed as needed. It is already possible to synthesize sufficient DNA to build a bacterial genome from scratch in a few weeks. Over the coming decades that time will be reduced to days, and then to hours.<br />
<br />
When molecular biologists figure out the kernel of biology, innovation by humans will consist of tweaking the parts to provide new services. Because of the sheer amount of information, it is unlikely that a single corporate entity could maintain a monopoly on the kernel. Eventually, as design tasks increase in number and sophistication, corporations will have to share techniques and this information will inevitably spread widely, reaching all levels of technical ability – the currency of the day will be innovation and design. As with every other technology developed by humans, biological technology will be broadly disseminated.<br />
<br />
As open-source biological manufacturing spreads, it will be adopted quickly in less developed economies to bypass the first world’s investment in industrial infrastructure. Given the already stressed state of natural resources throughout much of the developing world, it will not be possible for many of those countries to attain first-world standards of living with industrial infrastructure as wasteful as that of the United States. The developing world simply cannot afford industrial and energy inefficiency. A short cut is to follow the example of the growing wireless-only communications infrastructure in Africa and skip building systems to transport power and goods. It is already clear that distributed power generation will soon become more efficient than centralized systems. Distributed manufacturing based upon local resources will save transportation costs, provide for simpler customization, require less infrastructure investment, and as a result will likely cost less than centralized manufacturing."<br />
(http://www.synthesis.cc/World_In_2050.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Examples=<br />
<br />
Example of biofuel developments reviewed here at<br />
http://synthesis.typepad.com/synthesis/2007/06/the_need_for_fu.html<br />
<br />
<br />
=Discussion=<br />
<br />
==Dangers associated with these trends==<br />
<br />
"Distributed biological manufacturing is the future of the global economy. With design and fabrication power spread throughout the world to the extent suggested here, it is necessary to consider possible dangers. The simple answer is that those dangers are real and considerable. This technology enables the creation of new organisms potentially pathogenic to humans, or to animals and plants upon which we rely. It is already clear that the social and biological consequences of extending human life span and human germline engineering will consume considerable public debate time over the next few decades. Moreover, the underlying infrastructure and methods are already so widespread that no one country will be able to manipulate the development of biological technology by controlling the research within its borders. But fear of potential hazards should be met with increased research and education rather than closing the door on the profound positive impacts distributed biological technology will have on human health, human impacts on the environment, and on increasing standards of living around the world. Technology based on intentional, open-source biology is on its way, whether we like it or not, and the opportunity it represents will just begin to emerge in the next fifty years."<br />
(http://www.synthesis.cc/World_In_2050.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=More Information=<br />
<br />
#Other trends in [[Desktop Manufacturing]]<br />
#[[Localization]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Science]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Business]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Encyclopedia]]<br />
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[[Category:Peerproduction]]<br />
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[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Sustainability_Building_Block_Package&diff=58614Sustainability Building Block Package2012-01-23T00:52:55Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
=List 1=<br />
<br />
Defined by Marcin Jacubowski at the [http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Main_Page Factor E Farm Wiki] as the basic building blocks for sustainability.<br />
<br />
<br />
Links to items at http://blog.onevillage.tv/wp/?p=491:<br />
<br />
"1. HABITAT PACKAGE: CEB Press - Sawmill - Living Machines - Modular Housing Units - Modular Greenhouse Units - Solar Turbine CHP System<br />
<br />
2. AGRICULTURE PACKAGE: Modular Greenhouse Units - Orchard and Nursery - Electric Garden Tractor - Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening - Agricultural Micro-combine -Bakery - Dairy - Energy Food Bars - Agricultural Spader - Well Drilling Rig - Freeze Dried Fruit Powders - Hammer Mill -<br />
<br />
3. ENERGY PACKAGE: Solar Turbine CHP System - Compressed Fuel Gas - Inverters & Grid Intertie - Electric Motors/Generators - Fuel Alcohol -<br />
<br />
4. FLEXIBLE INDUSTRY PACKAGE: Multimachine & Flex Fab - Metal Casting and Extrusion - Plastic Extrusion & Molding<br />
<br />
5. TRANSPORTATION: Open Source Car - Electric Motors/Generators - Electric Motor Controls -<br />
<br />
6. MATERIALS: Aluminum Extraction From Clays - Bioplastics"<br />
<br />
<br />
=List 2=<br />
<br />
Provided by Jeff Buderer at http://blog.onevillage.tv/wp/?p=491<br />
<br />
"* Babington Biofuel Burner - The burner is a simple round sphere that allows non-combustable fuels to become atomized through air pressure delivered by two holes drilled in the middle. This allows a low cost system for a relatively complete burn of the waste or bio fuel. The Babington Burner would then be located underneath and through the burning of the liquid fuels would convert the water in the Flash Steam Generator into steam that would then power the Bladeless Turbine.<br />
<br />
* Solar Thermal Generator - Most Solar Thermal systems use expensive parabolic mirrors controlled by expensive tracking systems to move the mirrors during the day with the sun. The power then goes to central point where it either heats oil or a sterling engine. Efficiency is in the range of 25 - 40 percent.<br />
<br />
* Hot Box - Located about three feet underground in a highly insulated box this includes the storages of the hot oils in volcanic salts to conserve the heat during nights and cloudy days and also to have a reserve for additional heating and electrical loads over the normal peak capacity of the Babington and Solar Thermal Generators. Oil from the hot box would circulate through the Parabolic Mirror collecting solar energy to heat the oil to keep the Hot Box at a high enough Temp to maintain a reserve energy capacity to power the Combined Heating & Power System for a time of at least 24 hours.<br />
<br />
* Compressed Earth Block Machine (CEB) - The incredible thing is that there are resources all around us. At Factor E Marcin showed us his progress on the CEB machine which he has built from scratch. The machine is powered by the hydrolics from a multipurpose farm tractor and this includes two hydrolic presses to compress the earth into a block. CEB machines take aspects of several techniques in the alternative building movement. For example, Rammed Earth and Poured Earth building also use subsoil that is compacted together with a Horizontal Ram. The earth is held in place with forms and often cement is added. More “Natural” building techniques such as Cobb includes the mixing of subsoils with straw to provide added strength. CEB like both the above can use subsoils around the building location itself reducing the need for transporting materials which in the age of Peak Oil will be more restricted. Another advantage is it reduced material inputs and increase farm and community self-reliance in what many see as an age of growing instability globally.<br />
<br />
* Solar Bubble System - Solar Bubble Greenhouse Systems includes the use of Passive Solar Energy to heat a greenhouse. The specifics of this inlcude using a industrial strength soap bubble machine to produce bubbles which then fill a approx 20 inch cavity between the outside and the greenhouse providing an insulation protection of the greenhouse in the range of r-20 to r-30. Currently a plastic sheeting is used with a aluminum frame but we are considering the development of a modular system that might make the system longer lasting and easier to construct and dis-assemable. The modular system would include the extrusion of clear plastic panels to form the bubble cavity for the Solar Bubble System and composite panels for the secondary and primary support members. Surplus heat from the greenhouse would go into a geothermal storage system adjacent to the hot box. Similarly the geothermal system would in the winter time function as a back up system to heat the greenhouse on very cold and cloudy days."<br />
(http://blog.onevillage.tv/wp/?p=491)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Design]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Smart_Grid&diff=58613Smart Grid2012-01-23T00:52:41Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>=Definition=<br />
<br />
Tyler Hamilton:<br />
<br />
"The true vision of the smart grid is a self-healing, automated grid that can manage complex flows of electrons, from the hundreds — potentially thousands — of large and small sources of power to the millions of homes, businesses, industrial customers and, potentially, electric cars that require that energy."<br />
(http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/559894)<br />
<br />
<br />
(Please note: "there are over 80 different definitions of the Smart Grid floating around." [http://greenbuildingelements.com/2010/10/08/what-is-the-smart-grid/]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
'''1.''' By the US Dept. of Energy:<br />
<br />
"The Department of Energy breaks this down a lot further, laying out no fewer than 60 specific technologies that fall under the smart grid label (big pdf). These can be loosely grouped into six intersecting categories:<br />
<br />
* One set of technologies — smart meters, programmable thermostats, home automation software, etc. — allows consumers to participate in the smart grid by adjusting their electricity use automatically based on fluctuations in electricity availability or rates.<br />
<br />
* The most desperately needed part of the smart grid are the transmission lines and control software that tie together far-flung renewable energy sources (such as wind and solar) and energy storage devices (such as electric car batteries). Unlike the present crazy quilt system, a true smart grid will be able to move electricity from wherever its being generated to wherever its needed — potentially thousands of miles away — in real time, even parking it in storage for use later if necessary.<br />
<br />
* The smart grid is a communications network, moving information about grid performance, electricity demand and availability, rate information, etc. from point to point.<br />
<br />
* The smart grid is an application platform. Just as the internet allowed services like Amazon.com to spring into existence, the smart grid will allow a host of innovative energy management applications from third parties to be deployed on the network.<br />
<br />
* The smart grid is a set of monitors and automated control mechanisms that respond quickly to service interruptions — whether from natural disasters or purposeful attack — in a self-healing manner."<br />
(http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/doe-report-paints-bleak-picture-of-our-electric-future.ars)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''2.'''<br />
<br />
"There are several features of the Smart Grid that are key to its operation and “smartness.”<br />
<br />
* Smart Meters – These are solid-state, communicate with the utility through radio, and send usage data regularly. Through these meters, the utility can also receive power outage notifications, maintenance requests, and other alerts.<br />
<br />
* Renewable Power Generators - Most people are familiar with these: photovoltaics (solar panels), windmills, fuel cells. The difference is that consumer-provided generators will become an active part of the grid and the utility system as a whole. The solar panel on your roof will eventually generate power for your neighbors.<br />
<br />
* Smart Appliances - One of the basic tennents of the Smart Grid is that consumers will be able to actively manage when they use electricity in direct response to varying costs. In other words, electricity at night will be cheaper than during the day, and consumers will be aware of this and can make educated choices about when they use their power. Appliances will be able to monitor power costs and program themselves to run when power is cheaper. If they have batteries to store power, such as electric cars, then they can actually draw power when it is the cheapest and feed the grid when demand is high.<br />
<br />
* Utility Data Management – With all the information utilities will be receiving from their new meters, they will be better prepared to respond to peak usage times and discover problems before they occur. The system can only produce what power can be used at any given time. Without large banks (or buildings full) of batteries, there is no way to store power that is generated and not used. Surprisingly, at some points in time, too much power is being generated and must essentially be thrown away. With better data, and more consumer generators and storage devices, the utility will have to generate less power, and can store the excess when it is not needed."<br />
(http://greenbuildingelements.com/2010/10/08/what-is-the-smart-grid/)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''3.''' See also: http://www.smartgridaustralia.com.au/<br />
<br />
<br />
=Characteristics=<br />
<br />
'''1.'''<br />
<br />
Jesse Berst, managing director of [http://www.globalsmartenergy.com/ Global Smart Energy]:<br />
<br />
"the smart grid has three parts: '''smart devices, two-way communication''' (which makes those devices smart, and pulls and pushes the telemetry data they collect) and '''advanced control systems and applications''' (which provide the controls to act on the energy demand data that the smart devices provide). But making those three parts work together is where the real work of establishing the smart grid will come into play."<br />
(http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009657.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''2.'''<br />
<br />
From Cisco's [[Connected Urban Development]] project:<br />
<br />
"The main principles of a Smart Grid include:<br />
<br />
<br />
*Demand Management: Reducing electricity consumption in homes, offices, and factories. <br />
<br />
Demand Management includes:<br />
<br />
- Demand Response: During emergency periods of peak energy usage, utility companies send electronic messages to alert consumers about reducing their energy consumption by turning off (or turning down) unessential appliances.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Smart Meters and Variable Pricing: In many areas, electricity prices rise and fall based on demand at that moment. "Smart meters" let consumers shift energy consumption from high-priced periods to low-priced periods (load shifting and shedding).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Smart Buildings with Smart Appliances: Traditional, stand-alone building control systems are now converging onto a common ICT infrastructure that allows appliances (heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, and so forth) to "talk" to each other, coordinating their actions and reducing waste.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Energy Dashboards: Online energy dashboards provide real-time visibility into energy usage while suggesting ways to reduce consumption.<br />
<br />
<br />
* Distributed Energy Generation: Encouraging homes and businesses to install their own renewable energy sources. <br />
<br />
Distributed Energy Generation includes:<br />
<br />
<br />
- "Microgeneration": Some homes and offices generate their own electricity locally using small equipment (wind generators, photovoltaics, fossil-fuel generators with heat reclamation). Many of these devices are now as affordable as energy from utilities, and produce 50 percent less greenhouse gases.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Storage and Hybrid Electric Vehicles: Owners of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) can buy energy when it is inexpensive, store it in batteries, and sell it back to the grid when the price goes up. PHEV drivers hope to arbitrage the cost of power, while utilities see fleets of PHEVs supplying power to reduce peaks in demand.<br />
<br />
<br />
* Supply-side Efficiency: Using IT to improve control of the electric distribution grid. <br />
<br />
Supply-side Efficiency includes:<br />
<br />
<br />
- Grid Monitoring and Control: Utilities are installing sensors to monitor and control the grid in near real time to detect faults earlier and provide time to prevent blackouts.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Grid Security and Surveillance: Utilities are installing surveillance sensors to monitor and secure unmanned, remote equipment that is vulnerable to terrorism."<br />
(http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/connected_and_sustainable_energy)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''3.'''<br />
<br />
"* “Enables active participation by consumers.<br />
<br />
* Accommodates all generation and storage options.<br />
<br />
* Enables new products, services, and markets.<br />
<br />
* Provides power quality for the digital economy.<br />
<br />
* Optimizes assets and operates more efficiently.<br />
<br />
* Anticipates and responds to system disturbances (self-heals).<br />
<br />
* Operates resiliently against attack and natural disaster.”<br />
(http://greenbuildingelements.com/2010/10/08/what-is-the-smart-grid/)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Discussion=<br />
<br />
<br />
==Why We Need a Smart Grid==<br />
<br />
Explanation at http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/smart-grid-part-1-the-need<br />
<br />
<br />
==Smart Grids are Resilient==<br />
<br />
James Cascio:<br />
<br />
"Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected loss of components.<br />
<br />
A good comparison of the two models can be seen in the contrast between the current electricity grid (centralized, with limited diversity) and the "smart grid" model being debated (decentralized and highly diverse). Today's power grid is brittle, and the combination of a few local failures can make large sections collapse; a smart grid has a wide variety of inputs, from wind farms to home solar to biofuel generators, and its network is designed to handle the churn of local power sources turning on and shutting off. "<br />
(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)<br />
<br />
==Bill St. Arnaud on Three Generation of Smart Grids==<br />
<br />
"A good example is smart grids with the first generation of smart meters.<br />
The major beneficiary of this technology is NOT the consumer, NOR the<br />
environment - but only the utility. Smart grids help the utility to better<br />
manage peak load and thereby reduce the need to build more power plants. It<br />
does not reduce overall power demand or GHG emissions - it only displaces<br />
them to different periods of the day.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The second generation of smart grids will allow consumers to monitor energy<br />
consumption in real time and thereby reduce their energy bill. There is a<br />
small number of studies that indicate there may be a positive effect here.<br />
But it is too early to tell if this effect will be enduring or simply an<br />
artifact of a committed study group. Nevertheless smart grids of any<br />
generation do NOT reduce GHG emissions in any meaningful way.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Rather than building an expensive SMART grid, we are much better off with<br />
the inefficient STUPID grid we have today. With a stupid grid, and<br />
structural separation of energy supply and infrastructure consumers would be<br />
able to purchase renewable or nuclear power independent of their network<br />
operator. This is possible in Canada, most of Europe and some US states.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Providing incentives for consumers to purchase renewable power (and waste as<br />
much energy as they want) will be much more effective in reducing GHG<br />
emissions than deploying incredibly expensive smart grids which will only<br />
result in marginal gains.<br />
<br />
<br />
I think "third generation" smart grid, independent of the utilities, will play a critical role in reducing GHG emission.<br />
<br />
But the current generation of smart grids and smart meters serve only to benefit the utilities and will have minimal impact on GHG emissions. Reducing GHG emission is the real issue - not energy conservation or efficiency. Even the next second generation of smart meters and grids will largely only benefit the utilities and not have a measurable impact on GHG reduction.<br />
<br />
<br />
In terms of impact, a much better investment in the short term, than smart grids in reducing GHG emission would be:<br />
<br />
(a) to build higher capacity transmission lines so that we can bring renewable energy to consumers who want it;<br />
<br />
(b) structurally separate ownership of transmission facilities from power producers;<br />
<br />
(c) introduce concept of network neutrality to electrical transmission systems (which today's smart grid technology much like "intelligent" networks will inhibit); and<br />
<br />
(d) introduce carbon taxes ( or better still carbon credits) to encourage consumers to use renewable energy and adopt energy reduction strategies, and there by demand smart meters to monitor their usage ( the cart following the horse)<br />
<br />
<br />
In terms of smart grids it is essential, in my opinion that we build a smart grid architecture independent of the utilities. The utilities and electrical distribution companies are the enemy for any strategy in reducing GHG emissions. They are married to their dirty coal plants and antiquated network architectures for transmission lines.<br />
<br />
What would a third generation smart grid look like? Here is one possible scenario:<br />
<br />
<br />
The biggest challenge for renewable power companies is establishing direct relations with their customers. Renewable power sources must sell their power to utilities and distribution companies who then bundle their power with more traditional sources to deliver to consumers. In some cases consumers or businesses can pay a premium and buy REPs - renewable energy credits, whose price is supposed to reflect the bundling of new renewable power. And in jurisdictions where there is structural separation they can buy energy directly from ESCOs (energy service companies), some of whom specialize in delivery of green power.<br />
<br />
The challenge for renewable power companies is linking their production to consumption. Most renewable power is unpredictable in terms of its supply (wind, solar) and so deployment of renewable power has not eliminated the need for traditional coal plants who must stay on line in case of disruption in the renewable source.<br />
<br />
With a third generation smart meter/grid, the renewable power companies would have a direct Internet connection to their customer's power meter, independent of the utility. Such meters already exist. The customer's meter may be "multi-homed" to several different power suppliers such that the customer can switch energy suppliers automatically based on price and availability of power. This will much more effective in reducing GHG than demand displacement systems mart grids that are being advocated today. The tricky part will be negotiating a settlement system between the various power operators and the owner of the transmission lines."<br />
(arch-econ mailing list, October 2008)<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Energy]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Nowtopia&diff=58612Nowtopia2012-01-23T00:48:32Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Book: Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today. Chris Carlsson. AK Press, 2008'''<br />
<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
Chris Carlsson has written a very important book, that is closely related to our aims at the P2P Foundation:<br />
<br />
“Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that is redefining politics as we know it. As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation—technically and socially—for a genuine movement of liberation from market life.<br />
<br />
Nowtopia uncovers the resistance of a slowly recomposing working class in America. Rarely defining themselves by what they do for a living, people from all walks of life are doing incredible amounts of labor in their “non-work” time, creating immediate practical improvements in daily life. The social networks they create, and the practical experience of cooperating outside of economic regulation, become a breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification to which capitalism reduces us all.<br />
<br />
The practices outlined in Nowtopia embody a deep challenge to the basic underpinnings of modern life, as a new ecologically-driven politics emerges from below, reshaping our assumptions about science, technology, and human potential.<br />
<br />
With historical grounding, a toolbox drawing from multiple schools of anti-capitalist thought and theory, and a refreshingly pragmatic approach, Carlsson opens our eyes to the revolutions of everyday life.<br />
<br />
Chris Carlsson, executive director of the multimedia history project “Shaping San Francisco,” is a writer, publisher, editor, and community organizer. He has edited four collections of political and historical essays. He helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass, and was long-time editor of Processed World magazine. “<br />
(http://www.akpress.org/2008/items/nowtopiaakpress)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Review=<br />
<br />
Robert Ovetz:<br />
<br />
"For Chris Carlsson, new forms of resistance have been bubbling just beneath the surface out of sight of not only the mainstream media and social movement watchers but even the left. <br />
<br />
Carlsson’s new book Nowtopia updates Trinidadian theorist CLR James’ idea of the “future in the present”. New self-organized movements of urban gardeners, bike rebels, pirate programmers and, yes, for all their shortcomings even biofuelorganized working class movements. <br />
<br />
Carlsson sees nowtopias as terrains of conflict not over but against work and thus challenge us to rethink ideas of working class organization. Carlsson sees “in the Nowtopian movement not a fight for workers emancipation within the capitalist division of labor…. we see people responding to the overwork and<br />
emptiness of a bifuricated life that is imposed in the precarious marketplace. They seek emancipation from being merely workers.” (p. 5) This is an attempt to articulate a new analysis and understanding of the strategy of self-organization emerging among the working class. <br />
<br />
New emerging forms of resistance to capitalism lies, Carlsson asserts, in how people are attempting to transcend capitalism in the present by evading, reappropriating or subordinating work to more pleasurable community oriented projects. Such projects create new often short lived spaces that are outside or antagonistic to the objectives of control and profits. Nowtopia is packed with thoroughly documented examples of cooperative bike kitchens, urban gardening movements, biofuels coops, and the free software from someone intimately knowledgeable about each of these movements. The fundamental commonality among these nowtopias is their insistence on Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tinkering and inventing “to produce a different way of life. From reinhabiting cities with new transit choices to growing one’s own food in community gardens (challenging private property by making common the garden lands), to grassroots technological movements in fuels, software, and medicine, people are taking initiatives outside of wage- labor and business to make the world we want to live in now.” (p. 52) Nowtopia is a refreshing, accessible and inspiring testament to their both their successes and failures of these projects.<br />
Unlike the recent onslaught of “green economy” mantras that offer remedies to pull global capitalism from its deepening crises, Carlsson seeks to reignite new forms of working class organization. Nowtopia is complimentary to Carlsson’s previous work as co-publisher of the infamous Processed World magazine<br />
and co-originator of the now international Critical Mass bike ride movement. He examines these nowtopian projects in the context of current historical and political conditions to assess their ability to transform work into self-reliance, autonomy and community. Nowtopias are part of a strategy of working class resistance to the terror of the growing insecurity of life in the service economy. Part-time, temporary and contingent work without benefits combined with the growing drudgery of the available work and the realization that work is the fundamental cause of our social and environmental crises. This reorganization of work is increasingly a push factor driving more and more people to find a new ways to work with a sense of meaning, contributing to solutions and to build community. “By describing people who are making practical transformations, and creating new communities in the practice of these activities, I see an emerging type of working-class self-activity, and hopefully, self-consciousness,” Carlsson suggests offering a vibrant new class analysis. (p. 236) <br />
<br />
These nowtopias are hardly “utopian” as the title would seem to suggest. Rather, they can be seen as existing futures in the present always teetering on Faustian choices between selling out, going commercial or getting funded and thereby self-sabotaging their autonomy and dynamism. Some survive, a few thrive principles in tact and most fade away. Those that do blossom and grow, Carlsson insists, are signs of a recomposition of new working class power. The shift to insecure work in the service economy is an attempt of employers to restructure, or recompose, the working class to make it more passive, malleable and profitable. These nowtopian projects are both the source of the crisis leading to such restructuring and existing forms of resistance to it by creating what autonomist theorist Harry Cleaver calls an “infinity of atomistic and molecular rebellions through which people rupture the sinews of the capital-labor relation and create alternative relations—however temporary and limited those ruptures and those alternatives may be.” (p. 44) <br />
<br />
Vacant lot gardening illustrates for Carlsson a case study of the recomposition of working class power happening right now. Harkening back to communal peasant self-sufficiency and more recently victory gardens that kept America from starving during WWII and federally funded garden projects of the 1960-<br />
80s, urban gardens have long been terrains of struggle. <br />
<br />
For Carlsson, urban gardening is a crucial movement because “while contending social forces seek to control land and the political structures that administer it, space is also provided to unregulated social interaction. Gardens are important arenas for multi-generational circuits of communication, memory, and experience.” Urban gardens are resurrecting community between the young and elder generations passing along knowledge of tradition, ways to care for the land, community values and cooperation. In short, nourishing food is being produced and shared outside the circuit of the market thereby reducing the need to work for money to buy it. Meticulously detailing the little known popularity of backyard and community gardening, Carlsson reminds us that “they also grow community” that provide non-monetary sources of wealth. The disinvestment and capital strike in urban America over the past 30 years to undo the gains of the 1960-70s that has shattered our communities “has challenged those people who stay to reinvent the bonds that knit together a community. In the practical work of clearing vacant lots and planting and nurturing gardens, a different kind of working class emerges, independent and self-sufficient, improvisational and innovative, convivial and cooperative, very often led and organized by females.” (p. 89) In urban areas, these gardens become “liberated zones” that are earthen barricades to profit, control and the market. Witness the backlash against gardens in NYC, Fresno and Los Angeles since the 1980s. <br />
<br />
Nowtopias can also lose their potential as new forms of working class self-organization as they become corrupted or de-evolve into commercial ventures. Burning Man, the annual do it yourself art festival in the Nevada desert, is one example in which this can happen. Far from being a free space for art and community experimentation, Burning Man has de-evolved from a free festival on a local beach to an exclusive event with skyrocketing ticket prices, heavy reliance on petroleum and cars, and corporate management. These characteristics lead Carlsson to conclude that the evolution of the festival is the “outcome of a deeper and decades-long process of remolding consciousness in conformity with capitalist values.” (p. 222) Likewise, the Bush administration mandated a rapid expansion of biofuel use triggering exploding food prices, food riots in dozens of countries in 2007-2008, and rampant land speculation. “The bigger problem” with biofuels, Carlsson argues, “is how the growing market penetration of big capital will shape the technology to its own interests.” (p. 177) <br />
<br />
What Nowtopia doesn’t address is the relationship of these temporary ruptures to more predominant forms of working class activity and resistance. How can we link up these many DIY movements and projects to already existing forms of resistance in the workplace, neighborhoods, the watersheds and the streets. How can these linkages strengthen and expand these nowtopias into powerful movements that can both resist and provide spaces for solving real needs for daily needs and community? In otherwords, how do we organize the knitting circles, urban homesteaders and bike kitchens so that they are not only talking with one another but complementing the efforts of those on the streets? While missing from Nowtopia, Carlsson’s Reshaping San Francisco series of talks (and similarly named web project) is a vibrant monthly encounter (which, in full disclosure, I once participated in) among and between circles, projects and movements that makes these exact kinds of circulatory linkages. <br />
<br />
If commentaries on the crisis from the left have mostly emphasized the dangers, Carlsson has identified opportunities and where to look for them. Nowtopia is the place to go for inspiring reports on new forms of self-organized working class movements already simmering just out of our field of sight. Recognizing these and other nowtopias will better prepare us for when and if the bubbles begin to reach the boiling point."<br />
(http://www.commoner.org.uk/?p=89&preview=true)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Excerpts=<br />
<br />
From an article in Antipode journal [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00782.x/full]:<br />
<br />
'''1.'''<br />
<br />
"Nowtopia is a term that attempts to describe the myriad efforts to reclaim and reinvent work against the logic of capital. Nowtopia identifies a new basis for a shared experience of class. Specifically, the exodus from wage labor on one side, and the embrace of meaningful, freely chosen and “free” (unpaid) work on the other. No longer can our waged jobs be assumed to define us, and no longer can they be the primary basis for politics. Precisely because so many people find their work lives inadequate, incomplete, degrading, pointless, stupid and oppressive, they form identities and communities outside of paid work—in spaces where they are not working class. It is in these activities that people, who are reduced on the job to “mere workers”, fully engage their capacities to create, to shape, to invent, and to cooperate without monetary incentive. They “work” or “labor” in a way in which the particular substance of their activity is meaningful. These communities may not look much like the working class organizations of the past two centuries, but it is important to recognize that in this topsy-turvy period of system breakdown and transition, new political forms are emerging to reshape the endless struggle between capital and humanity. In the face of widespread dismissal of nowtopian movements as “lifestyle” politics or irrelevant “dropout” culture, we argue that they are in fact new political forms that are addressing directly many immediate problems of capitalist society.<br />
<br />
Today basic needs are going unmet for millions. Urgent efforts at long-term and medium-term planning to adapt to the increasingly visible collapse of natural systems are rejected out of ideological blindness. But individual human ingenuity flows over government and corporate obstacles. The solutions to social and ecological crises of our time are frequently coming from unwaged work that is done because people want and need it, rather than in hopes of monetary remuneration. Still at the margins of modern life for now, many people and communities are taking more of their time and care out of the market and making ways to live together, to get our needs met and desires engaged, by working together, working hard, and not working for money.<br />
<br />
Nowtopians engage in a wide variety of labor-intensive projects, from organic gardening, bike repair, or coding software, to making music, writing fiction, producing radio shows, or painting a mural. Permaculturists, the quintessential nowtopian technologists, have initiated various epistemological challenges to basic scientific paradigms through their unpaid, passionate work. A semi-conscious war between these life-affirming, self-emancipating behaviors and the coercive domination of money, property, and survival is the kernel of a potentially revolutionary transformation.<br />
<br />
While not sufficient in themselves for the overthrow of capital, these nowtopian practices do, in their rejection of waged labor and the value-form, develop a form of life that is directly antagonistic to the internal logic of the capitalist mode of production, and as such are germane to a struggle to destroy capital. Further, they combat the isolation and atomism that has reduced so many social struggles to individualized resistance and consumer politics. This is the same isolation and atomism that produces “free laborers” as a necessary component of the reproduction of labor power for capital.<br />
<br />
Attending to nowtopian practices sets in relief the basic violence at the heart of capitalist production: the process of turning creative, useful human activity into abstract labor dedicated to producing value for people other than those who labor. Marx articulated the “freed” laborer as someone stripped of all their deep implicit connectivity—free from the land and the tools of production, from sustained connections with other humans, and ultimately, from their own labor. And although all waged labor (and the threat of it, if one is un- or under-employed) is subject to this fundamental capitalist violence, anti-capitalists, Marxist theorists, and radicals of all theoretical and practical persuasions have tended to designate particular people and groups as more and less the victims of capitalism. There are undeniable differences in the way the hegemonic global force of capital affects peoples, but there is also a continuity in the global experience of capital. That is to say, there is a continuity to capital, even if it plays out very different moments of its own reproduction in different geographical locations such that it appears to be actually a different entity in different locations (it is important to recognize this geographical cunning of capital). Nowtopia helps us to understand a global continuity of capitalist violence despite geographical difference and uneven development—which is propelled by capital's constant search for spatial fixes (Harvey 1990:196)—because nowtopians are responding to a violence of capital that is not usually considered when assessing the destructive forces of capitalist hegemony. A recognition of the political relevance of the nowtopian impulse is also an affirmation that everyone in capitalist society—regardless of location or lifestyle—has a reason to combat it.<br />
<br />
However, despite the clear emphasis on the leveling effects of capital in terms of the wage relation particularly, many have emphasized the differences in Marx's ontology of labor, particularly that between productive and unproductive labor, in order to deepen exclusions and divisions between the more and less revolutionary parts of the working class. Unproductive labor has been used pejoratively by orthodox Marxists to dismiss a wide variety of workers as politically irrelevant because they do not produce surplus value directly. This old orthodoxy has percolated into the current era among the descendents of Third-Worldist and identitarian movements. In a different move with a similar outcome, many contemporary social activists tend to dismiss so-called “middle class” or more affluent wage workers as political non-entities, because they appear as direct beneficiaries and active supporters of an oppressive social system.<br />
<br />
David Harvie (2007:27) has suggested a different approach which is useful:<br />
<br />
- ''If we understand capital as the separating of worker and capital (or doing and done), and if productive labor is that which produces capital, then we can understand productive labor as those human activities which reproduce this separation and produce it on an expanded scale.''<br />
<br />
<br />
Whereas for most people, “unproductive labor” refers to inefficiency, or maybe to deliberate slacking, Harvie reclaims this concept to refer to work that is carried out primarily for practical purposes, purposes that are not those of capital—that is, what we have called nowtopian and what we might also call activities responding to localized social need. Unlike productive labor, unproductive labor can involve the subjective capacities of the worker to decide for herself what work is actually worth doing. In fact, Harvie (2007:161) concludes:<br />
<br />
the working class (or better, humanity) struggles to be unproductive, to free its activities from value, to go beyond value … that worker who is able to reclaim from the boss minutes, hours, days of her life, that worker who is able to produce as “the activation of his own nature” is a fortunate worker indeed.<br />
We do not necessarily have to agree with Harvie's redefinition of the terms “productive” and “unproductive” to recognize the importance of the distinction towards which they point. Anticapitalist movements often fail to address the significance of “unproductive” labor (labor towards goals that exceed and contradict those of capital) and the problems with “productive” labor (labor that continues to reproduce the value form). Both organized labor and governing socialist or communist parties abdicated decades ago any say over the content and goals of work, and implicitly the content and goals of science and technology, to the initiative of Capital. By the dawn of the twenty-firstt century, this has led to the mind-numbing expansion of useless work, while social needs are neglected and most people's creative capacities are left dormant. People are richly rewarded to create advertising, to invent new “financial instruments”, to design “anti-personnel” bombs, to analyze how to increase credit card debt, and so on. The same society will not spend meaningful resources on early childhood education and denies public schools of the most basic resources. Vast public subsidies pour into agribusiness and oil company coffers while urban gardens are bulldozed to make way for box stores and warehouses, and organic farmers have to sell their unsubsidized products at higher prices. Publicly funded highways continue to cover the land and most cities dedicate more than half their available acreage to parking or moving private automobiles, while public transit is starved of resources and the bicycle is treated as a childish toy instead of a legitimate transportation choice. This is all evidence of a society that in all instances strives to reproduce the dynamic of capital, the value form and waged labor, instead of attending to social need. Nowtopia is not simply a description of everything that is not waged (making breakfast at home is not necessarily nowtopian!), it is a term for work that is done for social and ecological reasons and explicitly not for the proliferation of capital. Of course, since our conception of society and the ecosystem is deeply informed by capitalism, the lines are never clear cut, but that is all the more reason to pay these activities some close attention.<br />
<br />
What makes nowtopians different from “drop-outs” in general, or those communities and peoples that always must constitute the necessary “outside” to capital, is a concerted rejection of and resistance to the value form. It is more than a disdain for the spectacle, or monoculture, because nowtopians reject the preconditions of the reproduction of capital. Other movements that might be considered “drop-out” or “alternativist” that have arisen throughout the history of capital have usually rallied around principles that were tangential to capitalism—for instance, anti-hierarchy, or identitarian power struggles, or a primitivist or Luddite view on technology, or the desire for better “management” of resources and the market. Where all of these phenomena have a deep connection to capital—capital uses and abuses hierarchy, divisions of identity, technological imperialism, etc in order to proliferate—opposition to them does not always pose a direct opposition to capital. The nowtopian impulse, while inchoate and generally blind to its growing political force, cannot be co-opted by capital because it is not-capital. It cannot be co-opted, it can only be destroyed. However, practices arising from the nowtopian impulse that are not in themselves nowtopian can be co-opted, and in so doing the nowtopian drive (the drive to engage, work, labor, without the mediation of exchange) is destroyed or debased. This differs from, say, anti-hierarchical organizing, which in itself can easily slide into the capitalist market in the form of, for instance, collectively owned business models. Nowtopia holds moments of a post-capitalist society (which may or may not have some kind of hierarchy, but cannot have waged labor), and materializes a pure anti-capitalism in the frustration that we cannot truly extricate ourselves from the capitalist system. When nowtopian sentiment grows resistant to its own destruction, when groups refuse en-masse to be pulled back into the realm of exchange, when it is no longer acceptable to support our nowtopian activities with our waged labor—this is when the nowtopian impulse might become revolutionary.<br />
<br />
But it must be understood that wage and the value form are not the primary way in which everyone experiences the violence of capital. As mentioned above, capital also differentiates—the material effects of capital differ drastically over space, time, identity, socio-cultural differences, and much more, and these differences are essential to recognize—not because they are evidence of different capitalisms, but because they show that just as capital temporally and geographically separates different moments in its reproduction while still working in concert, so must all people develop differing strategies to wrest reproduction into their own hands while still working together against the continuities of capital. We have developed many concepts, particularly within the field of geography, to articulate the differences, particularly geographical and spatial differences, produced by capital. However, rarely do we understand how the resistance to capital across uneven geographical, temporal, cultural, political terrain might be linked and be able to function together without suppressing those differences. As Harvey (1982:445) writes at the end of Limits to Capital, “not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use”. That is, it is not only the imperative of global capital to produce new sectors and spaces in which to proliferate its internal logic of the value form—capital also requires ongoing processes of violent dispossession in order to continue its ascension.<br />
<br />
Nowtopians are a part of the working class with a specific experience of capital, whose struggle, if cognizant of its resistance to capitalism, can feasibly link with other struggles over a common enemy. <br />
<br />
Nowtopian struggles, we might say, are a Marx-type labor unrest of late capitalism, because they are born from a new shared experience of class under capital, as we will argue. We consider “class”, or specifically, “the working class”, in fairly straightforward Marxist terms—that is, the people who have the common experience of being forced to sell their labor in order to reproduce their lives (inclusive of those who do not currently labor but live within the threat of it—unemployed, welfare recipients, domestic workers, etc), and who do not own the means of production. In affirming nowtopian activity's political importance, we make the essential move of recognizing the value form and waged labor – those fundamental requirements of the capitalist mode of production, without which it would not be capitalism—as itself a violence (both on individuals who have to do it and society which is impoverished by the misuse of human energy that follows the system of waged labor). We can in this way include “nowtopians”—those who are most deeply and directly affected by the violence of the value form, of profound abstraction—within a broad, all inclusive definition of the working class that has the potential to unite across their different experiences, needs, geographies, against the capitalist mode of production."<br />
<br />
<br />
'''2.'''<br />
<br />
"DIY, insofar as it really means “do it yourself”, long predates capitalism as a system. Human beings have always “done it themselves”. It is this vast field of normal human activity that became the raw material for capital to exploit, to channel or reduce to the commodity form. The re-emergence of do-it-yourself as a cultural movement, as a political rejection of expertise and authority, and finally as a practical way to meet basic needs, is one of the keystones of this period of class recomposition. The emergence of the concept itself is testament to the way capitalism has carved a trench between people and their labor, their activity, creativity, their “do-ing”. Now we need a concept to remind ourselves that we are in fact able to do it ourselves! (see Trapese 2007).<br />
<br />
Many waged laborers still learn skills on the job that enable them to do things themselves. Mechanics, plumbers, electricians, carpenters all have useful skills and exemplify a practical self-sufficiency that many yearn for, particularly the millions who can't fix a thing because they’ve been running computers, working retail, in hotels, or with “information”. The new DIY broadly writ, which includes autonomous, anarchist, and communist projects of taking collective control over reproduction, is the early glimmer of a recomposing working class fed up with their de-skilled and deadening work.<br />
<br />
Part of the new DIY's ruling ethos is to solve problems without relying on pre-packaged commodities, corporations, or large sums of money. It is also founded on a creative search for sustainable solutions that can replace our dependency on the alienating social relations of mainstream society. DIY challenges the direction of science and technology from below. Instead of waiting passively for results from corporate and university laboratories that might actually be useful (which happens only accidentally, because there is no social mechanism to define or direct “useful” research) the protagonists of an autonomous technoculture are inventing practical technologies and developing and sharing everyday skills.<br />
<br />
Frequently when DIY movements last long enough, they become co-opted back into the larger dynamics of the world economy, becoming a business or non-profit—effectively a type of “farm team” for capitalism. But autonomous grassroots technological initiatives give rise to new social constellations and self-directed practices, even if they eventually become businesses. Implicit in these efforts is the capacity to abruptly change direction, to shape the world consciously instead of reproducing it as it is.<br />
<br />
DIY demonstrates an emerging, self-organizing working-class recomposition based on exodus, and as such can be seen as a large part of the content of nowtopian activity. Sometimes this subtle recomposition emerges from so-called advantageous or privileged positions, sometimes from so-called disadvantageous or oppressed positions. DIY tinkerers directly satisfy socially determined needs and desires without their work or its results being reduced to products for sale. This is where we might distinguish Home Depot's DIY marketing from a nowtopic DIY practice—the latter kind of DIY is instigated by a burning desire to leave behind the realm of exchange for a realm of the social, the creative, the useful. One excellent example of this is the growing grassroots bicycle movement, which is expanding through the minds, hearts and hands of people working not for pay, but for the love of the craft, of the experience of bicycling, of the autonomy gained from it, and the community emerging from it.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Nowtopian efforts, gardening prominent among them, are good examples of the multiplicity of network forms that are reshaping the spatiality of politics and work in this era. Networks are usually characterized by self-organizing connections among people based on affinities. Sometimes those affinities relate to where we live, such as neighborhoods, or address a practical need, like food or Community-Support Agriculture (CSA) efforts. We see the network form in local urban gardening groups engaged in discussion not only face-to-face in the garden, but also by way of a dedicated email group or listserv. Networks appear in free software-based websites that facilitate connections among heirloom vegetable farmers and their potential buyers (see localharvest.org, slowfood.org), or in the connections that span the globe via the World Social Forum and its movement of movements (or network of networks). The forms that are called networks are not all the same. They straddle a range encompassing the simple needs of local individuals to connect with like-minded folks working on the same or similar projects, all the way to the emerging need of social movements on different continents to share skills, resources, and to coordinate strategy and tactics vis-à-vis global economic dynamics.<br />
<br />
Unlike previous political forms that built national and international institutions, and then sought to affect policy from these non-governmental organizations, networks begin locally and often stay there. The form helps people living isolated daily lives begin to rebuild the social and human connections that are the indispensable starting point of any political challenge to the status quo. But prior to constituting themselves on such ambitious grounds, networks facilitate simple human relationships that were once commonly forged in shared workplaces and shared neighborhoods. The most resilient networks are rooted in practical daily lives and shared purposes that emerge from those material conditions. Also emerging from similar material conditions globally is a “network sensibility”, a tendency towards self-organizing and linking across boundaries—geographical, political, even metaphorical. In the wake of the decline of trade unions, the hollowing out of states (and shredding of social safety nets once assured by those states), and the increasingly business-like non-profit organizations (NGOs) that dominate social movements, slowly emerging networks eschew the roles and limits of the old organizational forms. Instead they focus on basic needs such as food, transportation, communications, self-determination. Similar networks are in gestation to address basic infrastructural needs like electricity and water, as well as shelter and clothing.<br />
<br />
The backbone of the network form is communications. Though the prospect of a different organization of life in its totality is still a distant dream, the internet and its tools of popular participation are themselves products of countless individuals who dedicated themselves to creating it all, much of it without remuneration (Terranova 2004:94). As the Online Policy Group's founder, Will Doherty, put it: “The open source community is pretty much tech support for the revolution, if you will, or tech support for the new society” (Doherty 2004). The motivation to contribute to this new world in formation has led thousands of people to dedicated countless hours to shaping and perfecting software tools and even sometimes hardware outside the wage-labor paradigm. The General Public License for Linux (and many other programs) has eroded the private ownership paradigm in the software and online worlds, but more importantly, it is rooted in a self-reinforcing and self-expanding work culture centered around goals other than monetary reward. This material experience of a different kind of work has influenced people far beyond the programmers who have contributed so much to it (Juris 2004). The daily experience of an online world largely free to use in turn shapes the imaginations of its participants, helping to frame a paradigm based on generalized abundance instead of scarcity, a part of life where there is more than enough to go around. The Internet also reveals a nearly limitless abundance that stimulates sharing and cooperation for its own sake, a digital commons reinforcing human interconnectedness and interdependence. In a late capitalist world of numbing barbarism and alienated isolation, the powerful allure of meaningful communication inspires passionate engagement and remarkable time investments by millions. This participatory commons harbors every kind of human relationship, from the banality of buying and selling to the unconstrained sharing of poetry, art, music—any kind of expression that depends on communication. A post-capitalist life founded on generalized abundance is prefigured in self-expanding autonomous communications spaces on-line. But that is only one possible future, and far from inevitable.<br />
<br />
There are two opposed visions of the Net that co-exist in tense mutual dependence. The internet can be stuffed into the tiny box we call the “Market” or it can prompt a revolutionary redesign of how we do what we do, and how it fits into an urgently needed planetary ecological renaissance. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, social forces are pulling in both directions. The internet—and the creative, often unpaid software work that makes use of it—is evolving amidst an epoch-shaping fight over the purpose and status of this new arena of human socializing. Prolific free communication on the net constitutes an ongoing material experience unlike anything available in pre-internet societies. Its practitioners are learning something new about cooperation, sharing, and collective and derivative social endeavors. Furthermore, the quasi-communistic results of free software production (even the more business-oriented open-source projects) are an ongoing affirmative “NO” to the shoddy quality and profit-distorted work undergirding commercial software produced at large corporations.<br />
<br />
Slowly but surely the new transnational and asynchronous networks are shaping up as a real alternative to traditional political forms. The network form is increasingly the shape that political and social interaction depends on, and is in turn shaped by our experiences with the internet. The infrastructure provided by the internet has facilitated protests and movements while fostering radical decentralization and local control. Movements and campaigns that might have labored in total obscurity find a global network of interest and support. It is difficult to imagine, for example, the Zapatistas avoiding massacre without the global attention they gained through savvy use of the internet. The 15 February 2003 global anti-war protests brought out between 12 and 20 million people in what is widely acknowledged as the largest planetary protest ever held, an event self-organized largely through the internet. Fourth-generation warfare like the insurgency in Iraq shares “open source” characteristics, and has bedeviled advanced military machines unable to adapt to the new flexibility (Robb 2007).<br />
<br />
The ultimate fantasy for many people today is that a technology will automatically solve our problems. For political radicals it's all too easy to fall into this trap when it comes to the rise of Free-as-in-Libre and OpenSource Software (FLOSS). The gnarly drama of face-to-face discussion, political disagreement, and class, racial, and gender conflict cannot be escaped by creating elegant software, no matter how open it might be. Networks are not replacements for politics, but rather emergent ways to reorganize political life. <br />
<br />
<br />
As Jamie King wrote in Mute 27 in 2004:<br />
<br />
- ''What the idea of openness must tackle first and most critically is that a really open organization cannot be realized without a prior radicalization of the social-political field in which it operates. And that, of course, is to beg the oldest of questions'' (King 2004).<br />
<br />
What we see in the Free Software movement and the attendant rise of the network form is not a techno-fix so much as an evolving process of techno-creative collaboration. Rather than a linear process that establishes a technological foundation in which politics can become truly democratic, or a reverse linearity in which radical politics sets the stage for a new technosphere, we are in a confusing historic period characterized by a learn-as-we-go experimentalism. The radical political subjectivity that can make new use of an open technosphere emerges from the work that builds that apparatus, while that nowtopian work also reshapes the assumptions and expectations embedded in the broad cultural environment (for discussion of network as a political ideal, see Juris 2005). The steps taken now might make possible a post-capitalist, self-directed, networked society, hundreds of thousands of local communities knit together in essential cooperation across regions, continents, and the globe.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
3.<br />
<br />
"Social revolution is not much talked about these days. The last great outpouring of revolutionary rhetoric was ultimately silenced by the failures and co-optation of national liberation movements, the demise of Soviet-modeled “socialism”, and the defeat and partial absorption of radical movements by a resilient capitalist world order. In the oppositional vacuum that appeared in the wake of (self-proclaimed) triumphant liberal capitalism, initiatives to change life that were borne of dissatisfaction and alienation went underground, burrowing into the interstices of daily life, where they are slowly raising their heads under the aegis of a broad range of autonomous initiatives.<br />
<br />
Working for a wage reduces work's purpose to an empty, abstract monetary reward. Work done for its own sake is fundamentally different. Defined by the person doing it, deemed good and necessary on its social and/or ecological (rather than financial) merits, un-waged work fulfills and confirms a multidimensional sensibility, providing a whole range of feelings and experiences beyond the narrow instrumentalism of work for money. Work that is not coerced through the need to make money is always more satisfying to do, when the reason and reward for your work is not the ultimately empty abstraction of money, but comes from the multiple, complex intimate connections that we maintain and create through our work, our creative activity. The quality is “better” too, because everyone does their best work when determining their own purpose and pace.<br />
<br />
Dissent may erupt into direct insubordination, but the nowtopian exodus from capitalism's hollow “choices” often amounts to non-subordination. Nowtopic social movements are not creating alternate systems of “self-valorization” as much as they are removing the mediator of value from their engaged practices in the world. These movements go beyond hobbies like working on your own home or car (activities that remain within the logic of individual consumers). Community gardeners, alternative fuel innovators, anti-consumer bicyclists (to name a few of the nowtopian movements visible today) are producing communities and collectivities that embody a different sense of the individual and the group. Also, they represent technological revolts that have a more accurate and nuanced sensitivity to ecological practices and their relationship to local behaviours, because the goal is not obscured by the demands of the market or a boss. Taken together, this constellation of practices is an elaborate, decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post-capitalist, post-petroleum future.<br />
<br />
Slavoj Zižek recently made a curiously ahistorical assertion when he wrote “one of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible” (Zižek 2008:20). Zižek lists manifestations of “left reactions” to global capitalism in order to show that none of them take on the necessary task of making “finite demands” on those in power. <br />
<br />
<br />
One of his examples is similar to, but crucially different from the Nowtopian argument we have made:<br />
<br />
- ''[One left reaction] emphasizes that one can undermine global capitalism and state power, not by directly attacking them, but by refocusing the field of struggle on everyday practices, where one can “build a new world”; in this way, the foundations of the power of capital and the state will be gradually undermined, and, at some point, the state will collapse'' … (Zižek 2008:21)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Nowtopian behaviors certainly will not cause the state or global capitalism to collapse by themselves. These movements are vulnerable to a host of forces—importantly, cooption and reintegration into the capitalist system, a process that destroys their anti-capitalist dynamic. Nowtopians can only avoid such cooptation by finding a political voice and eventually, the social power to overthrow Capital—to put an end to “productive” labor once and for all. This will happen if enough nowtopian movements face the prospect of integrating themselves back into the economy in order to survive, and the people involved decide they will not accept that re-insertion into a world they want to abandon. And this will entail connecting the political voice of nowtopia to other voices that combat capital for other reasons across very uneven geographical terrain, and across gulfs that separate radically different experiences we have all had. We begin to understand that our enemy is common even if it hurts us differently, and that we are stronger fighting it on all its different battlefields.<br />
<br />
Nowtopians are not the beginning and end of social change, but they are an immanent part. Nowtopia is the fact that human beings are forever resilient in recreating patterns of behavior based on mutual aid, collaboration, and collective need, despite the forces working against those desires and impulses. Nowtopians do not preemptively set out the goal to build nowtopia, but they create it through their necessary activities. Nowtopia is not utopia—not Sir Thomas More's unachievable ideal utopia, nor the utopia that intentional communities have attempted to calculate and construct. Nowtopia is a self-emancipatory process that is happening, continuously. Nowtopia is the reality that the market economy is antithetical to our needs and desires, and through nowtopian movements we realize again that we cannot survive without “unproductive” labor, that the more our activities are not circumscribed by capital, the more we will do and the more we will enjoy.<br />
<br />
A movement capable of a revolutionary transformation cannot appear from nowhere, and it cannot depend on inevitable success. It has to emerge from daily practices among communities of human beings who trust each other and can take action together—in immediate practical ways as much as in far-reaching global ways. By reinventing a healthy relationship to self-activity, technology, and ecology, the emergent practices of Nowtopia constitute a foundation from which a revolutionary challenge worth its name might emerge. Without something to defend and protect, and without strong ties of solidarity, collectivity, or mutual respect and aid, we may not have the strength for a major struggle. Emergent practices of convivial, creative collectivities that address real needs are something we will be willing to defend, especially since we have come to them not only out of a desire to leave the old world, but because we can no longer survive without them."<br />
(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00782.x/full)<br />
<br />
<br />
=More Information=<br />
<br />
#Video: [[Chris Carlsson on Nowtopia]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Books]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Movements]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Politics]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Resilience&diff=58611Resilience2012-01-23T00:48:23Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>=Definition=<br />
<br />
James Cascio:<br />
<br />
"Resilience means the capacity of an entity--such as a person, an institution, or a system--to withstand sudden, unexpected shocks, and (ideally) to be capable of recovering quickly afterwards. Resilience implies both strength and flexibility; a resilient structure would bend, but would be hard to break."<br />
(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)<br />
<br />
See also: [[Resilience Theory]]<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
Alex Evans and David Steven:<br />
<br />
"In formal terms, resilience is defined as<br />
the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing<br />
change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks.<br />
(Walker et al, 2004)<br />
<br />
Perhaps the best practical definition we have come across is the one offered by the Harvard<br />
Business Review. It states that resilience results from being able to face up to reality,<br />
improvise in the face of unfamiliar challenges, and at the same time find a source of ‘meaning’<br />
in the challenges that encourages long-term thinking while affirming a sustaining sense of<br />
purpose (Coutu, 2002).<br />
<br />
Both definitions emphasise the need to change while maintaining a coherent identity.<br />
Systems that are brittle, that try to remain static at all costs, are precisely the ones that are<br />
most vulnerable to collapse. On the other hand, systems that are flexible, adaptable, that<br />
deal with crisis through renewal are the ones that will tend to survive. This is, in other<br />
words, a classic collective action problem. The central determinant of a system’s resilience<br />
is the ability to act collectively, coherently, and with the right balance between short and<br />
long-term interests.<br />
<br />
'''In a ''high resilience system'', risk – and response to that risk – is distributed throughout<br />
the system.''' Individuals and their groups see their interests as compatible with the collective.<br />
They have a common understanding of the challenges a society faces and take<br />
decisions accordingly, but this understanding is not a straitjacket. Different actors play to<br />
the strengths and will often compete fiercely. But there is a balance between initiative and<br />
co-ordination, and broad buy-in to overarching institutional frameworks.<br />
<br />
'''In a ''low resilience system'', on the other hand, risks are felt disproportionately by some<br />
groups and responses are inadequate, over-centralised, or both.''' Longer-term interests are<br />
heavily discounted, individuals pursue narrow self-interest; and conflict between groups<br />
intensifies. As a result, key institutions are increasingly seen as failing to ‘deliver’."<br />
(http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Characteristics=<br />
<br />
James Cascio:<br />
<br />
* "Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected loss of components. <br />
<br />
<br />
* The recognition that failure happens is the other intrinsic part of a resilience approach. Mistakes, malice, pure coincidence--there's no way to rule out all possible ways in which a given system can stumble. The goal, therefore, should be to make failures easy to spot through widespread adoption of transparency through a "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" embrace of openness, and to give the system enough redundancy and slack that it's possible to absorb the failures that get through. If you know that you can't rule out failure, you need to be able to "fail gracefully," in the language of design. "<br />
(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)<br />
<br />
<br />
==8 Principles==<br />
<br />
"1. Diversity: Not relying on a single kind of solution means not suffering from a single point of failure.<br />
<br />
2. Redundancy: Backup, backup, backup. Never leave yourself with just one path of escape or rescue.<br />
<br />
3. Decentralization: Centralized systems look strong, but when they fail, they fail catastrophically.<br />
<br />
4. Collaboration: We're all in this together. Take advantage of collaborative technologies, especially those offering shared communication and information.<br />
<br />
5. Transparency: Don't hide your system - transparency makes it easier to figure out where a problem may lie. Share your plans and preparations, and listen when people point out flaws.<br />
<br />
6. Fail gracefully: Failure happens, so make sure that a failure state won't make things worse than they are already.<br />
<br />
7. Flexibility: Be ready to change your plans when they're not working the way you expected; don't count on things remaining stable.<br />
<br />
8. Foresight: You can't predict the future, but you can hear its footsteps approaching. Think and prepare"<br />
(http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4851)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Conditions for a Resilient World==<br />
<br />
Brian Walker:<br />
<br />
"We are a long way from understanding how to create a resilient world. Nevertheless, it is possible to offer some visions for what a resilient world might look like.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world would promote biological, landscape, social and economic diversity. Diversity is a major source of future options and of a system's capacity to respond to change.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world would embrace and work with natural ecological cycles. A forest that is never allowed to burn loses its fire-resistant species and becomes very vulnerable to fire.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world consists of modular components. When over-connected, shocks are rapidly transmitted through the system - as a forest connected by logging roads can allow a wild fire to spread wider than it would otherwise.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world possesses tight feedbacks. Feedbacks allow us to detect thresholds before we cross them. Globalization is leading to delayed feedbacks that were once tighter. For example, people of the developed world receive weak feedback signals about the consequences of their consumption.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world promotes trust, well developed social networks and leadership. Individually, these attributes contribute to what is generally termed "social capital," but they need to act in concert to effect adaptability - the capacity to respond to change and disturbance.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world places an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules, and embracing change. When rigid connections and behaviors are broken, new opportunities open up and new resources are made available for growth.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world has institutions that include "redundancy" in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights. Redundancy in institutions increases the diversity of responses and the flexibility of a system. Because access and property rights lie at the heart of many resource-use tragedies, overlapping rights and a mix of common and private property rights can enhance the resilience of linked social-ecological systems.<br />
<br />
* A resilient world would consider all nature's un-priced services – such as carbon storage, water filtration and so on - in development proposals and assessments. These services are often the ones that change in a regime shift – and are often only recognized and appreciated when they are lost."<br />
(http://www.peopleandplace.net/featured_voices/2008/11/24/resilience_thinking)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Key Concepts of Resilience Thinking==<br />
<br />
From the Resilience Primer at Shareable [http://shareable.net/blog/resilience-primer]:<br />
<br />
"Definition: resilience is the ability of an interdependent social and ecological system to absorb disturbances and maintain the same structure and function. <br />
<br />
Other context:<br />
<br />
*A resilient system copes well with shock <br />
*As a system's resilience declines, the size of the shock from which it can recover gets smaller <br />
*Resilience shifts management focus from growth and efficiency to adaptability <br />
*An overemphasis on growth and efficiency of a system leads to a dangerous rigidity and fragility <br />
*A resilience focus is increasingly important as the magnitude of the shocks in the world get bigger and more unpredictable <br />
*Learning, flexibility, and self-organization are important to the ability to recover and thrive <br />
*The aim of resilience management is to keep a system in a regime so it continues to deliver the desired ecosystem services and is not easily pushed into an undesirable regime from which it can't recover <br />
<br />
KEY CONCEPTS OF RESILIENCE THINKING<br />
<br />
* Nonlinearity, alternate regimes and thresholds. SESs include nonlinear dynamics. A system can shift dramatically into an undesirable regime from a small change if a threshold is crossed. Attention to thresholds is critical. <br />
* Adaptive cycles. SESs tend to move through four recurring phases: growth and conservation (resources committed, stable, slow change, predictable), release and reorganization (resources freed up, chaos, fast change, opportunity). This is the cycle of life. <br />
<br />
* Panarchy - multiple scales and cross-scale effects. SESs function at multiple scales of space, time and social organization. You must understand the cross-scale interactions to manage effectively at a specific scale. One key to this is to realize that each scale can be in a different phase of the adaptive cycle. <br />
<br />
* Transformability. If a SES is pushed into an undesirable regime and can't be returned to it's former state, one option is to transform it into a new system with new variables, new livelihoods, and different scales of organization. <br />
<br />
* General vs. specified resilience. Specified resilience is resilience of a specific part of a system to a specific shock. Focus on resilience of one part the system can come at the expense of other parts of the system. Balance between the two forms of resilience is important."<br />
(http://shareable.net/blog/resilience-primer)<br />
<br />
<br />
==The resilience conceptual framework of Nicholas Gotts==<br />
<br />
"Characteristics of the resilience conceptual framework include:<br />
<br />
<br />
'''1. multiple metastable regimes.'''<br />
<br />
Rather than a single equilibrium point, such systems generally have multiple metastable regimes. Within each regime, change may occur, but the set of dynamically important variables and interactions remains fixed.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''2. the importance of episodic change.'''<br />
<br />
Systems with multiple metastable regimes may switch rapidly between them as critical thresholds are passed. Furthermore, hysteresis is common.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''3. Resilience.'''<br />
<br />
Holling and Gunderson (2002:28) define ecosystem resilience as “ ... the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior.” Resilience in this sense is central to the resilience conceptual framework.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''4. multiple distinctive scales with cross-scale interactions.'''<br />
<br />
Holling et al. (2002c:72) argue that ecological and social-ecological systems form a multilevel hierarchical structure, but that the different levels are of distinct kinds, i.e., the structure is not scale-free.<br />
<br />
The resilience conceptual framework underlies a broad body of work, including a considerable number of detailed studies of regional socialecological systems (see any issue of Ecology and Society, and most of the chapters in Gunderson and Holling 2002 and Berkes et al. 2003). This body of work has now reached a state in which systematic comparisons can be made, particularly with regard to thresholds and regime shifts (Walker and Meyers 2004, Groffman et al. 2006). A significant subset of recent work within the resilience conceptual framework explores or makes use of the adaptive cycle metaphor to varying degrees, and this paper focuses primarily on these, but also draws on the broader resilience literature." (http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00004781/01/ES-2007-2017.pdf)<br />
<br />
=Example=<br />
<br />
==[[Smart Grid]]==<br />
<br />
"Resilient flexibility means avoiding situations where components of a system are "too big to fail"--that is, where the failure of a single part can bring the whole thing crashing down. The alternative comes from the combination of diversity (lots of different parts), collaboration (able to work together), and decentralization (organized from the bottom-up). The result is a system that can more effectively respond to rapid changes in conditions, and including the unexpected loss of components.<br />
<br />
A good comparison of the two models can be seen in the contrast between the current electricity grid (centralized, with limited diversity) and the "smart grid" model being debated (decentralized and highly diverse). Today's power grid is brittle, and the combination of a few local failures can make large sections collapse; a smart grid has a wide variety of inputs, from wind farms to home solar to biofuel generators, and its network is designed to handle the churn of local power sources turning on and shutting off. "<br />
(http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/resilience)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=History=<br />
<br />
By Kevin Carson: Historical Models of Resilient Community<br />
<br />
"The prototypical resilient community, in the mother of all “Times of Troubles,” was the Roman<br />
villa as it emerged in the late Empire and early Dark Ages. In Republican times, villas had been estates<br />
on which the country homes of the Senatorial class were located, often self-sufficient in many<br />
particulars and resembling villages in their own right. During the stresses of the “long collapse” in the<br />
fifth century, and in the Dark Ages following the fall of the Western Empire, the villas became<br />
stockaded fortresses, often with villages of peasants attached.<br />
<br />
Since the rise of industrial capitalism, recurring economic depression and unemployment, and<br />
economic uncertainty associated with labor strife, have been the catalysts behind the creation of local<br />
exchange systems and the direct organization of production for barter.<br />
<br />
A good example is the Owenites' use of the social economy as a base for independence from wage<br />
labor. According to E. P. Thompson, "[n]ot only did the benefit societies on occasion extend their<br />
activities to the building of social clubs or alms-houses; there are also a number of instances of pre-<br />
Owenite trade unions when on strike, employing their own members and marketing the product." <br />
<br />
G.D. H. Cole describes the same phenomenon:<br />
<br />
As the Trade Unions grew after 1825, Owenism began to appeal to them, and especially to the skilled<br />
handicraftsmen.... Groups of workers belonging to a particular craft began to set up Co-operative Societies<br />
of a different type—societies of producers which offered their products for sale through the Co-operative<br />
Stores. Individual Craftsmen, who were Socialists, or who saw a way of escape from the exactions of the<br />
middlemen, also brought their products to the stores to sell."<br />
<br />
...[This pattern of organization was characterized by] societies of producers, aiming at co-operative<br />
production of goods and looking to the Stores to provide them with a market. These naturally arose first in<br />
trades requiring comparatively little capital or plant. They appealed especially to craftsmen whose<br />
independence was being threatened by the rise of factory production or sub-contracting through capitalist<br />
middlemen.<br />
<br />
The most significant feature of the years we are discussing was the rapid rise of this... type of Cooperative<br />
Society and the direct entry of the Trades Unions into Co-operative production. Most of these<br />
Societies were based directly upon or at least very closely connected with the Unions of their trades,<br />
...which took up production as a part of their Union activity—especially for giving employment to their<br />
members who were out of work or involved in trade disputes....<br />
<br />
The aims and overall vision of such organization were well expressed in the rules of the Ripponden<br />
Co-operative Society, formed in 1832 in a weaving village in the Pennines:<br />
<br />
The plan of co-operation which we are recommending to the public is not a visionary one but is acted<br />
upon in various parts of the Kingdom; we all live by the produce of the land, and exchange labour for<br />
labour, which is the object aimed at by all Co-operative societies. We labourers do all the work and produce<br />
all the comforts of life;—why then should we not labour for ourselves and strive to improve our<br />
conditions.<br />
<br />
Cooperative producers' need for an outlet led to Labour Exchanges, where workmen and<br />
cooperatives could directly exchange their product so as "to dispense altogether with either capitalist<br />
employers or capitalist merchants." Exchange was based on labor time. "Owen's Labour Notes for a<br />
time not only passed current among members of the movement, but were widely accepted by private<br />
shopkeepers in payment for goods."<br />
<br />
The principle of labor-based exchange was employed on a large-scale. In 1830 the London Society<br />
opened an Exchange Bazaar for exchange of products between cooperative societies and individuals.19<br />
The Co-operative Congress, held at Liverpool in 1832, included a long list of trades among its<br />
participants (the B's alone had eleven). The National Equitable Labour Exchange, organized in 1832-33<br />
in Birmingham and London, was a venue for the direct exchange of products between craftsmen, using<br />
Labour Notes as a medium of exchange.<br />
<br />
The Knights of Labor, in the 1880s, undertook a large-scale effort at organizing worker<br />
cooperatives. Their fate is an illustration of the central role of capital outlay requirements in<br />
determining the feasibility of self-employment and cooperative employment.<br />
<br />
<br />
The first major wave of worker cooperatives in the U.S., according to John Curl, was under the<br />
auspices of the National Trades' Union in the 1830s. Like the Owenite trade union cooperatives in<br />
Britain, they were mostly undertaken in craft employments for which the basic tools of the trade were<br />
relatively inexpensive. From the beginning, worker cooperatives were a frequent resort of striking<br />
workers. In 1768 twenty striking journeyman tailors in New York, the first striking wage-workers in<br />
American history, set up their own cooperative shop. Journeyman carpenters striking for a ten-hour<br />
day in Philadelphia, in 1761, formed a cooperative (with the ten-hour day they sought) and undercut<br />
their former employers' price by 25%; they disbanded the cooperative when they went back to work.<br />
The same was done by shoemakers in Baltimore, 1794, and Philadelphia, 1806. This was a common<br />
pattern in early American labor history, and the organization of cooperatives moved from being purely<br />
a strike tactic to providing an alternative to wage labor. It was feasible because most forms of<br />
production were done by groups of artisan laborers using hand tools.<br />
<br />
By the 1840s, the rise of factory production with expensive machinery had largely put an end to<br />
this possibility. As the prerequisites of production became increasingly unafforable, the majority of the<br />
population was relegated to wage labor with machinery owned by someone else.<br />
<br />
Most attempts at worker-organized manufacturing, after the rise of the factory system, failed on<br />
account of the capital outlays required. For example, when manufacturers refused to sell farm<br />
machinery to the Grangers at wholesale prices, the Nebraska Grange undertook its own design and<br />
manufacturing of machinery. (How's that for a parallel to modern P2P ideas?) Its first attempt, a wheat<br />
head reaper, sold at half the price of comparable models and drove down prices on farm machinery in<br />
Nebraska. The National Grange planned a complete line of farm machinery, but most Grange<br />
manufacturing enterprises failed to raise the large sums of capital needed.<br />
<br />
The Knights of Labor cooperatives were on shaky ground in the best of times. Many of them were<br />
founded during strikes, started with “little capital and obsolescent machinery,” and lacked the capital to<br />
invest in modern machinery. Subjected to economic warfare by organized capital, the network of<br />
cooperatives disintegrated during the post-Haymarket repression.<br />
<br />
<br />
The worker cooperatives organized in the era of artisan labor paralleled, in many ways, the forms of work organization<br />
that are arising today. Networked organization, crowdsourced credit and the implosion of capital outlays required for<br />
physical production, taken together, are recreating the same conditions that made artisan cooperatives feasible in the days<br />
before the factory system. In the artisan manufactories that prevailed into the early 19th century, most of the physical<br />
capital required for production was owned by the work force; artisan laborers could walk out and essentially take the firm<br />
with them in all but name. Likewise, today, the collapse of capital outlay requirements for production in the cultural and<br />
information fields (software, desktop publishing, music, etc.) has created a situation in which human capital is the source of<br />
most book value for many firms; consequently, workers are able to walk out with their human capital and form “breakaway<br />
firms,” leaving their former employers as little more than hollow shells. And the rise of cheap garage manufacturing<br />
machinery (a Fab Lab with homebrew CNC tools costing maybe two months' wages for a semi-skilled worker) is, in its<br />
essence, a return to the days when low physical capital costs made worker cooperatives a viable alternative to wage labor.<br />
In the Great Depression, the same principles used by the Owenites and Knights of Labor were<br />
applied in the Homestead Unit project in the Dayton area, an experiment with household and<br />
community production in which Borsodi played a prominent organizing role. Despite some early<br />
success, it was eventually killed off by Harold Ickes, a technocratic liberal who wanted to run the<br />
homestead project along the same centralist lines as the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Homestead<br />
Units were built on cheap land in the countryside surrounding Dayton, with a combination of threeacre<br />
family homesteads and some division of labor on other community projects. The family<br />
homestead included garden, poultry and other livestock, and a small orchard and berry patch. The<br />
community provided woodlot and pasture, in addition. <br />
<br />
A Unit Committee vice president in the<br />
project described the economic security resulting from subsistence production:<br />
<br />
There are few cities where the independence of a certain sort of citizen has not been brought into relief<br />
by the general difficulties of the depression. In the environs of all cities there is the soil-loving suburbanite.<br />
In some cases these are small farmers, market gardeners and poultry raisers who try to make their entire<br />
living from their little acres. More often and more successful there is a combination of rural and city<br />
industry. Some member of the family, while the others grow their crops, will have a job in town. A little<br />
money, where wages are joined to the produce of the soil, will go a long way....<br />
<br />
When the depression came most of these members of these suburban families who held jobs in town<br />
were cut in wages and hours. In many cases they entirely lost their jobs. What, then, did they do?.... The<br />
soil and the industries of their home provided them... work and a living, however scant. Except for the<br />
comparatively few dollars required for taxes and a few other items they were able, under their own sail, to<br />
ride out the storm. The sailing was rough, perhaps; but not to be compared with that in the wreck-strewn<br />
town....<br />
<br />
Farming as an exclusive business, a full means of livelihood, has collapsed.... Laboring as an exclusive<br />
means of livelihood has also collapsed. The city laborer, wholly dependent on a job, is of all men most<br />
precariously placed. Who, then, is for the moment safe and secure? The nearest to it is this home and acresowning<br />
family in between, which combines the two.<br />
<br />
An interesting experiment in restoring the "circuit of labor" through barter exchange was<br />
Depression-era organizations like the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Organization and Unemployed<br />
Exchange Association:<br />
<br />
...The real economy was still there—paralyzed but still there. Farmers were still producing, more than<br />
they could sell. Fruit rotted on trees, vegetables in the fields. In January 1933, dairymen poured more than<br />
12,000 gallons of milk into the Los Angeles City sewers every day.<br />
The factories were there too. Machinery was idle. Old trucks were in side lots, needing only a little<br />
repair. All that capacity on the one hand, legions of idle men and women on the other. It was the financial<br />
casino that had failed, not the workers and machines. On street corners and around bare kitchen tables,<br />
people started to put two and two together. More precisely, they thought about new ways of putting two and<br />
two together....<br />
<br />
In the spring of 1932, in Compton, California, an unemployed World War I veteran walked out to the<br />
farms that still ringed Los Angeles. He offered his labor in return for a sack of vegetables, and that evening<br />
he returned with more than his family needed. The next day a neighbor went out with him to the fields.<br />
Within two months 500 families were members of the Unemployed Cooperative Relief Organization<br />
(UCRO).<br />
<br />
<br />
That group became one of 45 units in an organization that served the needs of some 150,000 people.<br />
It operated a large warehouse, a distribution center, a gas and service station, a refrigeration facility, a<br />
sewing shop, a shoe shop, even medical services, all on cooperative principles. Members were expected to<br />
work two days a week, and benefits were allocated according to need....<br />
<br />
The UCRO was just one organization in one city. Groups like it ultimately involved more than 1.3<br />
million people, in more than 30 states. It happened spontaneously, without experts or blueprints. Most of<br />
the participants were blue collar workers whose formal schooling had stopped at high schools. Some groups<br />
evolved a kind of money to create more flexibility in exchange. An example was the Unemployed Exchange<br />
Association, or UXA, based in Oakland, California.... UXA began in a Hooverville... called "Pipe City,"<br />
near the East Bay waterfront. Hundreds of homeless people were living there in sections of large sewer pipe<br />
that were never laid because the city ran out of money. Among them was Carl Rhodehamel, a musician and<br />
engineer.<br />
<br />
Rhodehamel and others started going door to door in Oakland, offering to do home repairs in exchange<br />
for unwanted items. They repaired these and circulated them among themselves. Soon they established a<br />
commissary and sent scouts around the city and into the surrounding farms to see what they could scavenge<br />
or exchange labor for. Within six months they had 1,500 members, and a thriving sub-economy that<br />
included a foundry and machine shop, woodshop, garage, soap, factory, print shop, wood lot, ranches, and<br />
lumber mills. They rebuilt 18 trucks from scrap. At UXA's peak it distributed 40 tons of food a week.<br />
<br />
It all worked on a time-credit system.... Members could use credits to buy food and other items at the<br />
commissary, medical and dental services, haircuts, and more. A council of some 45 coordinators met<br />
regularly to solve problems and discuss opportunities.<br />
<br />
One coordinator might report that a saw needed a new motor. Another knew of a motor but the owner<br />
wanted a piano in return. A third member knew of a piano that was available. And on and on. It was an<br />
amalgam of enterprise and cooperation—the flexibility and hustle of the market, but without the encoded<br />
greed of the corporation or the stifling bureaucracy of the state.... The members called it a "reciprocal<br />
economy."....<br />
<br />
Stewart Burgess, in a 1933 article, described a day's produce intake by the warehouse of Unit No. 1<br />
in Compton. It included some fifteen different kinds of fruits and vegetables, from two tons of cabbage<br />
and seventy boxes of pears, all the way down to a single crate of beets—not to mention a sack of salt.<br />
<br />
<br />
The production facilities and the waste materials it used as inputs foreshadow the ideas of Colin Ward,<br />
Kirkpatrick Sale and Karl Hess on community warehouses and workshops, discussed in the last<br />
chapter:<br />
<br />
In this warehouse is an auto repair shop, a shoe-repair shop, a small printing shop for the necessary slips and<br />
forms, and the inevitable woodpile where cast-off railroad ties are sawed into firewood. Down the street, in<br />
another building, women are making over clothing that has been bartered in. In another they are canning<br />
vegetables and fruit—Boy Scouts of the Burbank Unit brought in empty jars by the wagon-load.<br />
<br />
Such ventures, like the Knights of Labor cooperatives, were limited by the capital intensiveness of<br />
so many forms of production. The bulk of the labor performed within the barter networks was either in<br />
return for salvage goods in need of repair, for repairing such goods, or in return for unsold inventories<br />
of conventional businesses. When the supply of damaged machinery was exhausted by house-to-house<br />
canvassing, and local businesses disposed of their accumulated inventory, barter associations reached<br />
their limit. They could continue to function at a fairly low volume, directly undertaking for barter such<br />
low-capital forms of production as sewing, gardening on available land, etc., and trading labor for<br />
whatever percentage of output from otherwise idle capacity that conventional businesses were willing<br />
to barter for labor. But that level was quite low compared to the initial gains from absorbing excess<br />
inventory and salvageable machinery in the early days of the system. At most, once barter reached its<br />
sustainable limits, it was good as a partial mitigation of the need for wage labor.<br />
<br />
<br />
But as production machinery becomes affordable to individuals independently of large employers,<br />
such direct production for barter will become increasingly feasible for larger and larger segments of the<br />
workforce.<br />
<br />
The Great Depression was a renaissance of local barter currencies or “emergency currencies,”<br />
adopted around the world, which enabled thousands of communities to weather the economic calamity<br />
with “the medium of exchange necessary for their activities, to give each other work.”31<br />
The revival of barter on the Internet coincides with a new economic downturn, as well. A Craigslist<br />
spokesman reported in March 2009 that bartering had doubled on the site over the previous year.<br />
Proposed swaps listed on the Washington area Craigslist site this week included accounting services in<br />
return for food, and a woman offering a week in her Hilton Head, S.C., vacation home for dental work for<br />
her husband.<br />
<br />
Barter websites for exchanging goods and services without cash are proliferating around the world.<br />
With unemployment in the United States and Britain climbing, some people said bartering is the only<br />
way to make ends meet.<br />
<br />
"I'm using barter Web sites just to see what we can do to survive," said Zedd Epstein, 25, who owned a<br />
business restoring historic houses in Iowa until May, when he was forced to close it as the economy soured.<br />
Epstein, in a telephone interview, said he has not been able to find work since, and he and his wife<br />
moved to California in search of jobs.<br />
<br />
Epstein said he has had several bartering jobs he found on Craigslist. He drywalled a room in exchange<br />
for some tools, he poured a concrete shed floor in return for having a new starter motor installed in his car,<br />
and he helped someone set up their TV and stereo system in return for a hot meal.<br />
"Right now, this is what people are doing to get along," said Epstein, who is studying for an electrical<br />
engineering degree.<br />
<br />
"If you need your faucet fixed and you know auto mechanics, there's definitely a plumber out there<br />
who's out of work and has something on his car that needs to be fixed," he said.<br />
<br />
As the crisis progresses, and with it the gradually increasing underemployment and unemployment<br />
and the partial shift of value production from wage labor to the informal sector discussed in C4SS<br />
Paper No. 4, we can expect to see the growth of all sorts of income-pooling and cost-spreading<br />
mechanisms.<br />
<br />
These include a restored emphasis on mutual aid organizations of the kind described by Pyotr<br />
Kropotkin and E. P. Thompson. <br />
<br />
As Charles Johnson wrote:<br />
<br />
It's likely also that networks of voluntary aid organizations would be strategically important to<br />
individual flourishing in a free society, in which there would be no expropriative welfare bureaucracy for<br />
people living with poverty or precarity to fall back on. Projects reviving the bottom-up, solidaritarian spirit<br />
of the independent unions and mutual aid societies that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,<br />
before the rise of the welfare bureaucracy, may be essential for a flourishing free society, and one of the<br />
primary means by which workers could take control of their own lives, without depending on either bosses<br />
or bureaucrats.<br />
<br />
More fundamentally, they are likely to entail people coalescing into primary social units at the<br />
residential level (neighborhood cohousing projects, urban communes and squats, intentional<br />
communities, extended family compounds, etc.), as a way of pooling income and reducing costs. As<br />
the state's social safety nets come apart, such primary social units and extended federations between<br />
them are likely to become important mechanisms for pooling cost and risk and organizing care for the<br />
aged and sick.<br />
<br />
Poul Anderson, in the fictional universe of his Maurai series, envisioned a post-apocalypse society<br />
in the Pacific Northwest coalescing around the old fraternal lodges, with the Northwestern Federation<br />
centered on lodges rather than geographical subdivisions as the component units represented in its<br />
legislature. The lodge emerged as the central social institution during the social disintegration<br />
following the nuclear war, much as the villa became the basic social unit of the new feudal society in<br />
the vacuum left by the fall of Rome. It was the principal and normal means for organizing benefits to<br />
the sick and unemployed, as well as the primary base for providing public services like police and fire<br />
protection."<br />
(http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/C4SS-Resilient-Communities-and-Local-Economies.pdf)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Discussion 1=<br />
<br />
==Towards a politics of resilience==<br />
<br />
Alex Evans and David Steven:<br />
<br />
"The politics of resilience, then, presents a challenging agenda – one that takes us far beyond<br />
how well we respond to localised natural disasters.<br />
<br />
In a complex and unstable world, it helps join up our thinking about a series of disparate<br />
challenges and provides a clear rationale for collective action. As Robert Cooper has argued:<br />
‘If states are to retain control, the first condition is that they should make peace with each<br />
other so that they can face the common threat of disorder together’ (Cooper, 2003).<br />
<br />
Facing common threats will require much more than goodwill, however. At present, all<br />
arms of international relations are in crisis. Military forces are struggling to understand a<br />
world where war is usually ‘amongst the people’, to use Rupert Smith’s phrase (Smith,<br />
2005). Development agencies are having to accept that poverty reduction cannot simply be<br />
accomplished by the transfer of resources. Many diplomatic services, meanwhile, badly<br />
need to renew their ‘theory of influence’ in a world where issues trump geography, and<br />
non-state actors are an increasingly powerful force. Fundamental reform cannot happen in<br />
one country alone.<br />
<br />
Instead governments need to work together to develop approaches that are integrated<br />
and interoperable. The starting point is greater ‘shared awareness’ of the nature of the<br />
threats that accompany globalisation, and an honest admission of the limits to government<br />
power (Evans and Steven, 2008). This should then encourage governments to reach out in<br />
two directions – upwards towards the international system, and downwards towards the<br />
world’s citizens.<br />
<br />
But this is not simply a neutral question of governance; it is also a fundamentally political<br />
agenda. The politics of resilience holds both good and bad news for all major streams<br />
of political thinking: conservative, liberal and social democratic.<br />
<br />
For conservatives, resilience’s appeal to tradition and identity is a strong one.<br />
However, the conservative instinct to resist change of all kinds is a clear threat to a<br />
system’s ability to adapt. Two quotes from the conservative philosopher, Michael<br />
Oakeshott, capture this dichotomy well. On the one hand, he writes that:<br />
In place of a preconceived purpose … such a society will find its guide in a principle<br />
of continuity (which is a diffusion of power between past, present and future) and in a<br />
principle of consensus (which is a diffusion of power between the different legitimate<br />
interests of the present).<br />
<br />
<br />
On the other:<br />
<br />
Change is a threat to identity, and every change is an emblem of extinction …<br />
Changes, then, have to be suffered, and a man of conservative temperament (that is,<br />
one strongly disposed to preserve his identity) cannot be indifferent to them.<br />
(Oakeshott, 1991)<br />
<br />
Liberals, meanwhile, have long argued for the diffusion of power. As Hayek argued,<br />
centralised control is not possible over systems ‘which no brain has designed but which<br />
[have] grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals’ (Hayek, 1974). He, after all, was<br />
awarded a Nobel prize over thirty years ago for his ‘penetrating analysis of the<br />
interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena’. Classical liberalism,<br />
however, has consistently been troubled by government attempts to create public goods.<br />
The result is an instinctive opposition to regulation, which leaves little room for attempts to<br />
manage unstable global systems.<br />
<br />
Social democrats, finally, understand the importance of public goods and are prepared<br />
to act forcefully to protect the vulnerable. They are also willing to act boldly to manage global<br />
instability. However, they have the weakness of being instinctive meddlers, crowding out the<br />
initiative of other actors and risking over-centralisation in the face of distributed risks.<br />
This is a time when states will be under pressure to take on new, and onerous,<br />
responsibilities, such as taking responsibility for regulating carbon and other scarce<br />
resources. Unprecedented institutional innovation will be needed if these responsibilities<br />
are to be discharged without imposing unsustainable levels of cost. It is surely therefore<br />
time to put the ‘nanny state’ out of her misery, while we search for a more sustainable relationship<br />
between government and state.<br />
<br />
In the end, resilience is about a politics that is ‘progressive’ in a pure sense. Rather<br />
than following the ideological imprint of a bygone age, we need to be prepared to take a<br />
broad view of the systems that we depend on – and re-order our priorities to ensure that<br />
every action we take helps strengthen and defend them. That takes courage, and a farsighted<br />
vision of the future. The question is not ‘what risks do we want to avoid?’ but<br />
‘what do we want to be resilient for?’"<br />
(http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Six principles of organizational resilience==<br />
<br />
Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz:<br />
<br />
"More recently, Ceridian Corporation collected best thinking and strategies to publish an executive briefing on organizational resilience. They highlighted the paradox that successful, resilient organizations are those that are able to respond to two conflicting imperatives:<br />
<br />
<br />
* managing for performance and growth, which requires consistency, efficiency, eliminating waste, and maximizing short-term results<br />
<br />
* managing for adaptation, which requires foresight, innovation, experimentation, and improvisation, with an eye on long-term benefits <br />
<br />
<br />
Most organizations pay great attention to the first imperative but little to the second. Start-ups often excel at improvisation and innovation but founder on the shoals of consistent performance and efficiency. About half of all new companies fail during their first five years.<br />
<br />
Each mode requires a different skill set and organizational design. Moving nimbly between them is a tricky dynamic balancing act. Disruptions can come from anywhere – from within, from competitors, infrastructure or supply chain crises, or from human or natural disasters. The financial crisis has riveted current attention, but it’s just one of many disruptions organizations must cope with daily. Planning for disruption means shifting from “just-in-time” production and efficiency to “just-in-case” resilience.<br />
<br />
We draw from these two studies, and others, to develop what we call '''the six habits of highly resilient organizations'''.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''1. Resilient organizations actively attend to their environments.'''<br />
<br />
Monitoring internal and external indicators of change is a means of identifying disruptions in advance. Resilient organizations seek out potentially disturbing information and test it against current assumptions and mental models. They work to detect the unexpected so they can respond quickly enough to exploit opportunity or prevent irreversible damage. In short, they anticipate to be prepared.<br />
<br />
“[T]he two questions that keep coming up in almost every speech, panel, and hallway conversation,” reports Arianna Huffington from this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, “are ‘what went wrong?’ and ‘how did we miss the signals?’ The consensus conclusions: 1) Too much faith in the free market. 2) Too much faith in economic models. 3) Too little transparency. 4) No moral compass.”<br />
<br />
<br />
'''2. Resilient organizations prepare themselves and their employees for disruptions.'''<br />
<br />
Attentive preparations build a team that imagines possibilities and displays inventiveness in solving problems. Managers know how and when to allow employees to manage themselves for focused productivity as well as adaptive innovation. Resilient organizations cross-train employees in multiple skills and functions. They know that when people are under pressure, they tend to revert to their most habitual ways of responding.<br />
<br />
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Morgan Stanley, the largest employer at the WTC, realized it was operating in a highly symbolic building and began emergency preparedness with detailed plans and drills. On September 11, 2001 it had three recovery sites at the ready where employees could congregate and continue business. They began evacuating about 2700 employees one minute after the first plane hit, and their offices across 22 floors were almost empty when the second plane hit. They lost only six people. According to their 2001 Annual Report, investments in redundant computing and communication technology made after the 1993 WTC bombing also played a significant role in this successful recovery.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''3. Resilient organizations build in flexibility.'''<br />
<br />
Even while executing for lean and mean performance, resilient organizations build in cushions against disruptions. The most obvious approach is the development of redundant systems – backup capacity, larger inventories, higher staffing levels, financial reserves, and the like. But those are costly and not always efficient. Flexibility is a better approach.<br />
<br />
Engaging suppliers and their networks in devising makeshift solutions to temporary disruptions is a flexibility strategy. So are policies that encourage flexibility in when and where work is done. Employees who are used to telework and virtual workspaces adapt more quickly and are more productive following a crisis. In addition, research shows that flexible work practices contribute to greater employee resilience, productivity, and commitment, and to lower levels of stress.<br />
<br />
In 1997, a fire at an Aisin factory in Japan destroyed most of the precision machine tools used to manufacture the P-valve used in rear brakes to prevent skidding. Toyota got 99% of its P-valves from Aisin. As a just-in-time manufacturer, Toyota had only a couple of days’ valves in its plants. While the fire was still burning, Toyota and Aisin immediately collaborated to make emergency requests of their networks of suppliers. Aisin helped other suppliers improvise different production techniques, providing them with detailed plans and technical support. Two days after the fire, the first valves came off the production line, and a week later, Toyota’s production line was back to normal. Two months later, Aisin resumed production at pre-fire levels.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''4. Resilient organizations strengthen and extend their communications networks – internally and externally.'''<br />
<br />
A robust and redundant communications infrastructure holds up in a crisis. Social networks among employees at resilient organizations are rich, varied, and visible. People who have trust relationships and personal support systems at work and with friends and family are much more able to cope with stress and change.<br />
<br />
Good connections and communications also apply to external relationships with suppliers and customers. A key is to recognize what’s important to meet organizational goals and to listen to those with needed expertise and ideas wherever they are in the value web.<br />
<br />
Resilient organizations use networked communications to distribute decision-making. As much as possible, they push decisions down to where they can be made most effectively and thus quickly. This in turn requires good access to information at all levels of the organization.<br />
<br />
After Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in 1992, the state reassessed its preparedness and greatly expanded its planning to include stakeholders from every level of government, as well as organizations in the private sector, non-profits, and faith-based groups. These organizations came together to cooperate and collaborate, addressing the complex problems that none of them could solve by themselves. This Florida “megacommunity” was prepared for Hurricane Katrina, unlike localities on the Gulf Coast. In fact, within hours of Katrina’s landfall, more than 3700 of Florida’s first responders were deployed to affected areas.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''5. Resilient organizations encourage innovation and experimentation.'''<br />
<br />
In times of great uncertainty and unpredictability, the success and failure of small-scale experiments can help map a path to the future. Resilient organizations engage in market research, product development, and ongoing operations and service improvements. They invest in small experiments and product trials that carry low costs of failure.<br />
<br />
UPS tells its drivers to do whatever it takes to deliver packages on time. They encourage improvisation to solve all the small things that can go wrong every day. At the same time, they have clear rules and regulations, such as always putting their keys in the same place, closing truck doors the same way, making only right turns 90% of the time to save time and fuel, and so on. Those routines, combined with creative improvisation, allowed UPS to deliver packages the day after Hurricane Andrew struck, even to people temporarily living in their cars.<br />
<br />
Resilient organizations foster a culture of continuous innovation and ingenuity to solve problems and adapt to challenges. A side benefit is that employees who believe they can influence events that affect their work and lives are more likely to be engaged, committed, and act in positive ways associated with resilience. Some organizations also have internal idea markets to surface new ideas and innovations. Others use “crowdsourcing” to engage people externally in solving a given problem. Eli Lilly's Innocentive Open Innovation Marketplace is perhaps the best example.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''6. Resilient organizations cultivate a culture with clearly shared purpose and values.'''<br />
<br />
When an organization’s sense of purpose is shared by its employees, suppliers and customers, those networks can provide flexibility to help it through a disruption. Engaged employees will seek out opportunities to try new approaches, find creative solutions, and achieve great results.<br />
<br />
A University of Michigan study of major airlines in the aftermath of September 11 found that those whose market value rebounded shared two characteristics: (1) they maintained their commitments to employees, and (2) they had adequate financial reserves. Others went bankrupt or out of business. Instead of layoffs or canceling severance packages and employee benefits, the resilient ones did everything they could to preserve employee relationships and loyalty. Financial reserves and a strong sense of purpose and organizational values made that possible."<br />
(http://www.peopleandplace.net/perspectives/2009/2/2/six_habits_of_highly_resilient_organizations)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Congruence between resilience thinking and the partnership view==<br />
<br />
Madronna Holden:<br />
<br />
"In their 10,000 years of sustainable living here, our land’s diverse cultures had this in common: they treated all natural life as their intimate kin, with standing comparable to that of humans. “All animals and inanimate objects possessed spirits,” as STOWW (Small Tribes of Western Washington) stated in their handout for their 1975 treaty rights workshop. Among the Sahaptin-speaking people on the mid-Columbia River, the term for “life” is waq’ádyšwit, the “animating principle or ‘soul’ possessed by people as well as animals, plants, and forces of nature.” Waq’ádyšwit indicates “intelligence, will, and consciousness,” and since it exists in all natural things, it is the moral basis of the reciprocal partnerships between humans and their land.(1)<br />
<br />
Similar recognition of personhood in nature is found in the traditions of the inland valleys as expressed by contemporary Coos-Kalapuya elder Esther Stutzman: “The earth is alive. It has a heart.” The indigenous peoples of Northern California likewise also perceived natural landscapes as comprised of persons alive with spirit. In the early 1900s, linguist Jaime de Angulo wrote of his frustration in trying to get a word for animals that contrasted with that for humans in the Pit River language. But there was no such word in their language, since there was no such distinction in Pit River culture.<br />
<br />
The radical equality between humans and other natural life in the partnership worldview goes hand in hand with the recognition that nature and humans are intertwined in the holistic manner of Walker’s “socio-ecological systems,” in which “changes in one domain of the system... inevitably impact the other.”<br />
<br />
In this sense, both the partnership model and the resilience paradigm offer an alternative to the dualistic split of the worldview that sets humans apart from and above nature. Both concur with the modern science that tells us whatever we do to our natural environment, we do to ourselves. <br />
<br />
In recognizing the dynamic reflexivity between ourselves and the natural world, indigenous Northwesterners developed an ethic of reciprocity, which entailed sharing the gifts of life with others, taking only as much as you could replace from natural systems, and treating natural life with respect in order to allow it to flourish – which in turn allowed humans to flourish. In such reciprocity, we find the intersection of ethics and practical outcomes in an interdependent world.<br />
<br />
Further, since all natural species were peoples in the partnership view, it followed that humans should establish diplomatic relationships with them. This conceptualization is not so different from Frances Westley’s chronicle of a contemporary resource manager’s work with adaptive Resilience Alliance guidelines.(2) In the modern case, the diplomacy took place between competing human interest groups. In the partnership model, the manager’s personal interest in caring for fish stocks would have been further developed and elevated to comparable status with his attention to human interests.<br />
<br />
Historically, the partnership view impelled local peoples to act with consideration for the future generations of salmon and humans together. It also allowed for observation of the effects of human actions on other species as a whole. Drawing on this perspective, for instance, Lucy Thompson observed in 1916 that non-Indian rules for protecting the salmon on the Klamath River were bound to fail, since they were based on the actions of individual fishermen – but their actions taken together created a gauntlet of barriers the salmon could not run.<br />
<br />
Such intimate observation of the salmon resulted in their abundance under native management, so that the indigenous peoples on the Columbia River, for instance, harvested seven times the modern take without harming the sustainability of the runs.<br />
<br />
The ways in which the partnership model encouraged humans to manage themselves for the benefit of both their landscapes and themselves were not limited to the salmon. In Tending the Wild, Kat Anderson details the way that this worldview led to the exquisite bounty of root crops, wildfowl, and game recorded in hundreds of explorer records in native California. In like fashion, early explorers in the Willamette Valley termed it the “gourmand’s paradise” for the results of the specific management practices of the Kalapuya – and they would come to the Willamette Valley to stock up on provisions whenever they ran low.<br />
<br />
The intersection of ethics and practical results in the partnership model is eloquently expressed by modern Nisqually leader Billy Frank, Jr., who has worked tirelessly both for Indian fishing rights and the care of the salmon and its habitat: “I don’t believe in magic. I believe in the sun and the stars, the water, the tides, the floods, the owls, the hawks flying, the river running, the wind talking. They’re measurements. They tell us how healthy things are. How healthy we are. Because we and they are the same thing.”(3)<br />
<br />
As modern Westerners, we cannot authentically or ethically take over the specific spiritual beliefs of other cultures. Nor can we return to the past. Yet as the Resilience Alliance’s workbook for resource managers observes, it is important to tell the story of ourselves and our land in ways that free us from the constraints of the ruling paradigm. In this context, the partnership worldview has much to show us about fostering a resilient world.<br />
<br />
Those who hold the partnership worldview would certainly concur with Walker’s inclusion of diversity in his resilience vision. A partnership worldview inherently promotes such diversity in its recognition that all natural life possesses spirit and personhood. In this sense, the partnership view envisions the most democratic of socio-ecological systems, embracing what Vandana Shiva terms “a democracy of all life.”<br />
<br />
Indeed, the partnership worldview immunizes its holders against the “paradox of domination” that goes along with the Walker’s “paradox of optimization.” The more one tries to control a thing, the less one sees it for what it is. One-way communication with natural life (we plant, you yield) subverts the knowledge we need to foster a resilient world. As a remedy for the dangers of such limited information gathering, the partnership model sensitizes humans to the ways in which natural life “talks back” to us.<br />
<br />
This paradigm has important scientific potential, as expressed in geneticist Barbara McClintock’s Nobel Prize-winning work she accomplished through “speaking with the corn,” getting to know each corn plant as an individual. It was not a popular method for any scientist, much less a woman beginning work in genetics several decades ago. For years McClintock struggled to continue her research without the support of her colleagues, finding ways to fund her own work. In doing so she expressed leadership and inventiveness of the kind that Walker outlines as necessary for enacting a resilience vision.<br />
<br />
This is also the kind of leadership expressed by Siletz Takelma elder Agnes Pilgrim Baker in taking on her personal commitment as a “voice for the voiceless.” She does not say, “voice of the voiceless.” She is not subsuming or taking over the voice of the other. Instead she is expressing the central stance in the partnership worldview: speaking up for those we might otherwise leave out of our goals or visions, in the same way that Mary Heck called attention to the beaver.<br />
<br />
Such leadership reminds us that in order to gear our behavior toward fostering a resilient natural world, we need to increase our listening skills – and thus expand our range of vision.<br />
<br />
Key to the success of the partnership worldview is its attribution of agency to all in any socio-ecological system. Thus it helps us embrace a question as pressing in this era of increasing globalization as it was to cultures with 10,000 years of standing in the Pacific Northwest."<br />
(http://www.peopleandplace.net/perspectives/2008/12/17/partnership_and_resilience)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Discussion 2=<br />
<br />
<br />
==Resilience vs [[Efficiency]]==<br />
<br />
John Michael Greer:<br />
<br />
"he rise of this term to its present popularity in green circles has a history worth noting. A year or two ago, the word “sustainability” began to lose its privileged place in the jargon of the time, as it began to sink in that no matter how much manhandling was applied to that much-abused term, it couldn’t be combined with the phrase “modern middle-class lifestyle” without resulting in total absurdity. Enter “resilience”, as another way to talk about what too many people nowadays want to talk about, generally to the exclusion of more useful conversations: the pretense that a set of lifestyles, social habits, and technologies that were born in an age of unparalleled extravagance can be maintained as the material basis for that extravagance trickles away.<br />
<br />
The word “sustainability”, it bears remembering, has a perfectly clear meaning. It means, as the word itself suggests, the ability of something to be sustained, either for a set period of time – “sustainable over a twenty year period”, for example – or indefinitely. That was its problem as a green buzzword, because next to nobody wanted to talk about just how long the current crop of “sustainable” tech was actually likely to stay viable (hint: not very long), and even fewer were willing to grapple with the immense challenges facing any attempt to sustain any of today’s technologies into the indefinite future.<br />
<br />
The problem with “resilience”, though, is that it also has a perfectly clear meaning. Once people figure out what that is, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be hunting for another buzzword in short order, because resilience can be defined very precisely: it’s the opposite of efficiency.<br />
<br />
Okay, now that you’ve stopped spluttering, let me explain.<br />
<br />
We can define efficiency informally as doing the most with the least. An efficient use of resources is thus one that puts as few resources as possible into places where they sit around doing nothing. The just-in-time ordering process that’s now standard in manufacturing and retail, for example, was hailed as a huge increase in efficiency when it was introduced; instead of having stockpiles sitting around in warehouses, items could be ordered electronically from a database so that they would be made and shipped just in time to go onto the assembly line or the store shelf. What nobody asked, and very few people have asked even yet, is what happens when something goes wrong.<br />
<br />
The great Tohoku tsunami a few months back provided a wakeup call in that direction, as factories across Japan and around the world suddenly discovered that the shipment of parts they needed just in time for next month’s production runs had been delivered instead to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. In the inefficient old days, when parts jobbers scattered all over the industrial world had warehouses full of parts being produced by an equally dispersed array of small factories, that would have given nobody sleepless nights, since the stock of spares on hand would be enough to tide things over until factories could run some extra shifts and make up the demand. Since production had been efficiently centralized in very few factories, or in some cases only one, and the warehouses full of parts had been rendered obsolete by efficient new ordering systems, knock-on costs that would have been negligible in 1970 are proving to be very substantial today.<br />
<br />
Efficiency, in other words, is not resilient. What makes a system resilient is the presence of unused resources, and these are inefficient by definition. A bridge is resilient, for example, if it contains a good deal more steel and concrete than is actually needed to support its normal maximum load; that way, when some outside factor such as a hurricane puts unexpected stresses on the bridge, the previously unnecessary structural strength of all that extra steel and concrete comes into play, and keeps the bridge from falling down. Most bridges are designed and built with that sort of inefficiency in place, because the downside of too little efficiency (the bridge costs more to build) is a good deal less troubling than the downside of too little resiliency (the bridge collapses in a storm). Like every project worth doing, a good bridge has to strike a balance between many conflicting factors, no one of which can be maximized except at the expense of others of equal importance.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Thus efficiency is not resilient, and resilience is not efficient. Just-in-time ordering is conceptually the same as the Dymaxion car’s narrow wheelbase and high center of gravity: a great idea, as long as nothing goes wrong. Since it may have occurred to you, dear reader, that today’s industrial civilization seems to have a lot in common just now with these examples of high efficiency and low resilience, you may be thinking that it might turn out to be necessary to accept a lower degree of efficiency, in order to provide our civilization with the backlog of unused resources that will give it resilience.<br />
<br />
Ah, but here’s where things get difficult.<br />
<br />
There’s a reason why contemporary industrial culture is obsessed with efficiency, and it’s not because we’re smarter than our grandparents. Every civilization, as it nears the limits of its resource base, has to deal with the mismatch between habits evolved during times of relative abundance and the onset of shortages driven by too much exploitation of that abundance. Nearly always, the outcome is a shift in the direction of greater efficiency. Local governments give way to centralized ones; economies move as far toward mass production as the underlying technology will permit; precise management becomes the order of the day; waste gets cut and so, inevitably, do corners. All this leads to increased efficiency and thus decreased resilience, and sets things up for the statistically inevitable accident that will push things just past the limits of the civilization’s remaining resilience, and launch the downward spiral that ends with sheep grazing among ruins.<br />
<br />
Trying to build resilience into a system that’s already gotten itself into this bind is a difficult project at best. The point of these efficiency drives, after all, is to free up resources to support the standards of living of the privileged classes. Since these same privileged classes are the ones who have to sign off on any project to redirect resources toward resilience, the difficulties in convincing them to act against their immediate self-interest are not hard to imagine. Since efficiency tends to take an aura of sanctity in such cases – privileged classes, after all, are as prone as anyone else to convince themselves that what’s good for them is good for everyone – proponents of resilience face an uphill fight against deeply rooted assumptions. After all, who wants to go on record in support of inefficiency?<br />
<br />
And of course that’s exactly what we’ve seen in recent decades in industrial society. The Glass-Steagall Act, which imposed resilience on the US banking system at the cost of a fair amount of inefficiency, is a good example; it was gutted by an enthusiastically bipartisan majority, giving us the highly efficient but hopelessly brittle financial system we have today. Many other measures that put resilience into the system were also scrapped in the name of “competitiveness”, though it’s worth noticing that America’s ability to compete in any arena that doesn’t involve blowing large chunks of a Third World country to kingdom come has gone down steadily while these allegedly competitive measures have been at work. All of it, slogans aside, served to free up resources to maintain living standards for America’s privileged classes – a category that extends well down into the middle class, please note, and includes a great many people who like to denounce the existing order of American society in heated terms.<br />
<br />
That’s our version of the trap that closes around every society that overshoots its resource base. The struggle to sustain the unsustainable – to maintain levels of consumption the remaining resource base won’t support indefinitely – always seems to drive the sort of short-term expedients that make for long-term disasters. I’ve come to think that a great many of the recent improvements in efficiency in the industrial world have their roots in this process. Loudly ballyhooed as great leaps forward, they may well actually be signs of the tightening noose of resource constraints that, in the long run, will choke the life out of our civilization.<br />
<br />
Thus it’s a great idea in the abstract to demand a society-wide push for resilience, but in practice, that would involve loading a great many inefficiencies onto the economy. Things would cost more, and fewer people would be able to afford them, since the costs of resilience have to be paid, and the short term benefits of excessive efficiency have to be foregone. That’s not a recipe for winning an election or outcompeting a foreign rival, and the fact that it might just get us through the waning years of the industrial age pays nobody’s salary today. It may well turn out that burning through the available resources, and then crashing into ruin, is simply the most efficient way for a civilization to go.<br />
<br />
Where does that leave those of us who would like to find a way through the crisis of our time and hand down some part of the legacy of our civilization to the future? The same principles apply, though it’s fortunately true that individuals, families, and local communities often have an easier time looking past the conventional wisdom of their era and doing something sensible even when it’s not popular. The first thing that has to be grasped, it seems to me, is that trying to maintain the comfortable lifestyles of the recent past is a fool’s errand. It’s only by making steep cuts in our personal demand for resources that it’s possible to make room for inefficiency, and therefore resilience.<br />
<br />
Most of the steps proposed in these essays, in turn, are inefficient – indeed, deliberately so. It’s unquestionably inefficient in terms of your personal time and resources to dig up your back yard and turn it into a garden; that inefficiency, however, means that if anything happens to the hypercomplex system that provides you with your food – a process that reaches beyond growers, shippers and stores to the worlds of high finance, petroleum production, resource politics, and much more – you still get to eat. It’s inefficient to generate your own electricity, to retrofit your home for conservation, to do all the other things we’ve discussed. Those inefficiencies, in turn, are measures of resilience; they define your fallback options, the extra strength you build into the bridge to your future, so that it can hope to stand up to the approaching tempests.<br />
<br />
The emerging patterns of the salvage economy that have been discussed here over the last few weeks feed into this same quest for resilience. Many older technologies, of the sort that might readily be salvaged and put to use, are a good deal less efficient than their modern replacements, and therefore much more resilient."<br />
(http://billtotten.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/salvaging-resilience/)<br />
<br />
Source: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/salvaging-resilience.html<br />
<br />
=Source=<br />
<br />
#Risks and resilience in the new global era. By Alex Evans and David Steven. Renewal Vol. 17, No.1<br />
<br />
URL = http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/Renewal_resilience_article.pdf<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=More Information=<br />
<br />
<br />
#See John Robb's proposition for [[Resilient Communities]]<br />
#Paper by Kevin Carson at http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/C4SS-Resilient-Communities-and-Local-Economies.pdf<br />
#Resilience links: http://shareable.net/blog/resilience-links-from-people-place<br />
<br />
==Bibliography:==<br />
<br />
#Coutu, D. L. (2003) ‘How Resilience Works’ in Harvard Business Review on Building Personal<br />
and Organizational Resilience, Boston, Harvard Business School Press.<br />
#Tainter, J. (1988) The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.<br />
#Walker, B. et al (2004) ‘Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological<br />
Systems’ in Ecology and Society 9 (2) Art 5.<br />
#Walker, B. and Salt, D. (2006) Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a<br />
Changing World, Washington, Island Press. [http://www.powells.com/biblio/4-9781597260930-0]<br />
<br />
<br />
==Resilience Alliance==<br />
<br />
#The [[Resilience Alliance]] (RA) is a research organization comprised of scientists and practitioners from many disciplines who collaborate to explore the dynamics of social-ecological systems.<br />
#The RA weblog is Resilience Science, at http://rs.resalliance.org/<br />
#The RA journal is Ecology and Society, at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/index.php.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Video==<br />
<br />
<br />
#[[Elinor Ostrom on Resilient Social-Ecological Systems]]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Security]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Policy]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Relational]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Time_Scales_for_P2P_Oriented_Change&diff=58610Time Scales for P2P Oriented Change2012-01-23T00:48:01Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
=Discussion=<br />
<br />
<br />
==Michel Bauwens==<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Sam Rose==<br />
<br />
"I think the projections I've seen on P2P foundation list of "30<br />
years","50 years" etc are too long for:<br />
<br />
1. Radical change in biosphere (enough changes to cause significant<br />
pressure on people employing industrial era approaches)<br />
<br />
2. Shift to commons and p2p based approaches<br />
<br />
An argument can be made that in as little as 10-15 years, multiple<br />
pressures will coincide all at the same time. Peak oil figures are set<br />
near 2030 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil speed up of Arctic<br />
and Antarctic thaw right now<br />
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100404/sc_nm/us_climate_nitrous by 2030<br />
it is plausible that we will have already passed the tipping point for<br />
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affecting climates world wide.<br />
<br />
Food and energy demand are projected to increase by 50% by 2030, fresh<br />
water by 30% http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5967/812<br />
India and China (2 most populous nations) both warn their populations<br />
that their demand will outstrip their supplies severely by 2030<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_crisis (links there to reports on<br />
this subject)<br />
<br />
Many food producing corporations that run industrial farming<br />
operations are switching large scale agricultural production to<br />
biofuel http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2009/10/12/118291/Massive-increase-in-global-biofuel-production.htm<br />
which can further increase food costs by raising commodity prices<br />
worldwide, and causing food shortages. This price and biofuel<br />
production increase is already happening now.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, multiple corporations are relentlessly pursuing total<br />
control of communications infrastructure, (and already have total<br />
control of) financial systems, energy and food distribution, etc<br />
<br />
So, by 2030 (not later) it is plausible that we will already be in a<br />
state where millions, if not billions will be marginalized by all<br />
existing basic sustenance systems (food, water, energy, access).<br />
<br />
Stuart Kauffman, and other complex systems theorists have shown that<br />
in all systems, change tends to happen in an "s curve" fashion.<br />
Kauffman uses a sandpile as an example in his book "At Home In The<br />
Universe". He describes the data signature of a massive pile of sand<br />
collapsing. First small bits fall of, then large chunks, then larger<br />
and larger, faster and faster. The total rate of collapse towards the<br />
end is exponentially faster than the beginning. I think we are seeing<br />
the same with global human systems now, and that we are *now* in the<br />
beginning time of collapse, with signals already present around the<br />
world. This means we have maybe 15 years, starting *now*, to start<br />
changing things in significant ways for at least 45% or more of people<br />
on the earth. 45% minimum probably will get us enough inertia in the<br />
opposite direction to slow down the momentum that is starting *now*."<br />
(email, May 2010)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Joss Winn==<br />
<br />
"The growing consensus is that the peak of conventional oil was in 2005<br />
and that the peak of all liquid fuels will be between 2010 - 2014.<br />
<br />
I've summarised this and a few other things relating to climate,<br />
technology and efficiency, here:<br />
<br />
http://joss.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2010/02/12/revisiting-thinking-the-unthinkable/<br />
<br />
Since writing that, a paper from an Oxford University research group<br />
(including ex-Chief Scientific Advisor to UK gov, Sr. David King) has<br />
added to the growing Peak Oil consensus.<br />
<br />
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2010.02.026<br />
<br />
(email, May 2010)<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Politics]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Citations_on_Open_and_Shared_Design_and_Open_and_Distributed_Manufacturing&diff=58609Citations on Open and Shared Design and Open and Distributed Manufacturing2012-01-23T00:47:53Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
=Design=<br />
<br />
<br />
==Marcin Jakubowski on open access to digital design==<br />
<br />
'''open access to digital design – perhaps in the form a global repository of shared open source designs - introduces a unique contribution to human prosperity. This contribution is the possibility that data at one location in the world can be translated immediately to a product in any other location. This means anyone equipped with flexible fabrication capacity can be a producer of just about any manufactured object. The ramifications for localization of economies are profound, and leave the access to raw material feedstocks as the only natural constraint to human prosperity.''' <br />
<br />
- Marcin Jakubowski<br />
<br />
<br />
==Shared Design is essential to transform the world==<br />
<br />
"When intellectual problems become distributed, the search for solutions becomes collaborative and the research agenda is driven not by multinational shareholders but by the passions of the participants, you get not just better results, you get different results."<br />
<br />
- Alec Steffens [http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008469.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
==Linus Torvalds on [[Open Peer to Peer Design]]==<br />
<br />
"“I think the real issue about adoption of open source is that nobody can really ever “design” a complex system. That’s simply not how things work: people aren’t that smart - nobody is. And what open source allows is to not actually “design” things, but let them evolve, through lots of different pressures in the market, and having the end result just continually improve."<br />
(http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/43)<br />
<br />
<br />
"don’t EVER make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That’s giving your intelligence _much_ too much credit."<br />
(http://kerneltrap.org/node/11)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Agroblogger on a [[Appropriate Technology]] [[General Public License]]==<br />
<br />
"Let us imagine an active online community participating in vibrant discussions and sharing of [[Appropriate Technology]] plans and experiences. '''Let us imagine the AT equivalent of a sourceforge.net, a place where designers and field workers can go to download plans of greenhouses, beehives, water pumps, animal traction implements, and biodiesel equipment. And, within the legal framework of an AT General Public License (GPL), those plans can be used freely, modified, and republished under the same AT GPL.''' IRC channels dedicated to specific programmatic areas could serve as a dynamic forum where "newbies" can gain wisdom and insight from experienced field practitioners."<br />
(Agroblogger [http://www.agroblogger.com/tag/appropriate-technology])<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Vinay Gupta on Open Source Design for Development==<br />
<br />
"An open library of designs for refrigerators, lighting, heating, cooling, motors, and other systems will encourage manufacturers, particularly in the developing world, to leapfrog directly to the most sustainable technologies, which are much cheaper in the long run. Manufacturers will be encouraged to use the efficient designs because they are free, while inefficient designs still have to be paid for. The library could also include green chemistry and biological solutions to industry challenges, for example enzymatic reactions that could be used in place of energy, and chemical-intensive processes or nontoxic paint pigments for cars and buildings. This library should be free of all intellectual property restrictions and open for use by any manufacturer, in any nation, without charge."<br />
(http://www.guptaoption.com/5.open_source_development.php)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Marcin Jakubowski on [[Neosubsistence]]==<br />
<br />
"Neosubsistence is the term we apply to a lifestyle where people produce tangible (physical) wealth, as opposed to dealing with information in the information economy. We are talking about basics: '''even though we live in the information economy, we cannot deny the reality that human prosperity is founded on the provision of physical needs upon which the meeting of all higher needs is predicated'''. ''Neosubsistence is related to the information economy in that the information economy is a foundation for neosubsistence''"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==John Thackara on the importance of design for sustainability==<br />
<br />
"Eighty per cent of the environmental impact of today's products, services and infrastructures is determined at the design stage. Design decisions shape the processes behind the products we use, the materials and energy required to make them, the ways we operate them and what happens to them when we no longer need them."<br />
(http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007654.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Manufacturing=<br />
<br />
==Karim Lakhani on Communities driving Manufacturers out of the design phase==<br />
<br />
"for any given company - there are more people outside the company that have smarts about a particular technology or a particular use situation then all the R&D engineers combined. So a community around a product category may have more smart people working on the product then the firm it self. So in the end manufacturers may end up doing what they are supposed to - manufacture - and the design activity might move to the edge and into the community."<br />
(http://www.futureofcommunities.com/2007/03/25/communities-driving-manufacturers-out-of-the-design-space/)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Kevin Kelly and Terry Hancock on nearly-free material production==<br />
<br />
"'''Material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies'''. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill."<br />
(http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Both the capital and marginal cost of making products has trended consistently and rapidly down as manufacturing tools become both cheaper and more versatile, so that the capital cost of an object is increasingly not in the capital equipment required to manufacture it, but in the effort required to design it.'''<br />
<br />
<br />
- Terry Hancock [http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy]<br />
<br />
==Steve Bosserman outlines what is most appropriate for local distributed manufacturing==<br />
<br />
"strong candidates for a locally distributed manufacturing approach include ANYTHING<br />
that is agriculturally- based like food, feed, fiber, and biofuel production,<br />
much of housing and building construction including the manufacturing of<br />
inputs used in that industry, localized electric power generation using<br />
non-bio sources like wind, solar, and geothermal, and production /<br />
manufacturing of materials, components, and assemblies that use locally<br />
sourced raw materials and draw upon open-source, relatively easy to learn,<br />
appropriate technologies that can be applied in a wide range of<br />
situations-- not just a single product."<br />
<br />
==Eric von Hippel on Manufacturing around User Innovation Communities==<br />
<br />
"Threadless has tapped into a fundamental economic shift, a movement away from passive consumerism. One day in the not-too-distant future citizen inventors using computer design programs and three-dimensional printers will exchange physical prototypes in much the same way Nickell and cohorts played Photoshop tennis.<br />
<br />
Eventually, Threadless-like communities could form around industries as diverse as semiconductors, auto parts, and toys. Threadless is one of the first firms to systematically mine a community for designs, but everything is moving in this direction. <br />
<br />
He foresees research labs and product-design divisions at manufacturing companies being outstripped by an "innovation commons" made up of tinkerers, hackers, and other devout customers freely sharing their ideas. The companies that win will be the ones that listen."<br />
(quotes and paraphrased by Inc. [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080601/the-customer-is-the-company_Printer_Friendly.html])<br />
<br />
<br />
==Frank Piller on [[User Manufacturing]]==<br />
<br />
"User manufacturing is enabled by three main technologies: (1) Easy-to-operate design software that allows users to transfer their ideas into a design. (2) Design repositories where users upload, search, and share designs with other users. This allows a community of loosely connected users to develop a large range of applications. (3) Easy-to-access flexible manufacturing technology. New rapid manufacturing technologies ("fabbing") finally deliver the dream of translating any 3-D data files into physical products -- even in you living room. Combining this technology with recent web technologies can open a radical new way to provide custom products along the entire "long tail" of demand.<br />
<br />
User manufacturing builds on the notion that users are not just able to configure a good within the given solution space (mass customization), but also to develop such a solution space by their own and utilize it by producing custom products. As a result, customers are becoming not only co-designers, but also manufacturers, using an infrastructure provided by some specialized companies."<br />
(http://mass-customization.blogs.com/mass_customization_open_i/2007/11/webinar-the-nex.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Jeff Bezos on User-Manufacturing Everything==<br />
<br />
"Before long, “user-generated content” won’t refer only to media, but to just about anything: user-generated jeans, user-generated sports cars, user-generated breakfast meals. This is because setting up a company that designs, makes and globally sells physical products could become almost as easy as starting a blog - and the repercussions would be earthshaking. "<br />
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2006-11-21-amazon-user-generated-products_x.htm)<br />
<br />
<br />
==Flexible Manufacturing and the Maker Movement==<br />
<br />
"Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences— the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections."<br />
(http://iftf.org/node/1766)<br />
<br />
<br />
'''So, what can we do to prevent instability? The solution isn't to formulate vague contingency plans or return to passive optimism. Obviously, that won't work. No, the solution is to improve our resilience to these systemic shocks through a social and economic transition that follows this simple formula:<br />
<br />
* Localize production. <br />
* Virtualize everything else.'''<br />
<br />
- John Robb [http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/04/localize-and-virtualize.html]<br />
<br />
<br />
"'''The emergence of commons-based techniques — particularly, of an open<br />
innovation platform that can incorporate farmers and local agronomists from<br />
around the world into the development and feedback process through<br />
networked collaboration platforms—promises the most likely avenue to achieve<br />
research oriented toward increased food security in the developing world.'''<br />
It promises a mechanism of development that will not increase the relative<br />
weight and control of a small number of commercial firms that specialize in<br />
agricultural production. It will instead release the products of innovation into a<br />
self-binding commons—one that is institutionally designed to defend itself<br />
against appropriation. It promises an iterative collaboration platform that would<br />
be able to collect environmental and local feedback in the way that a free<br />
software development project collects bug reports—through a continuous<br />
process of networked conversation among the user-innovators themselves."<br />
<br />
- Yochai Benkler ([http://www.oss.net/dynamaster/file_archive/080220/e85a39f0bcddd8a1352d573626dcc63a/Complete-4.0%20Book%20Text%20648%20sides.pdf], p. 22)<br />
<br />
<br />
"The guaranteed income will, in fact, lead to the revival of "private enterprise." Once the guaranteed income is available, we can anticipate the organization of what I have called "consentives": productive groups formed by individuals who will come together on a voluntary basis simply because they wish to do so. The goods produced by these consentives will not compete with mass-produced goods available from cybernated firms. The consentive will normally produce the "custom-designed" goods that have been vanishing within the present economy. The consentive would sell in competition with firms paying wages, but its prices would normally be lower because it would need to cover only the cost of materials and other required supplies. Wages and salaries would not need to be met out of income, as the consentive members would be receiving a guaranteed income. The consentive would be market-oriented but not market-supported."<br />
<br />
- Robert Theobald, The Guaranteed Income, 1966<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Infrastructural_Commons_for_Sustainability&diff=58608Infrastructural Commons for Sustainability2012-01-23T00:47:44Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>Report: EENGO Submission to the (Irish) National Sustainable Development Strategy. Final Report January 2008. Edited by Emer O'Siochru and David Korowitz.<br />
<br />
URL = http://www.ien.ie/news/publications/national-sustainable-development-strategy-nsds/ <br />
<br />
Also available via Emer O'Siochru at emerosiochru@gmail.com<br />
<br />
<br />
=Details=<br />
<br />
Emer O'Siochru:<br />
<br />
"A submission by the environmental NGOs in Ireland<br />
for a National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) in 2008.<br />
Emer O'Siochru led the process and David Korowitz of Feasta and Emer O'Siochru edited.<br />
<br />
The government has begun the consultation process for the<br />
NSDS from start again and the paper is now under review by a more<br />
formal group of environmental NGOs - the Environmental Pillar (EP)."<br />
(email, June 2008)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Executive Summary=<br />
<br />
"This EENGO submission to inform a National Sustainable Development Strategy attempts to go beyond a reiteration of global objectives of the Rio and Johannesburg summits and of European Directives accompanied by a list of Ireland’s failures to deliver; although they set the context of the submission. Instead we interrogate the forces or entrenched ideas that stymie progress so effectively and investigate new structures and mechanisms to engage our considerable human ingenuity to secure the future for our children and ourselves. <br />
<br />
The next National Sustainable Development Strategy will cover the short - approximately 10 year - window before our options close down alarmingly as climate change reaches irreversible thresholds. There is literally no time to lose and everything to gain, not least national competitive advantage, were we to make the changes now, before they force themselves on us along with the rest of the world. <br />
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Our overarching aim is not ‘Economic Growth’ but ‘ Wellbeing’ that requires a ‘Grown-up Economy’. We have also added the challenges of Energy and Food Security and Cultural Diversity to the challenges listed by the EU Sustainable Development Strategy outline in order to signal their importance to the sustainability project. <br />
These ideas and the chapter themes of ‘Risk Manangement and Development of Resilience’, ‘Protection and Sharing of Commons Property’ and ‘Information, Communication and Participation Rights’ are interlinked with the imperitive for human civilisation to make a net contribution to Earth systems and bio diversity, especially through ‘Democratised Energy and Carbon Capture’. All these ideas must be taken together for best effect and in a market economy, can only be delivered by the price mechanism balanced by the ‘Predistribution’ to citizens of their real and virtual inheritance. <br />
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'''Risk Management and Resilience Building'''<br />
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We tend to treat the future as if it will be a continuation of the present but with more of everything. This is in spite of historical evidence that major changes of direction inevitably disturb well-established trajectories. We even know what those major changes are likely to be – fossil fuel peak, global warming, water and soil degradation, irreversible biodiversity loss, new diseases against which we have few defences and increasing financial global interdependence and instability (in no particular order). The first thing to do is to name the problem – Future Risk – then pass enabling legislation to appoint a dedicated powerful agency, the Risk Management Agency within the Department of Finance to manage it along the following lines; -<br />
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• The Risk Management Agency will provide the risk assessed decision framework within which, the Taoiseach, Minister for Finance and other ministers will select options in full knowledge of the range and probabilities of potential outcomes. The NSDS, Partnerhsip Agreements, NDPs and NSS and all development guidelines should be re-evaluated under this framework. <br />
• It will manage the National Investment Funds with a wide input from future thinkers to redress our current over-reliance on market wisdom that looks to the past not the future. <br />
• It will oversee the setting up and operation of the ‘Commons Trusts’ (see below) and collate information from their various indicators to give us a reliable progress reports. <br />
• It will oversee geographical/spatial information gathering and collation so that all environmental, social and economic data is up-to-date, inter-compatible and freely accessible to government agencies, private sector and especially to civil society. <br />
• It will ensure that the communication technology and channels are reserved for all voices and the arenas for participation welcome the environmental /sustainability sector at all levels of governance. (See below) <br />
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'''Protection and Sharing of Commons Property'''<br />
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Enabling legislation is urgently needed to protect commons property from being expropriated by public and private agents. The difference between public property and the property of the commons is poorly recognised and this has led to either ‘enclosure’ for private gain or ‘tragedy’ from overuse. Governments have proved to be poor trustees of commons resources because of short political horizons and pressure from vested interests. As with the setting of interest rates, far-sighted governments would serve their electorate better by delegating to specialised agencies, Commons Trusts, to manage commons assets at arms length. Commons trustees would develop appropriate indicators to measure their success in conserving and improving their trust assets. Public and private developers would pay the relevant trusts to comment on impacts of proposed development in their EIS and SIAs. Beneficiary representatives would monitor the indicators and remunerate trustees on the results. The receipts for use of Commons Trust assets could form the basis of a citizen’s dividend that would decouple income from production (and consumption) and help address inequality and build social capital. <br />
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'''There are broadly two kinds of commons needing different approaches –the real commons of natural resources and eco systems, and the virtual commons of knowledge and culture.''' <br />
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'''Real Commons'''<br />
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• Proposals include reforming semi-state bodies with essential natural resources in their care, such as Bord na Mona and Coillte, as trusts to reflect the new priority for conservation. Their commercial functions would be outsourced into separate agencies that will have to meet the new trust’s standards and charges for use of the resource. <br />
• New trusts are needed too; the first and most important is the Climate Trust to conserve the climate ecosystem and distribute its use value to its beneficiaries. It would administer the ‘Cap and Share’ emission permit system for transport, expanding to cover other sectors within Ireland, then geographically to the EU, then developing nations, leading eventually a global system. <br />
• River Basin Trusts should be entrusted with the water resource within their catchment areas. A Coastline Trust could protect maritime resources and a Biodiversity Trust would redress the power imbalance that has always lost out against economic and social lobbies. <br />
• The value added to land by public and private investment is a commons’ wealth that is currently captured almost entirely by the landowner. Local authorities should act as trustees for their community and recoup this value through annual land value taxes to be then used to redress the infrastructure shortfall and/or distributed as a citizen dividend. In addition, Community Land Trusts should be fostered to ensure housing affordability and social integration in perpetuity. <br />
• Similarly, the human right to access rural land and coasts for recreation and spiritual renewal should be formally recognsied and protected by a special trust. <br />
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'''Virtual Commons'''<br />
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• Scientific knowledge and technology is a commons developed over generations of human endevour that should not be unduly enclosed or privatised for purely private gain or its value will be diminished for all. <br />
• Culture is included in this set of commons. The State or trustees acting on behalf of its beneficiaries must guarantee effective access to these human-created resources.<br />
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'''Information, Communication and Participation Rights'''<br />
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New technologies have the potential to transform a public good into a commons. Such a transformation has occurred to the public good of free speech. Free speech is meaningless where some can communicate by high-speed modems and satellite television and others are limited to face-to-face conversation. When communication is compromised, access to knowledge and information is restricted. When access to information is restricted, participation by all sectors on an equivalent basis is impossible. <br />
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• The Århus convention must be ratified immediately and access to environmental information directives enacted. Abolish pay to participate fees for planning and EIS submissions. <br />
• The environmental/sustainability sector into full social partnership. Transfer Comhar to the Dept of the Taoiseach to sit with NESC and NCC. Increase independent representation of environmental NGOS. Resource national NGOs properly without intrusive oversight. <br />
• Reform the CDBs and Local authority structures to conform to Agenda 21 principles – with environmental remit and environmental platform. Resource local NGOs properly without intrusive oversight. <br />
• Make necessary legal and legislative changes so that EC Directives inform Irish court judges and that the public has access to the courts to appeal poor or ill-informed decisions covering planning, resource protection and biodiversity conservation. <br />
• Access for self-organised civil society to up-to date communication mediums and platforms must be prioritised by the BCC and other responsible agencies. <br />
• Strict non-extendable time limits to restrictive copyright and patents must be enforced to encourage creativity and the knowledge-based economy. Access to OSi maps and GIS databases must be opened up. <br />
• A cadastre of property ownership and interests should be published and a landvaluescape created on which to base annual land value taxes. <br />
• Education especially in the sciences, is essential for understanding, effective monitoring and participation. Sustainability education for adult decision-makers and professionals should be a prioritised. <br />
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'''Decentralised and Democratised Energy and Carbon Capture'''<br />
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Ireland’s dependence on imported fossil fuels exposes us to completely unacceptable risks of interruption to supply and/or escalating and uncompetitive costs. Energy generation once a public monopoly, is in danger of evolving into a private cartel of a few very large-scale producers to the ultimate disbenefit of consumers and our democracy. Only a vibrant market of many producers (and prosumers) can deliver the flexibility, efficiency, robustness and spread of asset ownership that will ensure our future security. Accurate pricing of energy relative to CO2 production is vital, as is net energy return on energy invested (ROI). <br />
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• The distributed grid as well as the transmission grid must be separated from ESB control into a trust, even if this means facing blackouts – national interest must prevail over sectoral. Communities must be permitted to make long term investment commitments to local energy service providers (ESCOs).<br />
• A guaranteed price for electricity from renewables i.e feed in tarrif has promoted innovation and rapid expansion in other counties and it can also delver for us. <br />
• Carbon credits should be recognsied and paid for Co2 capture in Ireland in farming practice. A fund should be established for research and demonstration of biochar production by pyrolysis and its potential as a fertiliser and nutrient management. Research into other sustainable 2nd generation biofuels should accelerated. <br />
• Capital allowances similar to those for property should be given for renewable energy and carbon capture projects subject to an annual cap so that the maximum number of citizens can benefit. <br />
• Shares in energy assest should be reserved for the local community and in larger projects, for a capital lump sum for Irish children on reaching majority. The legalstructure of the LLPs should be introduced so that revenue can be allocated in a socially equitable and environmentally acceptable way. <br />
• Immediate acceleration to second-generation cellulosic technologies for biofuel production is imperative to benefit from our natural biomass advantage. Resources should be prioritised for RTD and demonstration notwithstanding the priorities of the 7th Framework Programme. <br />
• Building professionals should be supported in their initiatives to develop an ‘open’ robust, efficient and low carbon ‘conventional’ construction system<br />
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'''Predistribution'''<br />
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Equity replaces charity as the guiding principle for distribution of real and virtual commons wealth. It is the necessary corollory of charging for the use or access to resources that were previously free. Free in a world of limits is a free-for-all where the weak loose and the powerful gain for awhile, but all perish ultimately. We resolutely reject the old solution to the tragedy of the commons of enclosure or privatisation, that impoverished the ‘commoners’ in Europe that led to the flight to the cities. We regret that our government permitted the partial privatisation of the atmosphere by the Emissions Trading System but we accept that few, inlcuding most environemtal NGOs, truly comprehended the import and impact of that decision at the time. But we are confident that our government has the courage and insight now to redress that mistake by piloting Cap and Share, a mechanism appropriate to our sense of justice and to the challenge of protecting our most vital commons, the atmoshere. There is no other single policy initiative that this government could adopt of higher importance for the world. <br />
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==Questions Addressed== <br />
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The following is a brief synopsis in answer to the specific questions requested by the DoEHLG to be addressed by our submission, <br />
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1. What should be the focus of a renewed Sustainable Development Strategy?<br />
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The focus should be Human Wellbeing that requires a Grown-up Economy that can maintain stability even in the face of the economic decline that is likely with constrainst to fossil fuels. <br />
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2. What in their view is the purpose of a National Sustainable Development Strategy?<br />
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The NSDS should comprise the overarching reference for other plans such as Social Partnership Agreements, the National Development Plan, the Spatial Strategy and linked Guidelines, all other Department Plans such as for transport and energy, and Regional and Local Government forward planning, control and appeals, as well as informing decisions in the Law Courts. Existing plans should be modified to conform with the renewed Strategy – not the reverse. <br />
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3. What does the ENGO sector think that a National Strategy for Sustainable Development should offer to citizens?<br />
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It should reassure citizens that the Irish Government has advanced beyond reactive management where ‘nothing is a problem until it is a crisis’ to realistically and continguently planning for an uncertain future. It should protect their commons assets by recognising them in law and appointing champions to monitor and manage them. It should create the conditions for citizen involvement through free communication, full participation and real shares in existing natural and new energy resources. <br />
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4. Should the renewed SDS focus on a review of where we have come to since 1997 and how we’ve come to that place. Should it be primarily forward looking with only a brief look back for the purpose of setting a context?<br />
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A look back is useful only if it interrogates why so little real progress has been made. A list of misguided agencies (such as the CDBs) and plans honoured in the breach (such as the National Spatial Strategy) that simply notes Government outputs bearing no relation to outcomes would not be acceptable. <br />
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5. What would the ENGO sector see as being key elements of a renewed National Sustainable Development Strategy? <br />
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- Risk Management and Resilience Building<br />
- Focus on Wellbeing and a Grown-up economy<br />
- Recognition of Rights in Commons Property including Predistribution<br />
- Information, Communication and Participation Rights<br />
- Decentralised and Democratised Energy and Carbon Capture <br />
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The EENGO network is comprised of 26 constituent groups, operating at national level, well informed from years of monitoring, commenting and campaigning on these issues. But it has been a new experience for many NGO activists to step back from urgent reactive actions, to consider optimal long term measures from the perspective of the policy maker. This adjustment took some time to carry out, hence this submission is completed rather later than we planned. As many of our member NGOs have expertise in only a very particular area, not all actively support all of the ideas contained in the submisison, particularly as they relate to social and economic issues. However, they are not either, against any of them as they respect the expertise of NGOs with a wider field of interest to contribute their reccomendations as part of an overarching strategy. Total consensus is every area of policy is not achievable even for the legendary united Fianna Fail, so it not reasonable, nor does it diminish this submission that it does nto make such claims. <br />
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We wish the thank the DoEHLG for its financiual assistance in preparing the submission. <br />
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Finally we trust that if our submission succeeds, as we hope, in sparking a national debate about Ireland’s sustianability strategy, the debate will be short and lead immediately to action." <br />
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[[Category:Ireland]]<br />
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[[Category:Commons]]<br />
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[[Category:Policy]]<br />
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[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Michigan:_The_Transformation_Manifesto&diff=58607Michigan: The Transformation Manifesto2012-01-23T00:47:35Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
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<div>== Contributors ==<br />
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*I'm Sam Rose, from the Foundation or Peer To Peer Alternatives http://p2pfoundation.net/ and co-founder http://futureforwardinstitute.com/ I am a Michigan native, former blue collar worker and now independent business person.<br />
<br />
== "Michigan is Screwed" ==<br />
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See: http://www.youtube.com/embed/AUpO1QFMDtM<br />
<br />
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/42121778#42121778<br />
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It's likely you are highly aware of the current political situation that people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other struggling industrial states are facing. In Michigan in particular it looks to me like the goal of Rick Snyder and the legislators that control the Michigan House/Senate is to tear down 20th century community infrastructures, starting from the bottom up. <br />
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The reality is that if the people in power in Michigan now fully succeed, private mega corporations will queue up to enclose property, extract wealth and resources at lightning speed, further impoverish our community's most vulnerable members, push out those willing to fight by making their lives and communities miserable, and put whomever is left on their knees. They want our money flowing out of our pockets and communities, and their cheaply made worthless crap flowing in. They want to grab our land, our trees, frack out our natural gas and deplete our water, and run our soil down to clay. They want to push people out of the largest cities, fence of the empty land, bulldoze the buildings and sit on the land waiting for a future day when it's value increases. They want to do all of this while paying next to no taxes, employing none of the people of Michigan, and investing nothing back into the communities. They already got a huge amount of the money out of our communities by way of fraudulant mortgage scams that destroyed the economies of several countries around the world. They can make it more miserable for any of us that don't pick up and leave by: increasing our taxes (the elderly and retired, the poor, etc). Making our schools so deplorable that no one will want to move to our communities. And, whenever possible, declaring an "emergency" and dissolving local government, installing private corporations in their place with license to do whatever they want without any oversight. I am willing to bet that most of you that voted for Rick Snyder and the people in Michigan Congress probably did not vote for what I describe above. I'll bet that your ancestors didn't fight to get you to where you are now, just to see us all start to slip back towards whatever they came here to get away from. However, the sad fact is that what I describe above is now upon you, and all of us. <br />
<br />
<br> Fortunately for us, we don't have to accept this reality. We currently have all of the building blocks we need to turn things around for ourselves here in a relatively short amount of time. <br />
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A clue comes to us from our own state's past. At the turn of the 19th-20th century, automobiles were prohibitively expensive for all but a few people. One of the reasons was a monopoly on the designs of automotive technology by George B. Selden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden Selden and associate's efforts to protect their patents led to a battle with Henry Ford, which resulted in a decision by courts to open up automotive technology for those that were not using the Selden engine design. <br />
<br />
From Open Source - History and Development Adrienne Walker San Jose State University&nbsp;[http://infosherpas.com/ojs/index.php/openandlibraries/article/view/43/65 http://infosherpas.com/ojs/index.php/openandlibraries/article/view/43/65]: <br />
<blockquote>''Free sharing and open source are not 21st century ideas, we tend to think of open source as a way of being connected to the Internet as software but open source was in existence early in the 20th century although it took a different form. That form was automobile manufacturing. For those of you familiar with early automotive history, Henry Ford challenged the patent of George Selden. Selden had a chokehold on the automobile industry but Ford won a challenge to Selden's patent (The history of free and open source, 2009). Henry Fords breakthrough initiated the beginning of open source in the modern age and coupled with the formation of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association was influential in creating cross-licensing agreements. Cross-licensing agreements existed between the United States automobile manufacturers of the day. Each automobile manufacturing company modified the technology and filed patents, these patents were shared, and no exchange of money, no lawsuits and an industry thrived (The history of free and open source, 2009).'' </blockquote><ref>Special thanks to Nathan Oostendorp who made me aware of this part of Michigan industrial history when he presented this at http://igniteannarbor.com see http://ingenuitas.com/</ref> <br />
We can do this again in Michigan. We can start in our own communities, re-building our economies around sharing not just technology, but also production of food, energy, and knowledge.<br />
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== Energy ==<br />
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'''There's enough wind and solar power across the state of Michigan to run the whole state on wind and solar energy alone.''' Open sourcing the technology for wind, solar, and batteries for hybrid/electric cars would create an explosion of innovation across the state and in the region, and eventually worldwide. If we really want to get into manufacturing green energy in the state of Michigan, the fastest route will be by way of creating sound design cores for small wind generators and solar collectors/solar voltaics and releasing them under an open license (like TAPR for instance http://www.tapr.org/ohl.html ) Our first step can be to install hybrid solar/wind in as many individua locations as possible (some neighbrhoods can team up and group buy for a whole block), and install them in a way that turns the current electrical grid into a "Net metering" grid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering<br />
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In the US, much of the electric grid is municipally owned, community owned (as in "rural electric co-operatives"), publicly licensed, and/or runs over public rights of way. This provides a great deal of public-interest policy leverage over the existing grid.<br />
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We can also create the basic building blocks for multiple open source technology storage options (such as hydrogen, water tanks, etc). And, we already have much of what we would need to turn our power grid into a "smart grid" in terms of software and hardware. The single most important policy for promoting p2p energy is already in place in many areas--that is "net metering" or "reverse metering". Net metering allows any peer producer to put surplus energy onto the grid. In many cases such locally peer-produced energy, reverse-metered onto the grid, is credited at a subsidized rate above the normal consumer rate for electricity.<br />
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Where net metering is already in place, an additional policy initiative could be attempted. This would entail allowing each peer-producer and consumer the option to negotiate rates among themselves. Some peer-producers might charge rates higher than the "retail" consumer rate. In this case such producers would operate much like existing "green power" producers. In other cases producers might sell their surplus to preferred consumers (say family-related households or eco-village neighbors) at a discounted rate. Such a practice could be implemented over the existing grid with little more administrative effort than existing "green power" programs require.<br />
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As parts of the existing grid are gradually updated and upgraded, it should be possible to build in direct p2p balancing, metering, and billing capability so that no institutional "middleman" is required for adding or withdrawing amounts of energy that are below some threshold adequate to prevent outages or overloads.<br />
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We can also start processing our plant and animal waste in open source biodigesters to produce electricity (example http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Biogas ) and our agricultural and surburban landscaping refuse into new soil and biofuel. <br />
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Much of this new infrastructure can be managed by user-owned cooperatives where needed.<br />
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== Housing ==<br />
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We have a real opportunity with the collapse of the inflated real estate economy to cooperatively purchase land, and re-develop it for production of food, energy, and physical production. REsidential land can be contracted back to families, but this time with support from cooperatives and credit unions instead of big Wall Street banks. <br />
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== Education ==<br />
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It's time to create cooperatives where parents and teachers are the owners of school systems. Most cirricular development can be released under creative commons licenses (as seen with http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home http://ftacademy.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/ etc etc ) <br />
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A really compelling and immediately useful example is https://open.umich.edu/wiki/Main_Page<br />
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Parents can work with teachers and their students to adaptively shape learning over time. '''No more showing up in cinderblock buildings and being trained to be told what to do at the expense of truly learning how and why to do it. We teach children CRITICAL THINKING and skills to solve problems on their own with little or nothing to work with except their minds. Children are no longer raw material to be shaped into employees for big business. They are now taught to invent, build, experiment, create and destroy, co-manage and co-govern anywhere anytime with anything. They are taught actual history and left to decide for themselves. They are taught to produce their *own* food, energy, information systems as needed. They are taught to be programmers, not users. Makers, not consumers. Independent problem solvers, not employees. This is 21st century education in Michigan.'''<br />
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== Manufacturing ==<br />
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Manufacturing in Michigan will become small, distributed, diverse and massively adaptable and interoperable. Designs are shared and improved constantly. Technology cooperatives not only design and produce physhical hardware and software technology for people, but they also teach people how to do this themselves, and how to effectively use technology. <br />
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Existing manufacturing labor unions will help create these new technology cooperatives by taking their pension fund monies out of greedy wall street companies and re-investing in Local Economic Development. Tens of thousands of people who are laid off from jobs will also pool resources to create these Technology Cooperatives throughout the state. This could happen here in Michigan within one year. <br />
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== Money ==<br />
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Already here in Michigan, we are leading the way towards creating a '''plurality of currencies'''. We want to have more than one option for currencies, given the instability of US and global financial systems. Some existing examples include:<br />
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* [http://newfrontier.com/libertydollar/michigan-dollar.htm Liberty Dollar]<br />
* [http://www.baybucks.org/ Bay Bucks]<br />
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Examples of P2P currencies that work digitally from around the world can be found on the [[:Category:Money]] page.<br />
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== Research and Development ==<br />
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Michigan Technology Cooperatives can invest their surplus resources in ongoing open source research and development, driven by the needs of people in Michigan and throughout the US and world. Students learn to participate in this activity at as early an age as possible. <br />
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== Michigan Food Revolution ==<br />
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Food cooperatives and community supported agriculture have proven themselves in places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and elsewhere. As our world spirals into a collapse of global commercial energy and resource distribution, leading to increasing costs for imported goods, we can sidestep that problem and produce food locally and regionally. We can create enough food locally in Michigan to make imports a luxury-only source of food (instead of the majority of food source for our state). We can create community owned food cooperatives in every city in the state, while simultaneously bolstering the '''hundreds of thousands of LOCAL food producers and retailers that already exist in this state'''.<br />
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The federal government is moving towards de-funding programs like WIC, and other aid programs that help bring food to the poorest people in the state. 2011 is the year to find methods to connect people to people to meet food production needs.<br />
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== Jobs ==<br />
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'''NO. No more jobs.''' It is ALREADY fact that over 98% of businesses in Michigan are now small businesses<ref>http://levin.senate.gov/senate/smallbusiness/index.html</ref>. This is in part because most of those who are left actually participating in economic activity stopped looking for a job about 5-6 years ago and started a business. So this is what we do, we start businesses, and we connect them together. Go pay the $10 and register a DBA with your name on it at the county clerk. You are now ready to do businesses. Team up with other people in your community to share what you are learning about starting and running your own collaborative business/enterprise. In some cases we start cooperatives, credit unions, and ways for people to invest and receive return on investment in their local community (and not just monetary investment). We stop saving our retirement savings in 401k and other Wall Street scams and we invest that money locally and receive a robust and healthy return on investment.'''However, where people must hold jobs, their right to collectively bargain is supported. We DO NOT want to slide back to Dickensian work systems. We want to support working people and their hard won rights.''' <br />
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== Taxes ==<br />
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'''Rich people will pay more taxes. Poor people will pay less. Want to pay less taxes? Make less money.'''<br />
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== Health Care ==<br />
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Have I used the word "cooperative" enough in this manifesto? You are about to read it again. Why, you ask?:<br />
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'''Wouldn't you rather be a co-owner in the entity that helps you pool costs with others towards your healthcare, than deal with the corporate profit-driven casino model that currently exists for health insurance?'''<br />
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'''The time for Health Care Cooperatives in Michigan is NOW. Michigan Health Care Cooperatives hire doctors and their practices and take good care of them. They reject doctors who put profit over their Hippocratic Oath.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath</ref>. In this way, Michigan leads the way in reforming health care ''starting with the doctor/patient relationship''. Health Care Cooperatives in Michigan also FUND proven services, such as mid-wife-run birth centers, and other so-called "alternative medicine" providers. <br />
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'''We start with changing the law in Michigan to allow us the RIGHT to create these cooperatives.'''<br />
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== Government ==<br />
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When we're not busy having our faces shoved to the grindstone at a job, we're going to have some time to engage in Local, State, and Federal governments. However, we are also going to make them increasingly obsolete in the process. We are going to be able to come up with rules together via connective technologies like the internet. We're going to also be able to team up on government when we're not being listened to. <br />
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'''We can do it without political parties''' following [[The Political Principles of Peer-to-Peer Advocacy]]. <br />
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'''''No advocate of peer-to-peer politics wants all communications or activity routed through them. Bottlenecks are weaknesses.'''''<br />
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'''That being said, any politician *or* party that ascribes to the principles of openness, p2p and the commons is worth collaborating and working with. '''<br />
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== Your additions here ==<br />
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This is what transformation in Michigan means to me. What does it mean to you? I want to know. I'll faithfully incorporate whatever any of you contribute, and I will spread it around. It's time to get real, dig in and change this place, now.<br />
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== Other links ==<br />
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* [http://forwardfound.org/blog/?q=five-commons The Five Commons]<br />
* [http://p2pfoundation.net/Manifesto P2P Manifesto]<br />
* [http://cooperationcommons.com Cooperation Commons]<br />
* [http://lansingonlinenews.com/news/the-gop-education-agenda-why-earning-a-diploma-will-no-longer-buy-you-a-job-or-a-middle-class-life/ The GOP Education Agenda: Why earning a diploma will no longer buy you a job or a middle-class life]<br />
* [[Multitudes]](Hardt & Negri)<br />
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== References ==<br />
<references /><br />
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[[Category:Politics]]<br />
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[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Emergence_of_Benefit-Driven_Production&diff=58606Emergence of Benefit-Driven Production2012-01-23T00:47:22Z<p>Kardan: Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''* Paper: The Emergence of Benefit-driven Production. Christian Siefkes.'''<br />
<br />
URL: http://www.keimform.de/2011/benefit-driven-production/ [http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-739/paper_9.pdf pdf]<br />
<br />
The following paper was written for the [http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-739/ Proceedings]<br />
of the 6th Annual Open Knowledge Conference ([http://okcon.org/2011 OKCon 2011])<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Abstract=<br />
<br />
"The free software and free culture movements have radically changed the<br />
ways of producing software and knowledge goods. In many cases,<br />
participation in such project is benefit-driven rather than profit-driven.<br />
<br />
Participants get involved in order to realize some practical or social<br />
benefit, not because of monetary gains. Another difference from market- and<br />
firm-based production is that peer production is non-hierarchical: people<br />
voluntarily cooperate as peers; there are no fixed employer/employee or<br />
client/contractor relationships. And peer production is based on commons:<br />
goods which are jointly developed and maintained by a community and which<br />
are shared according to community-defined rules.<br />
<br />
Peer production is not just about producing knowledge: Hackerspaces and Fab<br />
Labs are the first forerunners of a commons-based production<br />
infrastructure. While commons-based peer production reaches beyond<br />
capitalism, the preconditions of its development are created by capitalism<br />
itself. The paradoxical relationship of capitalism to human labor leads to<br />
developments that might make the concept of labor (as we know it today)<br />
obsolete, and with it capitalism itself.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Text=<br />
<br />
<br />
==[[Benefit-Driven Production]]==<br />
<br />
The [[Free Software Movement]] and the [[Free Culture Movement]]s have radically changed the<br />
ways of producing software and knowledge goods. These changes have caused<br />
some markets -- such as those for Internet software, programming tools and<br />
encyclopedias -- to shrink considerably or disappear altogether. These areas<br />
have become dominated by free programs such as Apache, Firefox, WordPress,<br />
non-proprietary programming languages such as Python, open development<br />
environments such as Eclipse, and by the free Internet encyclopedia<br />
Wikipedia. They have largely driven out competing offers which (as usual in<br />
capitalism) are only available for sale.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, free software is produced by companies that use it to indirectly<br />
make money, e.g. by selling support, documentation, or suitable hardware.<br />
<br />
But many projects are driven by communities of people that contribute<br />
voluntarily and without pay. Participants may be motivated by the desire to<br />
use the software they help creating or they may simply enjoy doing what<br />
they do. Others participate in order to improve their knowledge, to<br />
demonstrate their skills, or to give something back to the community<br />
(Lakhani and Wolf 2005). Free software and free culture projects are thus<br />
frequently benefit-driven rather than profit-driven: Participants get<br />
involved in order to realize some practical or social benefit (getting<br />
useful software, learning, getting community recognition, doing something<br />
pleasurable), not because of monetary gains.<br />
<br />
Modern, neoclassical economy theory sees companies as a means of reducing<br />
so-called transaction costs (Coase 1937). As a company owner, I can assign<br />
tasks to my staff instead of having to buy and negotiate each small service<br />
individually. The employees benefit by knowing in advance how much they<br />
will earn, instead of having to sell themselves day by day in the market,<br />
with uncertain results. But they have to accept subordinate positions in a<br />
hierarchy and must follow the orders of the management. Market relations,<br />
on the other hand, take part between actors who are formally (though often<br />
not actually) equal, but they are always merely functional: I'm not<br />
interested in the others as human beings, I merely see them as potential<br />
trading partners, potential buyers and sellers.<br />
<br />
Standard neoclassical theory doesn't know ways of interaction beyond the<br />
market and the firm, but the communities of people who produce on the basis<br />
of voluntary cooperation indicate that it missed something. Since everybody<br />
participates voluntarily, nobody can order the others around. The term<br />
[[Peer Production]] has been coined by [[Yochai Benkler]] (2006) to express this<br />
stark contrast to the hierarchical nature of firms: participants work<br />
together on an equal footing, as peers.<br />
<br />
And in contrast to the market, others aren't merely potential trading<br />
partners, but people cooperating with me in order to reach a common goal.<br />
<br />
Peer production is based on contributions, not on exchange. And while trade<br />
(exchange) tends to be a zero-sum game, contributing isn't. If I make a<br />
"good deal," it quite often means that my trading partner made a bad one.<br />
But if somebody contributes something useful, everybody wins.<br />
<br />
A world where producers have to sell what they produce and users have to<br />
buy what they want to use, inevitably creates antagonisms. One person's<br />
income is another person's cost. And an increased market share for one<br />
producer means that the others producing the same goods will earn less,<br />
hence producers are forced to compete with each other. The same conflict of<br />
interest as between sellers and buyers in general exists between employees<br />
and employers: the former want to sell their labor power as dearly as<br />
possible, while the latter strive for a maximum of labor at minimal cost.<br />
Benefit-driven production doesn't know these antagonisms, since fulfilling<br />
my needs doesn't have to come at the cost of your needs. On the contrary,<br />
peer production works so well because the participants help each other to<br />
reach their goals and fulfill their needs. Everybody benefits.<br />
<br />
==Voluntary Production for Others==<br />
<br />
Benefit-driven production shouldn't be misunderstood as production merely<br />
for oneself. It is true that peer producers often begin by "scratching a<br />
[...] personal itch," as Eric Raymond (2001) put it; but at the same time,<br />
what they do is also useful for others. And people frequently engage not<br />
because of their consumption needs, but because of their productive needs:<br />
They contribute because they enjoy the tasks they are doing, because they<br />
learn something, or because they want to give something back to the other<br />
contributors.<br />
<br />
The fact that peer production is always production for others refutes the<br />
popular conception that without a market system, people would have to fall<br />
back into some kind of Robinson mode: Everybody would only produce for<br />
themselves or their family and large-scale cooperation would cease to<br />
exist. It's pretty clear that such a solitary way of production wouldn't<br />
get one very far. Another well-known alternative are centralized planned<br />
economies--the former "real socialism." In such economies, society as a<br />
whole functions like a big company. Management (the planners) decides what<br />
should be done, assigns the required tasks, and monitors that they are<br />
executed correctly. This alternative hasn't worked well in the past and<br />
doesn't sound very attractive: You are still a dependent employee (though<br />
now of the state) and must follow the orders of your superiors.<br />
<br />
Peer production, on the other hand, is production for others which is<br />
neither based on coercion nor motivated by monetary gain. Peers produce for<br />
others because they can, and because it is a way for them to find further<br />
contributors. The more people use the results of a project, the more<br />
potential contributors exist, since people who decide to join forces as<br />
occasional or regular contributors are typically already users of the<br />
project they choose to support. If a project doesn't share with others by<br />
coproducing for them, it endangers its opportunity to win new members.<br />
<br />
To distribute tasks, peer producers use an open process that has become<br />
known as "[[Stigmergy]]" (cf. Heylighen 2007). Participants leave hints (Greek:<br />
stigmata) about started or desired activities, encouraging others to<br />
follow these hints and take care of the desired tasks. Such hints, e.g.<br />
to-do lists and bug reports in software projects and "red links" pointing<br />
to missing articles in the Wikipedia, constitute an important part of the<br />
communication.<br />
<br />
All participants follow the hints that interest them most. This leads to an<br />
automatic prioritization of tasks (the more people care for a task, the<br />
more likely it is to be picked up by somebody). It also ensures that the<br />
different talents and skills of contributors are applied in a more or less<br />
optimal way (since people tend to pick up those tasks they think they are<br />
good at). And since everybody is free in choosing the tasks they want to<br />
do, participants will generally be more motivated than in a market-based<br />
system or a planned economy, where they have to follow the orders of their<br />
supervisor or client.<br />
<br />
==The Emergence of a [[Commons-Based Production Infrastructure]]==<br />
<br />
Peer production is thus radically different from the "normal," market- and<br />
firm-based mode of production that dominates our society. Production is<br />
mainly for benefit instead of profit; and people voluntarily cooperate as<br />
peers rather than being part of hierarchical employer/employee or<br />
client/contractor relationships.<br />
<br />
Another thing that's different is the way in which people relate to nature<br />
and to the products of their activities. Under capitalism, ideas, products,<br />
and natural resources are usually treated as [[Property]]. Property means the<br />
legal right to exclude or include others from using a good, allowing the<br />
owner to use, sell, or monetize their property at will.<br />
<br />
Peer production is primarily based on [[Commons]], therefore Benkler (2006)<br />
talks about [[Commons-Based Peer Production]]. Commons are goods which are<br />
jointly developed and maintained by a community and which are shared<br />
according to community-defined rules (cf. Ostrom 1990). Water, air,<br />
forests, and land were managed as commons in many societies. Free software<br />
and open content are a kind of commons that everybody is allowed to use,<br />
improve and share. But the relation between peer production and commons is<br />
not one-sided: Peer production is not only based on commons, it also<br />
creates new ones and maintains the existing ones, as the examples of free<br />
software, open content, and [[Open Hardware]] (blueprints and descriptions of<br />
physical items that everyone can use to produce, utilize, and maintain<br />
these items) show. All these projects contribute to a knowledge commons<br />
that can be used, shared, and improved by everybody.<br />
<br />
Peer production cannot just produce knowledge, it can also produce<br />
infrastructure and physical goods. For example, [[Community Wireless Networks]] have formed in many cities; they allow everyone in their<br />
neighborhood free network access. Many of these projects are organized as<br />
[[Mesh Networks]]: all participating computers will actively transfer data,<br />
removing the need for privileged servers. Such self-organized,<br />
decentralized networks can create a shared infrastructure for Internet and<br />
telephony (cf. Rowe 2010, 2011); similar networks might supply people with<br />
energy or water. Community projects organizing access to water as a commons<br />
exist in South America (cf. De Angelis 2010).<br />
<br />
'''Open facilities for the production of material goods are emerging as well.'''<br />
<br />
[[Hackerspaces]] and [[Fab Labs]] are typically run by volunteers; they often<br />
have computer-controlled machines--including milling machines and fabbers<br />
("[[3D Printers]]")--which allow the largely automatized production of<br />
individual items or small series. If possible, the utilized machines are<br />
open hardware, meaning that their blueprints can be freely used and<br />
improved by everyone. Another goal is the creation of machines that can<br />
produce machines that are at least as powerful as the original ones, thus<br />
allowing Fab Labs to produce the equipment for further Fab Labs. In this<br />
way, commons-based peer production is starting to create the tools that<br />
will allow it to spread even further, at the same time starting to supply<br />
people with what they need to live.<br />
<br />
==A [[Commonist]] Future?==<br />
<br />
Nick Dyer-Witheford (2007) has proposed the term [[Commonism]] for a society<br />
where the basic social form of production are the [[Commons]] (while in<br />
capitalism, commodities are the basic social form). As the success of<br />
commons-based peer production shows, commons and peer production go<br />
together very well. We can therefore expect peer production to be the<br />
typical form of production in a commons-based society. Commonism would be a<br />
society where production is organized by people who cooperate voluntarily<br />
and on an equal footing for the benefit of all.<br />
<br />
Some people may claim that such a society must be impossible because it<br />
never existed or because it is against human nature. But that something<br />
didn't happen in the past doesn't mean it won't become real in the future,<br />
and arguments about "human nature" miss the fact that people are formed by<br />
society just as well as they are forming society. Changing social<br />
structures also changes people's behavior.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, commonism would have to remain an abstract idea if it didn't<br />
have the potential to develop out of the current social system, capitalism.<br />
New ways of production can only emerge when "the material conditions for<br />
their existence have matured within the framework of the old society," as<br />
Karl Marx (1859, Preface) expressed it.<br />
<br />
There are two preconditions which I consider most relevant for the<br />
development of commonism: <br />
<br />
(1) Human labor disappears from the production<br />
processes, being replaced by automation and joyful doing. <br />
<br />
(2) Everyone has access to resources and means of production. Developments within capitalism<br />
favor the partial emergence of these conditions, though their full<br />
realization would make capitalism impossible.<br />
<br />
How these conditions change the processes of production becomes already<br />
visible in the digital realm, where commons-based peer production<br />
flourishes. But as argued above, it's unlikely to stop there. Peer<br />
production reaches beyond capitalism, by being benefit-driven and<br />
non-hierarchical rather than profit-driven and hierarchical and by<br />
obsoleting and destroying markets formerly dominated by commodity<br />
production (such as programming tools and encyclopedias). And yet, the<br />
preconditions of this development are created by capitalism itself.<br />
<br />
A paradox of capitalism is that human labor is its very foundation but also<br />
a cost factor which every company has to reduce as much as possible. Labor<br />
creates surplus value and thus profit, but at the same time, each company<br />
can increase its profit (at least temporarily) by cutting down the amount<br />
of labor required, thus achieving a cost advantage compared to its<br />
competitors. One way of reducing labor costs is outsourcing to low-cost<br />
countries, but in many cases, capitalists can achieve even higher cost<br />
savings by replacing human labor with machines, or by getting customers to<br />
voluntarily take over activities that formerly had to be paid.<br />
<br />
Until some decades ago, machine usage and human labor were usually tightly<br />
coupled, e.g. in assembly lines. But increasing levels of automation mean<br />
that more and more routine activities can be performed without any human<br />
labor. The remaining activities tend to be difficult to automate because<br />
they require creativity, intuition, or empathy. Hence modern capitalism is<br />
often referred to as a "service economy" or "information society," since<br />
most non-automatable tasks are from these areas.<br />
<br />
A related trend is the delegation of tasks to the customers themselves,<br />
thus further reducing the required labor power. Thanks to self service,<br />
supermarkets need fewer salespeople; online shopping and online banking<br />
avoid the need for salespeople and tellers altogether; firms like Ikea<br />
leave the final assembly of the furniture to their customers, thus reducing<br />
labor and transportation costs.<br />
<br />
But these developments also change the relationship between people and<br />
their actions. As an employee I work in order to earn money. But if I<br />
assemble my own furniture or if I browse the Internet for products I want<br />
to have, I'm interested in the *result* of my actions. And thanks to higher<br />
levels of automation, boring routine activities (which you wouldn't do<br />
unless "bribed" by money) are increasingly replaced by more creative and<br />
more interesting tasks.<br />
<br />
For such tasks, payment is a nice plus (provided you live in a money-based<br />
society), but not a necessary condition, as became apparent during the last<br />
decades to the surprise of many economists, when voluntary, benefit-driven<br />
peer projects started to spring up in all corners of the Internet. These<br />
developments are only possible because the participants have access to the<br />
necessary means of production (such as computers and Internet access). This<br />
precondition may seem to be a serious limitation of the free, commons-based<br />
mode of production, since capitalism is characterized by the fact that most<br />
means of production are concentrated in a few hands. It's possible to<br />
jointly produce software and knowledge where the necessary means of<br />
production are relatively small and already available to large numbers of<br />
people; but what about things that require huge factories?<br />
<br />
Once more, the productive forces of capitalism come to the rescue. The PCs<br />
and laptops of today are the progeny of the room-filling mainframes of 50<br />
years ago. Similarly, other productive machines have started to become more<br />
and more accessible and affordable for individuals and small groups.<br />
Inexpensive, but flexible CNC (= computer-controlled) machines increasingly<br />
replace the huge and cumbersome large-scale industrial facilities of the<br />
past. The emergence of a commons-based production infrastructure is a<br />
consequence of these developments, which originate in capitalism but allow<br />
people to go beyond it.<br />
<br />
==Challenges to Commonism==<br />
<br />
But will commonism really be able to replace capitalism at some point?<br />
Aren't there areas where it necessarily falls short? Two frequently raised<br />
objections are the problem of unpleasant tasks (which nobody wants to do)<br />
and the question of how to handle allocation and deal with the limitedness<br />
of natural resources, if private property and money cease to matter.<br />
<br />
<br />
===Unpleasant Activities===<br />
<br />
Lets assume a society based wholly on peer production, where all tasks are<br />
distributed among volunteers by stigmergic self-selection. What happens if<br />
there are no volunteers for certain tasks, because everyone considers them<br />
unpleasant, dangerous or otherwise unattractive? A monetary system forces<br />
the weakest members of society to handle these tasks--those who have no<br />
other options for earning money. Only cynics would say that's a good<br />
solution--but what is the alternative?<br />
<br />
Some of these tasks would probably turn out to be dispensable. If that's<br />
not the case, automation, reorganization, and fair sharing remain as<br />
solutions.<br />
<br />
Automation has had an enormous impact since the start of the "industrial<br />
revolution"--increasing parts of production have become automated in part<br />
or in total. But in capitalism, the potential of automation is limited by<br />
the height of wages. The less well paid a job is, the more difficult it<br />
becomes to automatize without extra cost. Therefore, the automation of many<br />
unpleasant tasks (such as cleaning) isn't worthwhile under capitalist<br />
logic. With peer production, the situation is different: If there are tasks<br />
that all or most people want to have done, but nobody wants to do, then the<br />
incentive to wholly or partially automatize them is very high. And since<br />
the automation of activities tends to be an exciting and challenging task,<br />
the chances of finding volunteers for doing so are much higher.<br />
<br />
If automation is impossible, it's often possible to reorganize activities<br />
in a way that makes them more agreeable. In capitalism, the working<br />
conditions for some jobs are very bad--for example, office cleaners<br />
typically have to work very early in the morning, long before other people<br />
get up. People cooperating voluntarily as peers would find different<br />
arrangements.<br />
<br />
Automation and reorganization can also be combined. For example, some<br />
Spanish cities employ garbage trucks with automated forks that can be<br />
remote-controlled from the driver's cab to automatically pick up and dump<br />
the rubbish bins. Hence nobody has to handle the garbage directly and waste<br />
collection becomes almost like a video game, making it easier to find<br />
volunteers.<br />
<br />
Activities that cannot be automated away or reorganized may become<br />
candidates for a pool of unpleasant tasks, out of which everybody picks a<br />
few now and then. If everybody (or everybody who cares) does a small part<br />
of such tasks, they can be dealt with without causing much trouble to<br />
anybody.<br />
<br />
<br />
===Allocation and the Limited Availability of Resources===<br />
<br />
The fear that allocation without money is an unsolvable problem mainly<br />
stems from a confusion between production for profit and production for<br />
usage, or benefit. I can *sell* a practically unlimited amount of edibles,<br />
but I can only *eat* so many of them before I'm full. The same is true for<br />
all other goods: every desire to actually use them is limited. The only<br />
thing that's potentially infinite is the possibility to turn them into<br />
money (as long as there are buyers). But that possibility vanishes in a<br />
world where production is benefit-, rather than profit-driven, and where<br />
nobody is forced to buy and sell anymore.<br />
<br />
Organizing production in such a way that everybody earns enough money is<br />
indeed an unsolvable problem, since there is never a clear end point where<br />
it would be enough. In a money-based society, money cannot only be turned<br />
in any other good (commodity), it can also be employed for making more of<br />
it, turning the money one already has into even more money one might<br />
potentially be able to use in the future. And money is a form of power, it<br />
allows influencing others, buying their labor power, and making them do as<br />
one wishes.<br />
<br />
The outcomes of benefit-driven production are instead specific benefits for<br />
the people involved--software, knowledge, food, energy, connectivity,<br />
mobility, care, shelter, clothing, etc. But it's not an unsolvable problem<br />
to produce enough food for all--current society is doing that already, it<br />
is only incapable of distributing it adequately, since those who would need<br />
it most are unable to buy it. Realizing other benefits--producing energy,<br />
mobility, care, shelter etc. for all--should be equally solvable once<br />
production focuses on these benefits rather than on profit.<br />
<br />
And peer production only works if you really treat the others as your<br />
peers, as equally relevant. Nobody can self-actualize at the cost of<br />
others, because the others aren't stupid and won't help them doing so--but<br />
without the support of others, nobody will get very far. This means that<br />
everybody's needs and desires matter. It's not a viable option for a<br />
handful of peer producers to build giant houses for themselves and then let<br />
the others worry about how to produce enough food in the remaining areas<br />
that may no longer be sufficiently large. Peer production is about finding<br />
solutions that work for all.<br />
<br />
In commonism, as in any society, decisions on how to use the available<br />
resources will be necessary. Is it preferable to produce food for all or<br />
rather biofuel, allowing some to continue driving cars after oil reserves<br />
have been exhausted? Should the energy supply be based on decentralized<br />
renewable sources or rather on nuclear power, whose waste will be difficult<br />
and dangerous to deal with for centuries to come? How to reconcile the<br />
interests of the users of a good, who want new production facilities, with<br />
the potential neighbors of these facilities, who might be annoyed by the<br />
noise? Anyone who understands how and why peer production works, will be<br />
able to imagine possible answers to these questions. But the most important<br />
thing is that they can be raised and answered by the people concerned--all<br />
of us.<br />
<br />
<br />
=References=<br />
<br />
- De Angelis, Massimo (2010): Water Umaraqa. <br />
<br />
URL: http://www.commoner.org.uk/blog/?p=241 (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Benkler, Yochai (2006): The [[Wealth of Networks]]: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven. <br />
<br />
URL: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/ (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Coase, Ronald (1937): The Nature of the Firm. Economica 4(16): 386--405.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Dyer-Witheford, Nick (2007): [[Commonism]]. Turbulence, no. 1. <br />
<br />
URL: http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-1/commonism/ (accessed 9 May 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Heylighen, Francis (2007): Why is Open Access Development so Successful? [[Stigmergic Organization and the Economics of Information]]. In: Bernd Lutterbeck, Matthias Bärwolff, Robert A. Gehring (eds.), Open Source Jahrbuch 2007. Lehmanns Media, Berlin. <br />
<br />
URL: http://www.opensourcejahrbuch.de/portal/articles/pdfs/osjb2007-02-04-en-heylighen.pdf (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Lakhani, Karim R.; Robert G. Wolf (2005): Why Hackers Do What They Do. In: Joseph Feller; Brian Fitzgerald; Scott A. Hissam; Karim R. Lakhani (eds.), Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. <br />
<br />
URL: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262062461chap1.pdf (accessed 5 Jun 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Marx, Karl (1859): A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Progress Publishers, Moscow 1977. <br />
<br />
URL: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Ostrom, Elinor (1990): [[Governing the Commons]]: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press, New York.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Raymond, Eric S. (2001): The [[Cathedral and the Bazaar]]. In: The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. O'Reilly, Sebastopol, CA, 2nd edition. <br />
<br />
URL: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Rowe, David (2010): Baboons, Mesh Networks, and Community.<br />
<br />
URL: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=124 (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
- Rowe, David (2011): Dili Village Telco Part 11 -- State of the Mesh.<br />
<br />
URL: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=1447 (accessed 29 Apr 2011).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Articles]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Peerproduction]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Business Models]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Economics]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:P2P Market Approaches]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Rise_of_the_Green_Left&diff=58605Rise of the Green Left2012-01-23T00:47:09Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''* Book: The Rise of the Green Left" by Derek Wall.'''<br />
<br />
<br />
=Content Summary=<br />
<br />
Derek Wall:<br />
<br />
"This book aims to inspire change and to resource it.<br />
<br />
The first chapter outlines what I see as the crisis and the solution. Basically ecological cycles are under assault on our planet, the cause of this assault is a system of economic growth, ever increasing economic growth promotes the destruction of the environment. Climate change and other environmental problems are caused by growth and growth is a product of the capitalist economic system. There is an alternative to capitalism, a democratic ecological economy based on the commons. The chapter outlines the nature of the ecological crisis and examines how commons can create prosperity without growth. By making goods to last and through social sharing we can gain more access to the material goods with less waste and damage to the environment. Commons is the solution the experience of indigenous people, the work of Elinor Ostrom and the growth of free software movements show that what is vital is also possible. Socialism and communism are at root not about state control but the creation of commons'<br />
<br />
Chapter 2 examines the real<br />
climate swindle. While climate change certainly exists and<br />
is a growing threat, there is little public awareness that the<br />
current solutions agreed at international summits are failing to<br />
reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The current framework<br />
redistributes from poor to rich and benefits banks while doing<br />
little or nothing for the environment. The very fact that even<br />
climate change is used as a way of increasing capitalist profits<br />
is a shocking illustration of the ecosocialist case for change.<br />
Equally, unless we reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by<br />
around 90 per cent and protect carbon sinks such as the<br />
forests and oceans, the future of humanity and the rest of<br />
nature are likely to be bleak.<br />
<br />
Chapter 3 looks at ecosocialist policies in more detail,<br />
policies aimed at tackling climate change and other ecological<br />
ills, creating social justice and real democracy. <br />
<br />
Chapter 4 outlines the evolution and origins of the ecosocialist<br />
movement from Marx and Engels to Evo Morales and John<br />
Bellamy Foster. Chapter 5 is an overview of the ecosocialist<br />
movement in Latin America where it seems currently to be<br />
making the most progress, particularly in Bolivia, Cuba, Peru<br />
and Venezuela. <br />
<br />
Chapter 6 examines ecosocialist strategies for<br />
change, asking the vital question of what is to be done? <br />
<br />
The book concludes with Chapter 7, which catalogues some of the<br />
resources available to help build an ecosocialist movement."<br />
<br />
=Review=<br />
<br />
"Derek Wall contrasts the long term sustainability of the shared Commons, written about extensively by Elinor Ostrom, with the inherent need for capitalism to create goods which become obsolete sooner and sooner, either via technical breakdown or aspirational shifts in fashion. The corollary is the burgeoning waste of resources even at a time of rapidly increasing resource scarcity - something which does not alarm capitalism given that it thrives on scarcity. Capitalism is driven by a mechanism that ignores morality - even superficially "green" initiatives such as growing biofuels for American and European cars in Colombia are shown to have involved armed gangs torturing and murdering local farmers into selling their lands so that traditional, sustainable pastures could be destroyed and replaced with alien, but profitable, biofuel crops. There are echoes here of Joel Bakan's psychological diagnosis of corporate capitalism as essentially psychopathic.<br />
<br />
The Commons approach of sharing, in sharp comparison, reduces waste massively and conserves resources, encouraging a socio-economic system based on co-operation and sufficiency as opposed to competition and endless growth. Viewing people as part of Nature rather than either somehow apart from or in dominion over it, ecosocialism seeks to synthesise the most vital aspects of both ecology and socialism, with the inextricable symbiosis between social justice and environmental sustainability emphasised and illustrated again and again.<br />
<br />
This is an important document for anyone interested in how green politics can deliver a truly different society and provide an answer to the claim that there is no alternative to capitalism. It challenges socialists to consider the need for sustainability in their thinking about social change. And it challenges the green movement, positing the need for a more coherent ideological narrative to underpin the authentic concerns of many of those involved. Greens who argue for individual or local action alone miss the point that, for example, even if every American citizen took every step argued for by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth film, this would achieve barely a third of the required reduction in US carbon emissions. "Lifestyle change is not enough; deeper structural change is needed."<br />
<br />
Collective, worldwide action is vital - this timely, highly readable and usefully engaging tome sets out some of the paths we can take towards a far happier world. Tracing the thinking behind a sustainable and just human society back as far as Marx and Engels, the book charts the progress of ecosocialism to date. Latin America is a particular example to the world; but the book also looks at developments elsewhere, including the rise of ecosocialism within green and left political parties like Die Linke in Germany, and the establishment of the global Ecosocialist International Network. It highlights practical soldairty between movements in different parts of the world, such as combined action between Peruvian trade unions and British climate change activists following the Bagua massacre in 2009.<br />
<br />
Derek Wall argues for an inclusive approach, embracing a diverse range of strategies and tactics and a wide range of thinking. The leap from where we are now to where we need to be is substantial, and so a welcome segment of the book covers possible transitional steps, such as progressive mutualisation of the economy, land reform and conversion of military production to peaceful and renewable purposes. He explicitly rejects the narrow dogmatic purity that so often stymies the Left, though equally cautions that political parties and individuals within them risk being seduced by power and so absorbed into the mainstream, neutralising their capacity to effect real change. Constant self-challenge and renewal within radical movements are important in order to effectively tackle wider societal issues."<br />
(http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-manifesto.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Excerpts=<br />
<br />
==Why the Commons is Important for the Left==<br />
<br />
Excerpted from chapter 1, by Derek Wall:<br />
<br />
"Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist at Indiana University,<br />
was co-winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for economics, in<br />
recognition of her work on the commons. She has spent a<br />
lifetime researching common property and found that across<br />
the globe, indigenous people and peasants have discovered<br />
ways of sharing land in ways that are ecologically sustainable<br />
and promote real prosperity (Ostrom 1990).<br />
<br />
<br />
Former Green Party member of the New Zealand Parliament<br />
Nandor Tanczos contrasts traditional commons management<br />
with capitalist property rights:<br />
<br />
- Our concepts of property ownership are vastly different from<br />
traditional practices of recognising use rights over various resources.<br />
A right to grow or gather food or other resources in a particular place is<br />
about meeting needs. Property ownership is about the ability to live on<br />
one side of the world and speculate on resources on the other, possibly<br />
without ever seeing it, without regard to need or consequence.<br />
The ability to ‘own’ property is fundamental to capitalism. Since<br />
the first limited liability companies – the Dutch and British East<br />
India Companies – were formed, we have seen the kidnapping and<br />
enslavement of 20–60 million African people and the rape, murder<br />
and exploitation of indigenous people around the world. Colonisation<br />
was primarily about mercantile empires, not political ones. It was all<br />
about forcing indigenous, communitarian people to accept private<br />
individual ownership of resources, which could then be alienated,<br />
either by being bought or stolen. (Tanczos in Wall 2005: xiv)<br />
<br />
The commons overcomes many of the problems with<br />
traditional state socialism because it tends to be flexible and<br />
decentralised. It has an inbuilt ecological principle based on<br />
the concept of usufruct, that is, access to a resource is granted<br />
only if the resource is left in as good a form as it was when<br />
first found. By extending this concept of usufruct, we can<br />
provide the basis of an ecological economy. By providing<br />
access, the commons enables prosperity without growth; if<br />
we have access to the resources we need, we can reduce<br />
wasteful duplication.<br />
<br />
<br />
Preserving and extending the commons for forests, seas<br />
and other ecological resources is particularly vital. In the<br />
world’s rainforests, indigenous people almost universally use<br />
communal ownership to prevent ecological destruction of<br />
the forests. However, the commons principle can be applied<br />
far more widely. In the form of free software and access<br />
to the World Wide Web, it has already transformed the<br />
knowledge economy and decommodified access to culture<br />
and information. This, of course, is still imperfect: people<br />
in poorer communities may lack access to the Internet, and<br />
free Internet resources are still used to generate sales revenue.<br />
<br />
Yet it already has had an extraordinary impact and shows<br />
that alternatives to private ownership are possible. It has<br />
already redistributed income from media corporations to<br />
consumers. The legal theorist Yochai Benkler (2006) has<br />
suggested that what he terms ‘social sharing’ can be applied<br />
to physical goods: we use a good only some of the time, and<br />
sharing allows more access to the good, without increased<br />
production. This is already occurring with car clubs.<br />
<br />
<br />
Roberto Verzola, an environmental activist from the<br />
Philippines has argued:<br />
<br />
- Perfect cooperation, which leads to more abundance, is as important<br />
an economic concept as perfect competition. A properly-managed<br />
free commons, like a freely accessible public library of books, CDs and<br />
DVDs, can help create more abundance as much as an unregulated<br />
free market often leads to artificial scarcity. (Verzola 2009)<br />
<br />
Varied forms of social sharing can massively reduce the need<br />
to produce physical goods but at the same time improve<br />
our access to them; this cuts through the contradiction<br />
between ecology and prosperity. Many people in the green<br />
movement are aware that economic growth is unsustainable,<br />
and socialists are critical of capitalism to a greater or lesser<br />
extent, but most people involved in progressive politics are<br />
unaware of the importance of the commons as a means of<br />
constructing a green and socialist economy. The commons is a<br />
solution that combines ecology with free access to resources,<br />
it does not abolish individual property but allows us to have<br />
greater use of resources with far less waste. Think of taking<br />
toys from a toy library, borrowing tools for a day, using a<br />
car pool, or even growing food on an allotment. Commons<br />
squares the circle, potentially allowing improved standards of<br />
living with far less physical impact on the environment. We<br />
need to build new commons if we are to survive and prosper<br />
as a species. Commons are almost always under assault, and<br />
globally, commons have been stolen from people and fenced<br />
off. Corporations spend billions lobbying politicians to make<br />
it difficult for individuals to access knowledge and culture<br />
for free. Corrupt academics produce ‘research’ arguing that<br />
commons must be destroyed.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
An economy based on use-values that promote ecology<br />
would be based on property rights that protect the<br />
environment while providing increasing access to sustainable<br />
resources. Ecosocialism is about the battle for the commons,<br />
conserving existing commons, and extending and deepening commons." <br />
<br />
<br />
==Why Tackling Property Righs and Democratic Planning are a environmental necessity==<br />
<br />
Michael Löwy, on reading the first draft of this chapter, noted:<br />
<br />
"[[Democratic Socialist Planning]] is not ‘central’, for two reasons : First)<br />
It is a planning at all levels, municipal, regional, national, continental<br />
(Europe), planetary. Second) The main decisions are not taken by<br />
any ‘central’ body, but by the whole concerned population, in a<br />
democratic vote … Local transport by buses has to be locally planned.<br />
And the production of locomotives and buses has to be planned, at a<br />
national or continental level. As well as the production of electricity<br />
to produce these goods. The closing down of carbon-fueled facilities<br />
and nuclear plants has to be planned, cleaning up the monstrous<br />
waste they leave behind.<br />
<br />
Many environmentalists have failed to criticize capitalism but<br />
capitalism is the cause of ecological destruction, so a green politics<br />
without a red analysis of capitalism will fail to develop realistic<br />
alternatives for environmental protection. Socialism while necessary<br />
is not sufficient, socialist movements in the past have amongst<br />
other failings often ignored environmental problems. There must<br />
be a process of building ecosocialist alternatives. Socialism without<br />
ecological concern will still wreck the planet, while ecological concern<br />
without a socialist analysis of capitalism will fail to save it. (private<br />
correspondence with the author)<br />
<br />
As Dave Riley, an ecosocialist activist from Australia,<br />
reminded me while looking at an earlier draft of this chapter,<br />
the key problem is political not technical. Solutions are<br />
possible but it is inadequate to simply point out that solutions,<br />
such as the commons, permaculture and a green ‘New Deal’<br />
which would invest in renewables, exist and then expect<br />
society to embrace them. The key is that their introduction<br />
will involve intense political struggle. My argument is that<br />
alternative forms of property rights that promote economic<br />
democracy and ecological sustainability are the essential base<br />
of a possible future, in contrast, to the impossible dream<br />
of capitalist waste. Property rights are political in that they<br />
determine access to resources, that is, they are about power;<br />
but to see alternative property as a free standing solution<br />
creates the danger of wishing for a more sophisticated fix."<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Books]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Movements]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Cell-Free_Synthetic_Biology&diff=58604Cell-Free Synthetic Biology2012-01-23T00:46:39Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div><br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
"In general terms, synthetic biology brings to mind using “BioBricks”, which are engineered genetic parts used to modify an organism, such as bacteria or yeast. The idea is to modify the organism to work to our advantage; for example, to eat sugar and produce biofuel — a pretty good tradeoff, considering the cost of gasoline and the cost of sugar. This is a top-down methodology: take an existing organism, modify it’s DNA, measure it’s behavior, and repeat the modification process until the desired “behavior” is measured.<br />
<br />
'''Some synthetic biology research, however, doesn’t use traditional organisms at all. In fact, doesn’t even use “cells”. This might be called cell-free synthetic biology, or in vitro synthetic biology. This is a bottom-up approach: create the desired “behavior” from scratch.''' The idea has existed for some time; <br />
<br />
a good summary is Synthetic biology projects in vitro, Anthony C. Forster and George M. Church, Genome Res. 17:1-6, 2007: “Many biopolymer syntheses are already better scaled up in cell-free systems, such as linear DNAs by oligo synthesis and PCR, unmodified RNAs by in vitro transcription, and peptide libraries by in vitro transcription/translation. And engineering flexibility is much greater in vitro, unshackled from cellular viability, complexity, and walls.”<br />
(http://88proof.com/synthetic_biology/blog/archives/84)<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Science]]<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Carbon_Trading&diff=58603Carbon Trading2012-01-23T00:46:23Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''Book: Carbon Trading. A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power. by Larry Lohmann (editor). Published by Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Durban Group for Climate Justice and The Corner House, October 2006''' <br />
<br />
Available for free at<br />
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/carbonDDlow.pdf<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
"The main cause of global warming is rapidly increasing carbon dioxide emissions -- primarily the result of burning fossil fuels. Some responses to the crisis, however, are causing new and severe problems -- and may even increase global warming. This seems to be the case with carbon trading -- the main current international response to climate change and the centrepiece of the Kyoto Protocol.<br />
<br />
Carbon trading has two parts. First, governments hand out free tradable rights to emit carbon dioxide to big industrial polluters, allowing them to make money from business as usual. Second, companies buy additional pollution credits from projects in the South that claim to emit less greenhouse gas than they would have without the investment. Most of the carbon credits being sold to industrialized countries come from polluting projects, such as schemes that burn methane from coal mines or waste dumps, which do little to wean the world off fossil fuels. Tree plantations claimed to absorb carbon dioxide, in addition, often drive people off their lands and destroy biological diversity without resulting in progress toward alternative energy systems.<br />
<br />
This exhaustively-documented but highly-readable book takes a broad look at the social, political and environmental dimensions of carbon trading and investigates climate mitigation alternatives. It provides a short history of carbon trading and discusses a number of 'lessons unlearned'. Detailed case studies from ten Third World countries -- Guatemala, Ecuador, Uganda, Tanzania, Costa Rica, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, South Africa and Brazil -- expose the outcomes on the ground of various carbon 'offset' schemes.<br />
<br />
The book concludes that the 'carbon trading' approach to the problem of rapid climate change is both ineffective and unjust. The bulk of fossil fuels must be left in the ground if climate chaos is to be avoided."<br />
(http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=544225)<br />
<br />
<br />
=Introduction=<br />
<br />
By the author:<br />
<br />
"OF ALL the schemes under discussion to stop or limit catastrophic climate change, one of those getting most attention is pollution trading. This popular but little-tried idea lies at the heart of some of the most prominent international approaches to the problem, including the Kyoto protocol and the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS). The trouble is, it won't work.<br />
<br />
Pollution trading was developed in the US in the 1980s and 1990s to make reducing emissions cheaper and more palatable for heavy polluters. The idea is that if business A can reduce emissions more cheaply than business B, then B can pay A to make reductions for both of them. Moreover, by putting a price on emitting greenhouse gases, trading is meant to encourage businesses to invent new technologies to replace fossil fuel use.<br />
<br />
This approach is misguided. Arguably, the US sulphur dioxide trading programme of the 1990s helped businesses save money in meeting modest short-term reduction targets for a single substance. But global warming requires a more radical solution: nothing less than a reorganisation of society and technology that will leave most remaining fossil fuels safely underground. Carbon trading can't do this. It just encourages the industries most addicted to coal, oil and gas to carry on much as before. Why bother making expensive long-term structural changes if you can meet your targets by buying pollution rights from operations that can cut their carbon cheaply?<br />
<br />
What's more, carbon trading schemes have tended to reward the heaviest polluters. Heavily polluting industries and nations are being granted roughly as many free pollution rights -- which they can trade lucratively -- as they need to cover current emissions. Under the EUETS, some of the worst greenhouse offenders, such as the German utilities group RWE, have earned hundreds of millions of euros in windfall profits just for pursuing business as usual. Meanwhile ordinary citizens suffer higher electricity prices, and renewable energy developers must beg for funds.<br />
<br />
The EUETS and the Kyoto protocol are further weakened by loopholes that allow big polluters to buy cheap "offset" credits from abroad. A British cement firm or oil company lacking enough EU permits to cover its emissions can make up the shortfall simply by buying credits from, say, a wind farm in India, a scheme to destroy HFC refrigerants in Korea, an energy efficiency programme in South Africa or a project to burn landfill gas to generate electricity in Brazil.<br />
<br />
Such projects are merely supplementing fossil fuel use; they are not replacing it. The institutions most eager to set up offset projects - from the World Bank to Tokyo Power - are precisely those most committed to burning up more and more fossil fuel. Covering the land with windmills and biofuel plantations will be of little use unless fossil fuel extraction is stopped.<br />
<br />
The damaging effects of carbon trading schemes are felt severely in poor countries. The Durban Group for Climate Justice has documented that almost all the carbon credits are generated by polluting companies, while communities that follow climate-friendly practices such as preserving local forests or defending their lands against oil exploitation are ignored. Only big firms can afford to hire carbon accountants, liaise with officials and pay the costs of getting projects registered with the UN. Yet these are often the companies that local people battle hardest against in defence of their livelihoods and health.<br />
<br />
The US wrote carbon trading into the Kyoto protocol before abandoning the treaty to its fate. The sclerotic market apparatus that resulted does not serve anyone's best interests. It helps keep an oppressive, fossil-centred industrial model going at a time when society should be abandoning it.<br />
<br />
There are better ways of tackling climate change than by privatising the Earth's carbon-cycling capacity. Public investment, shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels and toward renewables, conventional regulation, support for the work of communities already following or pioneering low-carbon ways of life, requiring that businesses pay the costs their competitors incur in developing green technologies - all these are stronger and more direct ways of bringing about the structural change required.<br />
<br />
Historians of science tell how scientists who supported the old European astronomical model that placed the Earth at the centre of the universe had to add more and more elaborate, ad hoc refinements or "epicycles" to their calculations in order to account for planetary movements. Carbon trading is like one of those epicycles. It's time it was replaced."<br />
(http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/item.shtml?x=546606)<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Abundance_of_Food_vs_the_Abundance_of_Recipes&diff=58602Abundance of Food vs the Abundance of Recipes2012-01-23T00:44:22Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Energy</p>
<hr />
<div>=Text by Brian Davey =<br />
<br />
Contribution from [[Brian Davey]] of [[Feasta]], reacting to the [[Berlin Commons Conference]] tension between [[Abundance]] and [[Scarcity]].<br />
subtitles by Franz Nahrada<br />
<br />
<br />
Brian Davey:<br />
<br />
"At the beginning of the final session of the international commons<br />
conference participants were invited to express their worries,<br />
criticisms and reservations. I stood up and said, roughly, the<br />
following:<br />
<br />
The participants who make up the conference perhaps should have<br />
focused more on what kind of era we are living in. In the conference<br />
there seemed to be two general understandings and the difference<br />
between them had not been brought out enough during the discussion.<br />
<br />
'''Commons as lifeboats ....'''<br />
<br />
On the one hand there were those for whom the commons were lifeboat<br />
institutions for collective control over vital resources in a world in<br />
crisis, a world in which production is likely to shrink because of<br />
runaway climate change, depleting energy and water and other<br />
resources. To a large degree these were people whose main focus of<br />
attention was on natural commons - the atmosphere and climate; water<br />
and the oceans; land and ecological systems...<br />
<br />
'''or as a new mode of production.'''<br />
<br />
On the other hand there were those for whom the commons represented an<br />
entirely new mode of peer to peer production, which, when no longer<br />
held back by the constraints imposed by intellectual property<br />
restrictions, had the potential to usher in a world of<br />
'''abundance'''....not only in the provision of free information services<br />
like Wikipedia, created collectively and available to everyone, but<br />
eventually extending into material production processes too - through<br />
open source design of material goods and the spreading of new ideas<br />
for cultivation. In short we stood at the beginning of an age of<br />
abundance....The participants with this view tended to be those<br />
involved in knowledge and cultural commons - eg those involved in<br />
developing software etc.<br />
<br />
'''Limits versus abundance'''<br />
<br />
After the conference I think these issues are so important that I have<br />
written this follow up paper. Let me start it by observing that the<br />
environmental movement has long been involved in a debate with the<br />
political and economic mainstream that looks like this:<br />
<br />
Environmentalists argue that we are actually approaching and<br />
overstepping material limits to growth and the "carrying capacity" of<br />
the planet's ecological systems. Meanwhile the mainstream argues that<br />
we don't need to worry about any such thing because technology and<br />
human ingenuity will see us through - so that growth can continue<br />
indefinitely into the future....<br />
<br />
Now I was not aware of anyone in the Berlin Commons conference who was<br />
arguing for continued growth. And everyone I met in this conference<br />
seemed to be aware of climate change and peak oil and gas.<br />
Nevertheless, the "abundance" argument did seem to me to be, at least<br />
in part, a re-packaged variant of the "human ingenuity can see us<br />
through" position - with the interesting spin on it, that human<br />
ingenuity and creativity would see us through IF the corporate attempt<br />
to enclose and privatise knowledge through intellectual property<br />
(patents, copyright, royalties etc) can be lifted - so that<br />
intellectual creation can occur as a genuine collective process and<br />
anyone and everyone is free to take the ideas, designs, software and<br />
creations of others, to correct them, amend them, adapt them, further<br />
develop them, contribute to them and so on.....without having to pay<br />
through the nose for the privilege.<br />
<br />
Now in my view you can take these ideas too far. But before I explain<br />
why I want to explain why I found this viewpoint refreshing and to<br />
isolate a few kernels of truth.<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
40 years ago in my Trotskyite youth I used to attend conferences which<br />
were almost the polar opposite of this one. Participants in these<br />
earlier conferences were concerned to establish and agree upon what<br />
was "the correct analysis", the correct way of interpreting the world<br />
and what should be done about it. The "correct analysis" somehow<br />
always seemed to be what the people you knew closest thought - because<br />
you had worked out the ideas with them and, if you<br />
disagreed.....well....it would be uncomfortable for you to go to all<br />
the meetings and find that you were the odd person saying something<br />
different.).<br />
<br />
But, of course, other people, often in or from other places, people<br />
who had other relationships, typically worked out a slightly different<br />
view of what was "correct". So that meant that, for them, you were<br />
wrong, and, for you, they were wrong.<br />
<br />
The conferences that resulted from this way of relating to "the truth"<br />
were frustrating and unproductive. I remember people remarking, with<br />
frustration, how the other factions didn't budge an inch in their<br />
thinking and, no doubt, seen from their point of view, neither did we.<br />
Difference was a problem - other peoples different viewpoints were<br />
"wrong" while we were always "right".<br />
<br />
I cannot say that everyone had the same experience at the<br />
International Commons Conference. At least some people seemed to get<br />
frustrated - but my own experience was mainly one in which the<br />
participants there were at ease with the differences and prepared to<br />
engage with people with a different viewpoint in a relaxed way - and<br />
that was very refreshing.<br />
<br />
Indeed when you adopted this relaxed acceptance of difference my<br />
experience was that you tended to find that the people with the<br />
different view were already aware of your viewpoint - they may not<br />
have agreed with it as the best explanation but sometimes they would<br />
accept it as plausible and another possible view.<br />
<br />
Indeed I felt as if I was in a discussion in which participants who<br />
had different views, were regarded as useful for testing out one's own<br />
views, useful for seeing a different perspective that one might not<br />
have had before. There was a sense that ideas and viewpoints are not<br />
fixed and right or wrong, but always in development and the differing<br />
ideas of other people were useful in helping one further develop one's<br />
own ideas.<br />
<br />
Here, I think, we have an emerging idea of one dimension of<br />
"commoning" in the "knowledge commons" . I suspect it has arisen from<br />
the experience of working things through in group processes of<br />
software design or of cultural production. Here you have an open<br />
mindedness that has arisen from the experience of open source software<br />
design and the group development of ideas - where "bugs" are regarded<br />
as inevitable, where they are ironed out in collective processes,<br />
where someone else can perhaps creatively develop something that one<br />
has done and intellectual creation is an inherently collective<br />
process.<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
So I think that what I was experiencing was indeed a collective "mode<br />
of production" at work - where "commoning", means active participation<br />
in production, jointly with one's peers. And this is non egoistical,<br />
non competitive, and not concerned with grabbing property rights and<br />
personal advantage - which would, after all, slow down and damage the<br />
collective process.<br />
<br />
The idea that doing things in this way is much smoother and more<br />
creative I can really accept....up to a point. I can thus also accept,<br />
up to a point, that it is possible to conceive of responses to the<br />
ecological and economic crises, being developed and designed<br />
collectively and then applied to material production. I am aware, for<br />
example, that there are processes involved in designing "eco-cars"<br />
which are open source.<br />
<br />
This idea can be extended even further from ideas and designs into<br />
material production. Thus it would not just be software and cultural<br />
works that might be created without intellectual property in peer to<br />
peer processes but material products made of "stuff" too - vehicles,<br />
furniture, gardens. (Peer to peer here means co-production without an<br />
intermediary or an organisation, like an employer, managing the entire<br />
process and then claiming the group product as its own).<br />
<br />
At its most developed this leads to the idea that open source designs<br />
could be taken and used by anyone in local community work places.<br />
These places of "free infrastruture" would operate like resource<br />
centres and be equipped with computer steered machinery that would be<br />
able to create real material products out of the digital designs. (So<br />
called "Fab Labs" - see http://tangiblebit.com/ )<br />
<br />
Well....that is where the theory of an intellectual commons goes into<br />
material production..... However, at this point however I think we<br />
need to come back to Earth. For these are visions of the future that<br />
I find difficult to believe in and I want to explain why.<br />
<br />
'''Energy costs'''<br />
<br />
The Berlin Commons conference documentation used a terminology about<br />
the "generative logic of the commons" to refer to the way in which<br />
commons can be and are productive. However, as some people pointed<br />
out, even the digital commons are based on a material and energy<br />
guzzling infrastructure - and although there may be well meaning<br />
designers engaged in open source design processes trying to reduce the<br />
energy usage and material throughput in the maintenance of the<br />
internet infrastructure, the digital commons is by no means a free<br />
lunch. Thus, for example, making a personal computer costs 1800kWh of<br />
energy and thus consumes 11 times its own weight in fossil fuels<br />
before it gets into use...and that's also before we start to take into<br />
account all the other computers and much bigger servers it will need<br />
to be connected to and the energy they all take to run on...<br />
<br />
'''Material Limitations'''<br />
<br />
But, for me, there are some important issues here that go way beyond<br />
the issues about the energy used to create and run the internet and<br />
its infrastructure. While it is true that a considerable part of the<br />
financial costs of many products arises out of the design process, and<br />
these costs are greater because of intellectual property impositions<br />
and the charging of rent for the intellectual property, nevertheless,<br />
the creativity that is freed up by knowledge commons operating without<br />
intellectual property restraints cannot in and of themselves lift the<br />
limits to growth which have been the core issue for ecological<br />
economists.<br />
<br />
So it is from this standpoint that I find it difficult to go all the<br />
way with, for example, Roberto Verzola of the Philippine Greens, who<br />
wrote a paper for the Berlin Conference called "Abundance and the<br />
Generative Logic of the Commons". Yes, I agree with Roberto that the<br />
internet is producing and abundance of "information and knowledge" but<br />
information abundance is not the same as material abundance.<br />
<br />
For one thing an abundance of knowledge and information that some<br />
people have, can remain unknown to, or ignored, or otherwise<br />
unattended to, by the people and institutions that need and ought to<br />
know about that information and knowledge so that it is actually used.<br />
<br />
In fact there is far more information and knowledge in the world than<br />
we can all possibly devote our attention to and a whole set of<br />
institutions exist to draw attention to the agendas of powerful<br />
interests who are operating in unsustainable ways, and to draw<br />
attention away from, to slander and to try to discredit information<br />
and knowledge about things which need urgent action. Thus, for<br />
example, there has been an abundance of information and knowledge for<br />
decades about unsustainable types of economic development and about<br />
sustainable alternatives - but there has also been a political<br />
economic power structure that has felt able to ignore it, and seduce<br />
the greater bulk of the population in rich countries to devote their<br />
attention to consumption, shopping, celebrity life styles, sports, and<br />
diverting entertainment. At the same time there has been a largely<br />
successful campaign to deliberately mislead people about climate<br />
change and other issues. So while there's a lot of information there<br />
is a lot of ignorance too...... ignor - ance that is. This channelling<br />
of mass attention is based on highly sophisticated knowledge of human<br />
psychology - indeed the founder of the modern PR and marketing<br />
industry, Edward Bernays, repeatedly drew attention to his<br />
relationship to Signmund Freud, and his use of concepts that<br />
manipulate the emotional predispositions of masses of people to suit<br />
the power elite (including the bankers and the energy barons).<br />
<br />
Secondly even if the abundance of information were to be used<br />
helpfully in the search for solutions to our problems '''this information<br />
abundance could only to a limited degree be converted into an<br />
abundance of material goods''' - or more accurately, it has a limited<br />
potential to mitigate the decline in production that is likely to<br />
arise through energy descent.<br />
<br />
Let me be careful to note that Roberto is well aware of peak oil but I<br />
do not fully agree with his point of view when he writes in his paper<br />
that:<br />
<br />
'' " The massive bulk of water, carbon, iron, silicon and other minerals on Earth as well as energy from the sun are also wellsprings of abundance." ''<br />
<br />
''"The Earth's mineral abundance is non renewable a\nd must be managed differently from renewable solar energy."''<br />
<br />
''"As oil production peaks, for instance, cheap abundant oil will come to an end. Peak oil should teach us an unforgettable lesson in abundance management. Those who miss the lesson will go for more coal, nuclear power and agrofuels. Those who get it will shift to clean renewables, energy efficiency and planned "descent". Transition Towns are leading the way."''<br />
<br />
''"Solar energy makes possible other abundant energy resources such as water, wind and wood. In 2009, renewables supplied 25% of total world energy capacity, thanks to China's surging interest in biogas, windpower and photovoltaics. Germany, too. Photovoltaics are made from semiconducting silicon, the material base of the digital revolution (Do you recall how expensive LCD projectors were ten years ago?) If photovoltaics follow similar plunging price trends as other digital goods. we can look forward to a Solar Age soon. Hydrogen from water also promises another abundant energy source."''<br />
<br />
''"In passing let me cite one more wellspring of abundance: webs of positive human relationships in caring communities, which generate feelings of peace, contentment, love happiness and other psychic rewards which defy quantification"''<br />
<br />
(From "Abundance and the Generative logic of the Commons" by Roberto<br />
Verzola, Philippine Greens.Keynote speech for Stream III<br />
<br />
Roberto's message seems to be - yes, there will be peak oil and it<br />
will be a problem but it will only be a problem if the wrong energy<br />
technologies are adopted in response. If we embrace energy efficiency,<br />
and renewable energy technologies which are falling rapidly in price,<br />
then there will not be a problem - there will still be abundance -<br />
and that's not to mention a non measurable abundance of good feelings<br />
from positive human relations. (Quite what Roberto means by the word<br />
"descent" is not clear to me).<br />
<br />
'''As an ecological economist I find these ideas disturbing in this kind of conference.''' They seem to contradict 100% the "Limits to Growth" arguments developed originally in the study commissioned by the Club of Rome in the 1970s and subsequently updated and confirmed by study after study.<br />
<br />
I can fully accept the possibility of a non measurable abundance of<br />
good feelings arising out of positive human relationships....although<br />
whether that possibility will in any way be actualised depends on our<br />
succeess, or lack of success, in re-developing the commons and<br />
commoning as the basis of human relationships.....'''however the notion of an abundance in material abundance I do not find credible'''. This<br />
wishes away the fact that Planet Earth has a limited ecological<br />
carrying capacity and all the studies show we have already overshot it<br />
considerably.<br />
<br />
'''Supporting points'''<br />
<br />
Lets go back to basics. First of all how do we explain and measure<br />
what material production does occur? A good way of doing this is to<br />
take the amount of energy that is applied in economic processes,<br />
adjusting the measure of energy for the efficiency with which the<br />
energy is delivered in the transformation of materials and "stuff"<br />
that becomes embodied in products. Then you get a measure of the<br />
amount of "work" done in material production - where the word "work"<br />
is not a reference to human labour, but to the physics of the<br />
application of energy to the transformation and movement of materials<br />
- physical processes that are subject to the laws of thermodynamics.<br />
<br />
Thus the amount of material production in the economy is related to<br />
how much energy is applied AND how efficiently it is applied.<br />
<br />
In fact, this way of looking at production, and production growth,<br />
does exceedingly well when it is<br />
applied to real data. Two authors Ayres and Warr - used this way of<br />
thinking to study growth in the US economy. Between 1900 and 1975 it<br />
provide an almost perfect explanation for the trend growth of material<br />
production.<br />
<br />
See: http://www.iea.org/work/2004/eewp/ayres-paper1.pdf<br />
<br />
Now there is still a place in this model for human ingenuity to<br />
improve the efficiency with which energy is delivered to production.<br />
And there is some place for immaterial production which might grow.<br />
But immaterial production has to be embedded and embodied in material<br />
processes and things too - even a hair cut requires, scissors,<br />
premises, a chair, lighting....<br />
<br />
And when it comes to producing stuff you cannot keep on increasing the<br />
efficiency of energy delivery to production processes and nor can you<br />
keep on increasing energy inputs either - especially at a point in<br />
history when the concentrated power made possible by burning fossil<br />
fuel energy sources starts to dwindle because of depletion, going over<br />
the peak of oil production, gas peak and coal peak....(not to mention<br />
the atmospheric use peak which we passed some time ago).<br />
<br />
'''The Limitation of Renewable (Energy) Sources'''<br />
<br />
But what about renewable energies? Can these not be the basis of<br />
"abundance" - that is the argument of Roberto and I don't agree.<br />
<br />
We need to get a grip on the key fact that there is an absolute limit<br />
on the amount of solar and renewable energies available, no matter how<br />
ingenious and cheap we engineer an infrastructure to capture it, and<br />
no matter how good we are as gardeners and permaculture designers to<br />
capture it through plants.<br />
<br />
The "generative logic of the commons" has to work with the fact that<br />
the power of raw sunshine at midday on a cloudless day is 1000W per<br />
square metre - but that is 1000 W per m2 of area oriented towards the<br />
sun, not per m2 of land area. To get the power per m2 of land area in<br />
Britain, where I live, we need to compensate for the tilt between the<br />
sun and the land, which reduces the intensity of midday sun to about<br />
60% of its value at the equator. And of course it is not midday all<br />
the time. And of course in Britain, and many other places it is cloudy<br />
a lot of the time. In a typical UK location the sun shines during just<br />
34% of daylight hours.<br />
<br />
Globally total incoming solar radiation is 122 Petawatts which is 4<br />
orders of magnitude greater than the total primary energy supply used<br />
by humanity - but given the low density with which it falls across the<br />
whole planet harvesting it for production processes is a costly energy<br />
intensive process. Many of the current ideas for harvesting this solar<br />
energy for human use assume that we can do this through biomass and<br />
plant based photosynthesis. Perhaps indeed permaculture has much to<br />
offer us - but it cannot resolve the fact that in Britain, after cloud<br />
cover and all the other issues there is only 100 watts falling on each<br />
meter of flat ground on average for the plants to harvest. Nor can<br />
human ingenuity and the generatice logic of the commons do much about<br />
the fact that the best plants, for example, in Europe, can only<br />
convert 2% of that solar energy into carbohydrates.<br />
<br />
What's more its as well to remember that humans already appropriate<br />
30-40% of Net Primary Production of the planet (biomass) as food,<br />
feed, fiber, and fuel with wood and crop residues supplying 10% of<br />
total global human energy use. Even a relatively small increase,<br />
pushing human use of biomass up to 50% of the planets biomass<br />
production would undermine and destroy many hugely important<br />
eco-system services. In fact, because of the climate crisis, we need<br />
to be using biomass to capture CO2 out of the atmosphere. The room for<br />
maneovre barely exists, if at all.<br />
<br />
Similar things can be said about other renewable energy resources.<br />
Yes, they are part of the future. yes they are part of what is needed.<br />
Yes, ingenuity can increase their efficiency in harvesting energy. But<br />
no they cannot and will not ever be able to provide an "abundance" if,<br />
by abundance we mean material production abundance.<br />
<br />
With current human use of energy globally at about 13 Terawatts in<br />
2005 as a measure we need to take in the significance of the fact<br />
that, after solar energy<br />
<br />
''"No other renewable energy resource can provide more than 10 TW.<br />
Generous estimates of technically feasible maxima (economically<br />
acceptable rates would be much lower) are less than 10 TW for wind,<br />
less than 5 TW for ocean waves, less than 2 TW for hydroelectricity<br />
and less than 1 TW for geothermal and tidal energy and for ocean<br />
currents. "'' (Vaclav Smil "Energy in Nature and Society. General<br />
Energetics of Complex Systems." MIT Press, 2008, p382-383).<br />
<br />
So lets review the argument. Material abundance requires an abundance<br />
of energy to do the physical work of transforming and moving around<br />
matter to turn good ideas and designs into products available to<br />
users. At the moment humanity uses about 13 TW of energy and this<br />
quantity is set to shrink quite dramatically in availability. No<br />
matter how clever we are the amount that we can replace from<br />
renewables is also strictly limited ....'''a renewable energy infrastructure will take considerable energy to construct and will have to concentrate natural energy fluxes dispersed over wide geographical areas.''' Moreover these natural energy fluxes are<br />
themselves subject to absolute limits in their availability.<br />
<br />
'''Conclusion'''<br />
<br />
My conclusion is that, to talk about abundance is a very misleading<br />
message. Commons have much to offer us - sharing ideas without<br />
intellectual property constraints will help us, sharing scarce<br />
production and energy and pooling production arrangement and<br />
infrastructures will too, sharing may bring us into human<br />
relationships with many psychological and emotional rewards. In that<br />
sense we may describe commons as "having a generative logic" - But an<br />
"abundance" is not a message that I agree with - if it taken to mean,<br />
or implied to mean, an abundance of material production. In my opinion<br />
to use the word "abundance" is a misleading picture of the future that<br />
we are heading into.<br />
<br />
An abundance of information about how we might make things is not the<br />
same as an abundance of things - it is an abundance of recipes not an<br />
abundance of food."<br />
<br />
=Discussion=<br />
<br />
==Michel Bauwens: How Immaterial Abundance can assist a Steady State Economy==<br />
<br />
'''Response to Brian Davey of Feasta: Immaterial vs. Material Abundance'''<br />
<br />
Michel Bauwens:<br />
<br />
Brian Davey has written a very stimulating text above, published also [http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/brian-davey-beware-of-fake-abundance/2010/11/13 here], which warns of equating the abundance of immaterial culture with the abundance of material production.<br />
<br />
This is a very important argument, with which we basically agree. Nevertheless, I also believe that Brian Davey fails to see the importance of immaterial abundance in solving the crisis of material scarcity.<br />
<br />
Let’s quickly review the points with whom I can easily agree.<br />
<br />
Yes, we cannot naively hope for the era of material abundance to continue unabated, without recognizing the real material scarcities that are becoming more serious by the day. A serious contraction from the industrial standard of material production is more than likely.<br />
<br />
Yes, internet infrastructure is itself a costly material infrastructure.<br />
<br />
Yes, we cannot naively assume that ‘abundant’ renewable energy can fully replace, or even substantially replace, the overflow of fossil fuels we got accustomed to. Renewables are not magical solutions and have both absolute limits and real concrete issues of concentration for human need.<br />
<br />
So, in conclusion, I agree that it is very dangerous to conflate ‘immaterial abundance’ with material abundance. And this in fact an argument I have been constantly making in my own lecture. That the present system combines pseudo-abundance, a mistaken faith in the infinite abundance of the material world, believing that infinite growth is compatible with a finite planet; with a belief in the necessity of artificial scarcity in the world of immaterial innovation and culture, making it very difficult for humans to freely share and cooperate. I have argued that what I call the successor civilization, centered around the commons and peer to peer dynamics, which subsume both market and state, will overturn that erroneous operating system, into one ''which recognizes both the real scarcity of the material world, and the abundance of cultural exchange in a digital context''. <br />
<br />
My key point would be that a successful transition towards a steady state economy, or even de-growth, actually depends on global cooperation and the available network structure.<br />
<br />
<br />
A few obvious points. <br />
<br />
- The internet is a key tool of human cooperation and fast-paced innovation. Humanity will face many challenges, and while local situations are diverse, there are also substantial commonalities, which means that humans can and should learn from each other. That learning, where any potential innovation is instantly available to the rest of humanity, is what the promise of free culture (a misnomer, in the sense that it means the very broad cooperation of humans around a range of issues). Of course, stated in this particular way, there is an exaggerated optimism. Nevertheless, think of how knowledge would be transmitted without the internet, without print, and without writing even. As we face global challenges, many of which will have an urgency, do we have an alternative? Can we afford not to mobilize transnational collective intelligence? Can we afford that localities remain totally isolated? It is not necessary to worship speed, in order to understand that it does have a certain role to play and that isolation through high transaction, communication, and coordination costs, would not be a good thing in then context of urgent problem solving.<br />
<br />
- Global open knowledge, code and design communities follow a different logic than capitalist firms. While capitalist innovation designs for large capital intakes (to weed out competition), for centralized production and international value chains, for consumption through planned obsolescence; open design communities design for distributed manufacturing (not just fablabs, but a general re-orientation of production around appropriate technology using open and distributed manufacturing); without planned obsolescence<br />
<br />
- Internet is a tool for peer to peer and non-hierarchical socialization. Brian remarks how different the Berlin Commons Conference was, in its open dialogue and tolerance for diversity of opinion, from the old leftist battle for truth he was accustomed to in his youth. But there is a reason for this, namely that the process of socialization amongst peers, in a context of cultural abundance, trains for this kind of cooperation<br />
<br />
- Sharing infrastructures, access to common resources, such as say transportation, only work with ubiquitous knowledge sharing at low coordination costs. For example, bike-sharing systematically failed before the advent of digital media, but are now pretty much routine in many cities. There are huge possibilities for building down the need for material production (for individual property), through sharing infrastructures which depend on the internet infrastructure.<br />
<br />
- Isolated local communities are dwarfish forms, which, even if they are ecologically lighter, would face the pressure of transnational corporations and competitive nation-states. This is a guarantee for social strife, i.e. possibly violent confrontation over scarce resources. On the other hand, local production that is coupled with open design communities and global knowledge sharing, can easily outcooperate the coordination capabilities of transnational companies, while transnational phyles, i.e. coordinated value networks that are responsible for their own livelihoods, can offer fraternity and solidarity in an era of declining welfare states. Global ‘digitally-enabled’ cooperation opens the possibilities for new global governance networks that can tackle global challenges, in ways that neither local communities or nation-states can.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, the conclusion is: immaterial abundance is not opposed to sustainable material economies, but a condition for a smoother transition towards such a state of affairs. While we have to acknowledge that such infrastructure is costly, and may not survive a ecological meltdown, it is not something to wish for, but something that should be avoided if possible. Amongst the investment choices of humanity, the possibility of global cooperation and mobilizing transnational collective intelligence, should not be discounted, but would be one of the better choices. This of course doesn’t mean that computing itself could not become a whole deal greener than it is now. It is hard to imagine how a steady-state, degrowth, or cradle to cradle economy could be achieved without blood and tears, without the use of collective intelligence.<br />
<br />
The crux of the matter is this: we are undoubtedly facing an end to material abundance through fossil fuels. But this transformation can happen the hard way, i.e. as a terrible and costly reduction leading to new kinds of pathological neotribalism and neofeudalism. This is likely the path if we choose isolated localism, without access to global mutual coordination that is now achievable. It is no use having local organic farming, if one is faced with roving bands of armed men demanding your production .. Or, our society can transform to a higher level of complexity, by achieving a synthesis between a steady state economy, and a very rich global social and cultural life of global mutual coordination on a planetary scale, and a rich relocalized production setting.<br />
<br />
The peer to peer vision at least, if achievable, promises this new synthesis, a marriage of the local material and the global immaterial, instead of a return to regressive localism in a context of civil, corporate, and nation-state based strife for scarce material resources.<br />
<br />
==Franz Nahrada: What are the Conditions of Abundance ?==<br />
<br />
There are a few more points to make. The traditional "ecological" argumentation as used by the Club of Rome usually simply aggregates quantitative aspects of production processes and reproductive capabilities without looking at the interplay between them, which is to say it moderately ill-coordinated and designed under current economic conditions. <br />
<br />
Michael Braungart has put this into a simple image: when you have badly-designed material production that produces waste, each additional activity in this material production will increase the overall scarcity at the end. But if products are designed themselves to be parts of cascades of material re-use and up-cycling, each additional activity increases the base for other activities and creates abundance. <br />
<br />
There is a qualitative factor that determines the interplay between our growing information and the material world: it is the ability to conceive and design self-feeding and self supporting cycles and arrangements where human efforts are not lost when they are once spent, but permanently harvesting systemic gains from these inputs.<br />
<br />
The capitalist - industrial mode of production was centered around a monodimensional concept of value, which results in an input - output machine of so-called efficiency. McLuhan once remarked that for this machine it does not matter if its output is cornflakes or cadillacs, as long as the result can be harvested as money. The post-industrial automated mode of prodcution - reproduction will require us to finally create economic measurements and measures that reflect the assumption that the value of each process is multidimensional. <br />
<br />
It is , for example, by no means unimportant where a production process takes place. If the excessive heat of a large server farm that is necessary to maintain our internet infrastructure is used to warm a human settlement, there is a systemic gain merely from design. Everything then is decided by space, time and the interrelatedness of things. This requires a quantum leap in intelligence and information, its by no ways easy to achieve. We must study possible patterns and learn about their complex interplay as essential condition for decisions.<br />
<br />
It would be worthwhile to analyze our current society as a constant producer of waste, both imnediate and systemic waste. The answer cannot easily be given, but it is not in the numbers, but in the interplay of things. Nature is a great system of abundance (much more than "steady state"), and that equals to zero waste. We have to learn from her and participate in her cycles, refine them, indulge in them instead of refraining from activities. Thats the important turnauround that we can define and achieve together.<br />
<br />
<br />
==Wolfgang Hoeschele: Economics of Abundance==<br />
<br />
In his discussion piece, Brian Davey expresses his concern about serious impending resource scarcities (which I share), and his opinion that people who talk about “abundance” are not taking resource scarcity seriously, and are thus overly optimistic about the future of the world. He further assumes that most of these people come from the “knowledge and cultural commons” backgrounds, and sees this background as part of the reason for their excessive optimism.<br />
<br />
While I cannot talk for everybody promoting ideas about abundance, I can certainly talk for myself, since I have written a book about the “Economics of Abundance.” Brian Davey surely has not had a chance to read that book yet, since it has only just been published and he was probably not aware of its existence before the International Commons Conference. In this forum, I’d like to summarize some of the ideas that I advance in this book, '''to show that promoting an “economics of abundance” is something very different from ignoring resource scarcities''', does not imply excessive optimism, and does not require a background in the information industry (to which I do not belong; I am a geographer accustomed to dealing with very “down to earth” issues of resource use).<br />
<br />
'''The Production of Scarcity'''<br />
<br />
First, I would like to emphasize that material resources can be abundant, even though they exist in finite quantity. Material resources are abundant if they are used in non-depleting or non-degrading ways (e.g., breathing air), or if there is much more of them than are needed by people (e.g., fisheries in places where people fish only a small portion of the sustainable yield).<br />
<br />
A fundamental problem about our present economy is that it sees no value in abundant resources because you cannot sell them at a high profit margin, e.g., you cannot package air for breathing and then sell it to somebody; where fish are abundant you can sell them but only at a modest price. In other words, only exchange value is recognized, use value is not. It is therefore advantageous for entrepreneurs to make abundant resources scarce so that they can then be sold at a higher price and generate more exchange value. The argument I make in my book is that the work of making abundant resources scarce is not left to individual initiative but is done by scarcity-generating institutions. Scarcity can be produced by manipulating either the supply or demand of a commodity such that demand exceeds supply. In this sense, there is scarcity even when there is a huge amount of production. One can also put it this way: our current economy maximizes inefficiency of consumption in order to generate the demand needed to justify ever increasing production. In such a context, increased efficiency of production does nothing to address issues of resource scarcity.<br />
<br />
A good example pertains to transportation. Mobility – the ability to go where one needs to go – is most abundant if all or most people can reach their daily destinations by walking or cycling or public transport. In this way, mobility is affordable to everybody, and is available to young kids (as soon as they can move about independently), to old people (who can use public transport if they can no longer walk, cycle, or drive), to all members of one-car households, and to people with disabilities that prevent them from driving or walking or cycling (who can still use public transport). In these conditions of abundance, it would be possible for most people not to own their own car but to rely on car-sharing or taxi services for the comparatively rare times that they need a motor vehicle. The conditions that support abundant mobility – compact cities with streets amenable to walking and cycling and socializing – also support lower per capita investment in infrastructure, and on the whole lesser resource use than sprawled cities designed for automobile dependence. Hence, “abundance” does not consist of everybody having a car, but of everybody being able to move around freely and at low cost, without depending on complex and unsustainable commodity chains, while “scarcity” consists of everybody wanting or needing a car, no matter whether they can afford one or not.<br />
<br />
The fact that so many cities do not support abundant mobility is a result of the concerted efforts of the car industry, the oil industry, real estate interests, and various associated economic sectors, which have together influenced governments to build or rebuild cities and transport infrastructures to serve the “needs” of cars (note that inanimate objects do not have needs). I have found that talking about how these institutions generate scarcity and alternatives create abundance helps generate great enthusiasm and creativity in working for change, as in a workshop that I recently led (see http://shareable.net/blog/abundant-mobility-one-towns-resources). <br />
<br />
Scarcity is also generated by inequitable property regimes. For example, if a few people (capitalists, landed gentry, and the like) own the means of production, whether these consist of land, water, access to fisheries or hunting grounds, factories, or anything else, while others are constrained to sell their labor in order to obtain an income, then the property owners have an interest in keeping jobs scarce, to maintain a reserve army of unemployed labor that keeps wages low. We all know this from Marx, this is nothing new. <br />
<br />
In addition, there are important “means of production” that have traditionally been owned by nobody, and it is of advantage to industrialists to use those as free goods of nature and to pollute or otherwise degrade them. Among these are clean air and water; polluting them creates scarcity among all the people whose health is adversely affected. Then, great investments are required to clean up air and water, to the benefit of those industrialists manufacturing the necessary equipment. Common ownership of natural resources (natural resource commons) as well as of workplaces (worker cooperatives) and knowledge (knowledge commons) is essential to undermining this mode of scarcity generation, and to create abundance instead.<br />
<br />
On the level of individual psychology, scarcity is a result of never knowing when enough is enough, of always wanting more. This addictive mindset is fostered by a consumerist culture and insecurity and fear about the future; overcoming such addiction requires precisely the “positive human relationships in caring communities, which generate feelings of peace, contentment, love happiness and other psychic rewards which defy quantification” that Roberto Verzola mentions in his piece.<br />
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An economics of abundance is not an economics that assumes that abundance necessarily exists, but one that analyzes modes of scarcity generation such as the ones I mentioned above, and that points out ways to counteract them. Just as scarcity is socially constructed (and is very real, just as real as a humanly constructed building), so also abundance has to be created. Under current circumstances, this is a daunting task; whether we will succeed in accomplishing it before we face ecological catastrophe I do not know. However, I feel strongly that the idea of generating abundance points out the kind of path we must take if we are to have any hope of averting disaster. Thus, the value of my proposals does not depend on optimism or pessimism, it depends on whether they are a realistic path out of our current quandary.<br />
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[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
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[[Category:Articles]]<br />
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[[Category:Energy]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Abundance_and_the_Generative_Logic_of_the_Commons&diff=58601Abundance and the Generative Logic of the Commons2012-01-23T00:44:10Z<p>Kardan: Category:Energy</p>
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'''* Text: Abundance and the generative logic of the commons. By Roberto Verzola (rverzola@gn.apc.org), Philippine Greens'''<br />
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Keynote speech for Stream III: “The Generative Logic of the Commons” of the International Conference on the Commons, Berlin, Germany, Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, 2010.<br />
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=Text=<br />
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"I will present my talk in the form of ten assertions about abundance and its relation to the commons. Some of the ten are quite obvious and uncontroversial. Others may provoke intense debate. Hopefully, they can help clarify the issues covered by this conference.<br />
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==1: The Internet is creating an abundance of information and knowledge==<br />
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This is hardly news by now. New technologies have made possible a global digital infrastructure, which, in turn, has given rise to a new information economy. This economy has one obvious feature: the abundance of free or low-cost information and knowledge. With few exceptions, I usually find a needed piece of information, skill or knowhow – if it is public knowledge – on Wikipedia, YouTube, a blog, a Web site, or a mailing list somewhere. <br />
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Disturbing issues remain, such as inappropriate content, unaffordability, exclusion, embedded value systems, toxic production and e-wastes. But if we are looking for abundance, the Internet definitely has it. To turn this wealth of information into wisdom though, users have to pick true from false, grain from chaff.<br />
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==2: The abundance concept is even more neglected than the commons==<br />
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The commons concept was denigrated for decades by mainstream social scientists who thought that all commons inevitably collapsed. They made the “tragedy of the commons” a sound-bite. However, the need to manage threatened global commons like the atmosphere, the oceans and biodiversity and the rise of Internet-based commons forced a second look at the rich literature on this topic. The 2009 Economics Nobel Prize award to Elinor Ostrom for her work on the commons put the concept back on the mainstream. <br />
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Abundance is even more neglected. The most fundamental assumption in economics is scarcity. This, in effect, assumes away abundance. Thus, most mainstream economists are not prepared to deal with abundance. They have few concepts that explain it. They have no equations that describe it. Confronted with it, they fall back on inadequate theories based on scarcity.<br />
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The growth of the information economy, however, has made it imperative to deal with the phenomenon of abundance. Unlike the long history of commons research, studies of abundance are few; thus, we are just starting to build theories about it. <br />
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==3: The wellspring of information abundance is the human urge to communicate==<br />
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How did information goods become so abundant? For one, ideas grow – not diminish – with sharing. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Its peculiar character ... is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine....” Also, digital technology has further lowered the cost of exact copies over any number of generations, leading to a marginal cost of almost zero. “Too cheap to matter,” as Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson puts it. Furthermore, it does seem that “information wants to be free”. Something is driving it to multiply. This driving force, I suggest, is the human urge to acquire and exchange knowledge. We did so when it cost much. We will certainly do so even more, now that sharing costs practically nothing.<br />
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On the Internet, we can fully express the primal human urge to communicate. This is why we have information abundance.<br />
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==4: A second wellspring of abundance is the urge in every living organism to reproduce==<br />
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Nature's abundance is hard to miss: bacteria can double their numbers every half hour; some plants release a million pollen in a single day; a fish can release one to ten million eggs in one breeding season; one rice grain can produce a thousand grains within a planting season. (Even pets with five to seven litters a year are more than most of us can handle!) In seas, lakes, swamps, grasslands, forests, and other ecosystems – abundant life blooms. Where they do not anymore do so, something must have upset the natural abundance. Even such damaged ecosystems, if left alone, soon teem with life again.<br />
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While abundance in nature can last indefinitely, it does not grow without limit. As species multiply, they soon settle into balance with other species and the natural environment. The food chain of plants, herbivores, carnivores and other predators, and decomposers such as arthropods, fungi and bacteria becomes webs of material and energy cycles and exchanges, highly-productive ecosystems that provide us perpetual streams of natural income – new soil, clean air, food, materials for clothes and houses, medicine, fuel, industrial inputs, a thousand other goods and services and psychic rewards too.<br />
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The generative logic we see in many commons, I suggest, comes from these inner logic of sharing in humans and reproduction in living organisms.<br />
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==5: The massive bulk of water, carbon, iron, silicon and other minerals on Earth as well as energy from the sun are also wellsprings of abundance==<br />
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The Earth's mineral abundance is non-renewable and must be managed differently from renewable solar energy. <br />
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As oil production peaks, for instance, cheap abundant oil will soon come to an end. Peak oil should teach us an unforgettable lesson in abundance management. Those who miss the lesson will go for more coal, nuclear power and agrofuels. Those who get it will shift to clean renewables, energy efficiency and planned “descent”. Transition towns are already leading the way. <br />
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Solar energy makes possible other abundant energy sources such as water, wind and wood. In 2009, renewables supplied 25% of total world energy capacity, thanks in part to China's surging interest in biogas, wind power and photovoltaics. Germany, too. Photovoltaics are made from semiconducting silicon, the material base of the digital revolution. (Do you recall how expensive LCD projectors were ten years ago?) If photovoltaics follow similar plunging price trends as other digital goods, we can look forward to a Solar Age soon. Hydrogen from water also promises another abundant energy source. <br />
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In passing, let me cite one more wellspring of abundance: webs of positive human relationships in caring communities, which generate feelings of peace, contentment, love, happiness and other psychic rewards which defy quantification.<br />
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==6: Abundance creates commons==<br />
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I have now identified several archetypes of abundance. All these archetypes have created commons. (“Question: before refrigerators, what did people do when they had too much food? Answer: they threw a party!” ) Human societies learned early on to deal with abundance – including temporary ones – from forests, rivers, and other hunting and gathering areas by managing them as commons. Taken for granted for a long time, the oceans, the atmosphere, and other global commons are just getting due attention. Likewise, the creative commons of information, knowledge and culture are now getting renewed attention with the rise of the Internet which, by the way, has become a great showcase of both the concepts of commons and abundance (and their problems, too).<br />
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Markets and governments are also public spaces. Therefore, rather than dismiss them outright as completely anathema to the commons, should we not try to reorient them, to be managed as commons? (After all, public markets and village meetings still show features characteristic of commons. Perhaps, we should see the failures of markets and governments – the financial bubbles in the West or the communist collapse in the East, for instance – as the real tragedies of the commons, from which valuable lessons can be drawn.)<br />
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==7: Under conditions of abundance, reliability becomes more important than efficiency==<br />
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Efficiency – maximizing gain and minimizing waste – is very important when resources are scarce. It has been the focus of mainstream economics. <br />
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But when resources are abundant, efficiency recedes in importance. Some biological processes are “wasteful”, like releasing millions of sperm although only one will actually fertilize an egg. As hardware became cheaper, electronic designers have likewise learned to put integrated circuits, processing power, storage, and bandwidth to uses considered wasteful years ago.<br />
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It often makes sense to give up some efficiency to ensure the continuity of abundance. Among engineers, we call a process that seldom fails “reliable”. This term has familiar equivalents. A process that lasts indefinitely is called “sustainable”. Since future generations can enjoy the same abundance that we are enjoying, sustainability also means “intergenerational equity”. A process that benefits only one sector of society is not reliable because it fails for the other sectors. If all sectors benefit, then we have “social justice” or “equity”. For high reliability, we need to minimize any risk that can cause a failure of abundance; this sounds like “risk-aversion”, or the “precautionary principle”.<br />
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In short, reliability means ensuring that the fruits of abundance are enjoyed without fail by all social sectors, our generation, as well as future generations. We optimize it by putting risk-reduction ahead of gain accumulation. If abundance is a goose that lays golden eggs, we'd rather ensure that the goose stays fit and alive, than force it to lay two eggs instead of one each day.<br />
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==8: We can learn to make one abundance lead to another and create cascades of abundance==<br />
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People with access to land often stay poor simply because they have forgotten how to tap and build on the abundance that nature lays at their feet. Beyond tapping existing abundance and making it last indefinitely, we can learn to recognize the conditions that generate each archetype, so that we can subsequently create cascades of new abundance. To cite examples: the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) improves yields dramatically; permaculture creates through conscious design a self-regenerating “forest” of food and cash crops; remineralization rejuvenates our soils; biodynamic farming taps distant forces to raise the quantity and quality of farm produce. <br />
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On the Internet, the original protocols have spawned cascades of abundance. First came mailing lists, download sites and home pages; then the search engines; other innovations followed, such as blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, and social networking portals, with no end in sight.<br />
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Creating cascades of abundance is hardest in the industrial sector because its substantial material and energy needs (and wastes) tend to disrupt ecological systems. If industrial processes could be turned into closed material loops fuelled by renewables, this may yet provide the key to cascading industrial abundance. <br />
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As we get better at cascading abundance, new commons will emerge that can provide our communities with even more continuous streams of goods, services, psychic rewards and other benefits. <br />
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==9: Abundance spawns two contrary mindsets: monopolizing it for private profit-making, versus holding it in common for the good of the whole community and future generations==<br />
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These two will compete for our minds. Which mindset will ultimately win is by no means clear.<br />
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An example in agriculture is the contest between farmers who share commonly-held seed varieties among themselves, versus multinationals who extract monopoly rents from their proprietary seeds through plant variety protection, patents, F1 hybrids, and the “Terminator” technology.<br />
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In the industries of the West, very little is commonly-held now; the corporate mindset holds sway. Curiously, however, the world's main source of industrial abundance today is China. which boasts of a huge but less dominant State sector, in precarious balance with a growing corporate sector, under the Communist party's schizophrenic ideology of “market socialism”.<br />
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In the information economy, user movements for copyright and patent exemptions, open access, free software and other forms of non-exclusivity have made big inroads in building commons of information techniques, tools and content for sharing. However, corporations and governments are trying to stem the tide of sharing by tightening IPR enforcement and through agreements like the GATT/WTO and the up-and-coming ACTA. <br />
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==10: Corporations are undermining abundance held in common==<br />
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Unfortunately, we created corporations and gave them life before Asimov drew up his Three Laws of Robotics. The First Law was: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The Second: “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” We would be much better off today if all corporations – which, like robots, are man-made automata – were constrained by these laws. <br />
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Our legal systems instead put into these business automata a single urge – to seek profits. This one-track mind has made them take over commonly-held sources of abundance – from seeds, to land, to knowledge – and turn these into monopolies because it is profitable to do so. What they could not take over, they have undermined or sabotaged, to create artificial scarcity. Corporations have destroyed the fertility of our soils, substituting commercial synthetics in their place; they have stopped the natural flow of mothers' milk in favor of commercial formula; they have bought out independent seed companies, to force-feed us with genetically-modified toxic foods, all in pursuit of profit. They have become, in Wolfgang Hoeschele's words, “scarcity-generating institutions”. <br />
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We conceded to corporations legal personhood, turning them into a de facto man-made species of business automata. They have become super-aggressive players in our political, economic, and social worlds. Beating us in our own game, they have taken over governments, economies, and media. Having become masters in domesticating Homo sapiens, they now house, feed, train and employ tamed humans to serve as their workhorses, pack mules, milking cows, watchdogs, stool pigeons and smart asses. <br />
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Thus, I will argue, corporations are now the dominant species on Earth. They routinely ignore human orders, injure human beings and foul up ecosystems in violation of laws for automata; these man-made mammoths now occupy the top of the food chain and have become the greatest threat to our well-being and the survival of many species on this planet. <br />
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=Postscript=<br />
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We face, it seems, three fundamental and interrelated challenges in the twenty-first century:<br />
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First, we must reacquire a species consciousness as Homo sapiens and reestablish our connections with the natural world. With our conscious mind, unique intelligence and creative powers, the human, says a new story of creation, is the Universe's way of looking at itself and appreciating its own beauty, origins, evolution and grandeur. For this, we carry a huge burden of responsibility to the rest of the living world, now dying under a great wave of extinctions. <br />
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Second, we must free ourselves from corporate control. This basically involves learning to keep ourselves healthy through the right natural environment, food and protection from the elements, and raising our young under the new mindset, without depending on corporations. We must rely instead on each other and on commonly-held sources of abundance we ourselves can build and maintain.<br />
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Third, we must reestablish control over corporations. This involves reprogramming them to obey Asimov's three laws for automata, and hunting down disobedient corporations. Eliminating the disobedient from the corporate gene pool is the first step in reclaiming our role as stewards of the natural world and masters of our own creations.<br />
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Given the powers of the corporate species, these are daunting tasks indeed. But they are also tasks worthy of Homo sapiens.<br />
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=Further Commentary=<br />
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The first assertion – that there's abundance of free or low-cost information and knowledge on the Internet – is obvious and uncontroversial, so I'll skip it.<br />
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The first assertion leads immediately to the second, that this information abundance is forcing a deeper look at the concept of abundance itself. Assertion 2 says that abundance is a neglected concept because mainstream economics assumes it away, by defining itself as a study of scarce resources. Thus, unlike the rich literature from the long history of commons research, we have few theories of abundance.<br />
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The rest of my talk is about a theory of abundance.<br />
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Assertions 3-5 identify sources or wellsprings of abundance. Elsewhere, I have also used the mechanistic term engines of abundance. These assertions lead to a typology of abundance. For more details, there's a book on display outside, entitled Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property, which contains my longer piece “Undermining Abundance”. There's also Wolfgang Hoeschele's book on The Economics of Abundance.<br />
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Let's start with the wellspring of information abundance. <br />
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Think of a bottle (or a box). You can bottle water, food, air and most other goods for sale. If you use up the bottle's content, it's gone. That's scarcity. But drinking from a bottle of ideas will never use up the contents of the bottle. That's abundance.<br />
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Think of a curious child. It will touch, smell, taste, look at and listen to almost anything. And once it learns to talk, anything and everything bottled up in its mind will come out. It's an innate urge to absorb information and to communicate information. It's a universal human urge.<br />
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The Internet, in effect, offers a huge set of bottled ideas for the child in all of us, and each bottle keeps on giving... and giving... and giving.... That is why we have information abundance.<br />
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Think of DNA. They are also like bottled ideas. Mother Nature bottled these ideas into genes, cells, organisms and species, and put an intrinsic reproductive urge in every living organism, to spread one's DNA, to reproduce one's own kind.<br />
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That is why nature – and if we do it right, agriculture too – also keeps on giving... and giving... and giving... through balanced and highly-productive ecosystems that provide us with perpetual streams of natural income – new soil, clean air and water, food, stuff for clothes and houses, medicine, fuel, industrial inputs, and a thousand other goods and services, as well as psychic rewards too. Where life does not bloom abundantly anymore, something must have upset the natural abundance. Even these damaged ecosystems, if left alone, soon teem with life again.<br />
<br />
The generative logic we see in many commons comes, I suggest, from the inner logic of sharing in humans and reproduction in living organisms.<br />
<br />
The massive bulk of water and minerals on earth and energy from the sun are also wellsprings of abundance.<br />
<br />
The earth's mineral abundance is non-renewable and must be managed differently from renewable solar energy. As oil production peaks, for instance, the era of cheap abundant liquid fuels will some come to an end. Peak oil should teach us an unforgettable lesson in managing bottles of goods that are used up. Those who miss the lesson will go for more coal, nuclear power and agrofuels. Those who get it will shift to clean renewables, energy efficiency and planned “descent”, as what transition towns are now doing.<br />
<br />
One more wellspring of abundance: the webs of positive human relationships – acquaintances, friendships, family, community – which generate feelings of peace, contentment, love, happiness and other psychic rewards which defy quantification.<br />
<br />
Each of these wellsprings of abundance creates an archetype – a distinct category – of abundance: information, biological, bulk, psychic, and so on.<br />
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Once we open our eyes to the potential abundance around us, their wellsprings, archetypes, etc., we can appreciate Assertion 8, that the possibility exists of making one abundance lead to another and of creating cascades of abundance.<br />
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People with access to land often stay poor simply because they have forgotten how to tap and build on the abundance that nature lays at their feet, or the wealth of knowledge humanity has accumulated over time. All of us must learn again to recognize abundance when it happens, to tap existing abundance, and to make it last indefinitely. We must learn to bring about the conditions that generate each archetype, so that we can create cascades of new abundance. In my paper, I cite some examples from agriculture and the Internet.<br />
<br />
Creating cascades of abundance is hardest in the industrial sector, because its substantial material and energy needs tend to disrupt ecological systems. If industrial processes could be turned into closed material loops fuelled by renewables – just like ecological processes – this may yet provide the key to cascading industrial abundance.<br />
<br />
Photovoltaics are made from semiconducting silicon, the elemental basis of the digital revolution. Six-thousand-dollar LCD projetors 10 year ago now cost less than a thousand. If photovoltaics follow similar plunging price trends as other digital goods, then we can create more cascades of new solar-based abunance and bring in a Solar Age.<br />
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As we get better at building balanced ecologies of agriculture, industrial and information abundance, our communities will enjoy even more continuing streams of goods, services, psychic rewards and other benefits.<br />
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So, if we have learned to recognize abundance, their generative logic, their archetypes, etc., if we have become better at creating new abundance and cascades of them, what next?<br />
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That's Assertion 6: abundance creates commons. Question: Before refrigerators, what did people do when they had too much food? Answer: They threw a party! As I said, Abundance creates commons. I will leave it to the experts here to tell us more about the commons.<br />
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We have now covered the paper's Assertions 1-5 on the archetypes of abundance, Assertion 8 on cascading abundance, and Assertion 6 on abundance creating commons. We are left with the more debatable Assertions 7, 9, and 10.<br />
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Suppose we are now wallowing in abundance – as we are of information on the Internet. We have the proverbial goose – many of them, in fact – that lays golden eggs. What next?<br />
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Assertion 7 raises one more neglected concept – like the concepts of abundance and commons – whose time has come, I think. This is the concept of reliability. It is an engineer's term. You might be more familiar with the related social concepts: “sustainability”, “equity”, “risk-aversion”, and the “precautionary principle”.<br />
<br />
The goal of reliability is to minimize the risk of failure. It tries to make abundance last indefinitely, without failing. Assertion 7 says that under conditions of abundance, reliability – that is, reducing the risk that abundance will fail – becomes more important than efficiency. Efficiency – meaning, maximizing gain and minimizing waste – is very important when resources are scarce. This has been the focus of mainstream economics. But when resources are abundant, efficiency recedes in importance. When nature releases millions of sperm, although only one will fertilize an egg, it is after minimizing the risk of failure, not minimizing waste. It is after reliability, not efficiency. We'd rather ensure that the goose stays fit and alive, than force it to lay two golden eggs instead of one everyday.<br />
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We are now left with two remaining assertions, 9 and 10.<br />
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I said earlier that abundance creates commons. Unfortunately, pooling resources in common is not the only mindset that abundance spawns. Assertion 9 says that abundance spawns two contrary mindsets: holding its source in common is great for the whole community and for future generations, but monopolizing it is great for private profit-making.<br />
<br />
Two contrary mindsets: commons or monopoly.<br />
<br />
An example in agriculture is the contest between – one – farmers who share commonly-held seed varieties among themselves, versus – two – multinationals who extract monopoly rents from their proprietary seeds through plant variety protection, patents, F1 hybrids, and the “Terminator” technology.<br />
<br />
In the industries of the West, very little is commonly-held now, and the monopolistic mindset holds sway. A curious exception, however, is the world's main source of industrial abundance today – China – which boasts of – one – a huge but less dominant state sector, in precarious balance with – two – a growing corporate sector, under the Communist Party's schizophrenic ideology of “market socialism”.<br />
<br />
In the information sector, users movements – one – for copyright and patent exemptions, open access, free software and other forms of non-exclusivity have made big inroads. However, corporations and governments – two – are trying to stem the tide of sharing by tightening IPR enforcement and through agreements like the GATT/WTOP and the up-and-coming ACTA.<br />
<br />
So, two mindsets: one, commons and two, monopoly.<br />
<br />
There's a third mindset, actually. If abundance spawns two mindsets, scarcity spawns three: commons, monopoly, and competition. I think the dynamics between these three will define the economics of the 21st century.<br />
<br />
The main carriers of the monopoly mindset are business firms organized as corporations. I talked earlier about urges: the human urge to communicate, and the biological urge to reproduce.<br />
<br />
Our legal system also put an urge into corporations. It's a single urge – to seek profits. This one-track mind has made them take over commons of abundance – from seeds, to land, to knowledge – and turn these into monopolies because it is profitable to do so. What they could not take over, they have undermined or sabotaged, to create artificial scarcity. Corporations have destroyed the fertility of our soils, substituting commercial synthetics in their place; they have stopped the natural flow of mother's milk in favor of commercial formula; they have bought out independent seed companies, to force-feed us with genetically-modified toxic foods, all in pursuit of profit. They have become, in Wolfgang Hoeschele's words, “scarcity-generating institutions”.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the corporations came in before Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. In the 1950s, when robots were mostly figments of imagination of science fiction writers, Asimov wrote the novel, I Robot, where he laid down the three laws, to ensure that intelligent, man-made automata did not take over the world and enslave humankind.<br />
<br />
The First Law was: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”<br />
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The Second Law: “A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”<br />
<br />
The third law is about self-preservation, without conflicting with the First or Second Laws.<br />
<br />
We would be much better off today if all corporations – which, like robots, are man-made automata – were constrained by these laws. But when we granted legal personhood to corporations, turning them into a de facto man-made species of business automata, we built into them not the three laws for automata but the single urge to seek profits. Corporations have since confirmed the science fictionists' worst fears about runaway automata.<br />
<br />
They have become super-aggresive players in our political, economic and social worlds. Beating us in our own game, they have taken over governments, economies and media. They have become masters in domesticating Homo sapiens. They now house, feed, train and employ tamed humans to serve as their workhorses, pack mules, milking cows, watchdogs, stool pigeons, and smart asses.<br />
<br />
Assertion 10 argues that corporations are now the dominant species on Earth. They routinely ignore human orders, injure human beings, and foul up ecosystems, in violation of laws for automata. These man-made mammoths now occupy the top of the food chain and have become the greatest threat to human well-being and the survival of many species on this planet.<br />
<br />
With our conscious mind, unique intelligence, and creative powers, Homo sapiens, says a new story of creation, is the Universe's own way of looking at itself, of appreciating its own beauty, origins, evolution and the grandeur of it all. Thus we carry a huge burden of responsibility not only to the living world, but to the whole universe as well.<br />
<br />
We face, I believe, three fundamental and interrelated challenges in the 21st century:<br />
<br />
First, we must reacquire a species consciousness as Homo sapiens, and reestablish our deep connections with the natural world.<br />
<br />
Second, we must free ourselves from corporate control. To do so, we must each learn not to depend on corporations to keep ourselves alive and healthy, and not to depend on corporations to educate our young. We must instead rely on each other and on sources of abundance we ourselves can build, maintain and hold in common.<br />
<br />
Third, we must reestablish control over corporations. This involves reprogramming them to obey Asimov's three laws for automata or their equivalents. It also involves – as we did against big prehistoric predators – hunting down disobedient corporations and disbanding, bankrupting or otherwise eliminating them. Taking out the disobedient from the corporate gene pool is the first step in reclaiming our role as stewards of the natural world and masters of our own creations.<br />
<br />
<br />
=Recommended readings on abundance:=<br />
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* Dugger, William and James Peach. [[Economic Abundance]]: An Introduction. M.E. Sharpe, New York: 2009.<br />
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* Hoeschele, Wolfgang. The [[Economics of Abundance]]: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity and Sustainability. Gower Publishing, Surrey, England: 2010.<br />
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* Verzola, Roberto. “[[Undermining Abundance]]: Counterproductive Uses of Law and Technology in Nature, Agriculture and the Information Sector” in Krikorian, Gaelle and Amy Kapczynski (eds.). Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property. Zone Books: 2010. Full text available at http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/verzola-on-abundance1.pdf<br />
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_____________. “Challenging Media: Poverty Amidst Abundance”. Media Development (January 2008). Full text available at http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/3/media-poverty.pdf<br />
<br />
_____________. “21st Century Political Economies: Beyond Information Abundance”. International Review of Information Ethics (Vol. 11 – October 2009). Full text available at http://www.i-r-i-e.net/issue11.htm<br />
<br />
_____________ . Towards a Political Economy of Information. Constantino Foundation, Quezon City: 2004. Full text available at http://rverzola.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/towards-a-political-economy-of-information-full-text/<br />
<br />
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[[Category:Energy]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Sparking_A_Worldwide_Energy_Revolution&diff=58600Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution2012-01-23T00:43:07Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
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<div>[[Image:Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution. Social Struggles in a Transition to a Post-Petrol World.jpg|200px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''* Book: Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution. Social Struggles in a Transition to a Post-Petrol World. Ed. by Kolya Abramsky. AK Press, 2010'''<br />
<br />
URL = http://www.akpress.org/2009/items/sparkingaworldwideenergyrevolution<br />
<br />
"a major contribution to the movement working for a transition from carbon capitalism to an ecologically sound energy system. Its sixty chapters document the present energy crisis, describe alternative technologies, and introduces us to the people who worldwide are fighting for a healthy planet and the recreation of the earth's commons" <br />
<br />
<br />
=Table of Contents=<br />
<br />
Introduction: Racing to “Save” the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post- capitalist Transition to a Post-petrol World?, Kolya Abramsky..........................5<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 1 | Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons,<br />
Midnight Notes and Friends..................................................................................32<br />
<br />
Chapter 2 | A Discourse on Prophetic Method: Oil Crises and Political Economy,<br />
Past and Future, George Caffentzis.......................................................................60<br />
<br />
Chapter 3 | Building the Clean Energy Movement: Future Possibilities in Historical<br />
Perspective, Bruce Podobnik.................................................................................72<br />
<br />
<br />
==Section 1: Up Against the Limits: Energy, Work, Nature, and Social Struggles==<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 1: Energy Makes the World Go Round and Work Makes the Energy Sector Go Round'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 4 | Machinery and Motive Power: Energy as a Substitute for and Enhancer<br />
of Human Labor, Tom Keefer................................................................................81<br />
<br />
Chapter 5 | Energy, Work, and Social Reproduction in the World-economy,<br />
Kolya Abramsky......................................................................................................91<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 2: Oil: The World’s Foremost Energy Sector in Terminal Crisis?'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 6 | Peak Oil: Past, Current and Future Scenarios, Energy Watch Group....102<br />
<br />
Chapter 7 | A Shortage of Oil to Save Our Climate? On the Permanent Oil Crisis,<br />
Peak Oil and the Interaction Between the Two, Peter Polder........................ 115<br />
<br />
Chapter 8 | No Blood for Oil! A Retrospective on the Political Economy of Bush’s<br />
War on Iraq, George Caffentzis.......................................................................... 123<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 3: Some Regional Perspectives on Energy'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 9 | Climate Change, Energy and China: Technology, Market and Beyond,<br />
Dale Wen/Focus on the Global South............................................................... 130<br />
<br />
Chapter 10 | For Democratic, National Development of North America’s Energy<br />
Resources, Various Energy Sector Trade Unions and Other Organizations...155 .<br />
<br />
Chapter 11 | European Energy Policy on the Brink of Disaster: A Critique of the<br />
European Union’s New Energy and Climate Package, Sergio Oceransky..... 159<br />
<br />
Chapter 12 | Energy Security in Africa with Renewable Energy,<br />
Preben Maegaard................................................................................................. 175<br />
<br />
Chapter 13 | Multi-national Companies and the Energy Crisis in Latin America, Erika<br />
González, Kristina Sáez, and Pedro Ramiro/Observatorio de Multinacionales en América Latina <br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 4: Community and Worker Struggles Over Ownership and Control in the Fossil Fuel Sector and Their Role in a Transition to a Post-petrol World'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 14 | [[Struggles Against Privatization of Electricity Worldwide]], David Hall/<br />
Public Services International Research Unit.................................................... 188<br />
<br />
Chapter 15 | Community Resistance to Energy Privatization in South Africa, Patrick<br />
Bond and Trevor Ngwane................................................................................... 197<br />
<br />
Chapter 16 | Recuperating the Gas: Bolivia in its Labyrinth, Marc Gavaldà....... 208 <br />
<br />
Chapter 17 | Iraqi Oil Workers Movements: Spaces of Transformation and Transition,<br />
Ewa Jasiewicz....................................................................................................... 219<br />
<br />
Chapter 18 | Way Out for Nigeria: No More Oil Blocks!—Let’s Leave the Oil Under<br />
the Ground, Nnimmo Bassey/Environmental Rights Action Nigeria............ 228<br />
<br />
Chapter 19 | Leave the Oil in the Soil: the Yasuní Model, Esperanza Martinez.... 234<br />
<br />
==Section 2: From Petrol to Renewable Energies: Socially Progressive Efforts at Transition Within the Context of Existing Global Political and Economic Relations==<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 5: Leading the Way: A Sample of Emerging “Best Practices”'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 20 | The Emergence of a Wind Economy in Germany, Land as a Reusable<br />
Resource, Klaus Rave.......................................................................................... 246<br />
<br />
Chapter 21 | An Authentic Story About How a Local Community Became Self-Sufficient in Pollution Free Energy From the Wind And Created a Source of<br />
Income for the Citizens, Jane Kruse and Preben Maegaard.......................... 256<br />
<br />
Chapter 22 | The Role of Renewable Energy Sources in the Development of Cuban Society: the Lessons to be Learned, Conrado Moreno Figueredo and Alejandro<br />
Montesinos Larrosa............................................................................................. 264<br />
<br />
Chapter 23 | Development, Promotion, Dissemination and Diffusion of Household Biogas Technology in Rural India, Raymond Myles/INSEDA....................... 277<br />
<br />
Chapter 24 | Transition to Energy-Efficient Supply of Heat and Power in Denmark, Preben Maegaard................................................................................................. 292<br />
<br />
<br />
==Section 3: Struggles Over the Choice of Future Energy Sources and Technologies==<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 6: Technofixes'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 25 | The Technofix Approach to Climate Change and the Energy Crisis:<br />
Issues and Alternatives, Claire Fauset/Corporate Watch............................... 300<br />
<br />
Chapter 26 | Developments of Iceland’s Geothermal Potential for Aluminum<br />
Production—A Critical Analysis, Jaap Krater and Miriam Rose/Saving Iceland ..... 311<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 7: Moving Fast to Stay Still: Rebooting Coal, Oil and Nuclear'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 27 | EnergyJustice “Clean Coal” Fact Sheet, Nancy LaPlaca................... 326<br />
<br />
Chapter 28 | The Smell of Money: Alberta’s Tar Sands, Shannon Walsh and<br />
Macdonald Stainsby............................................................................................ 333<br />
<br />
Chapter 29 | Nuclear Energy: Relapse, Revival or Renaissance?, Peer de Rijk/World<br />
Information Service on Energy.......................................................................... 345<br />
<br />
Chapter 30 | The Ecological Debt of Agrofuels, Mónica Vargas Collazos/Observatorio<br />
de la Deuda en la Globalización....................................................................... 355<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 8: Resurrection of the Nuclear Industry, its Connection with Global Militarism and Limited Uranium Supplies'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 31 | Confronting the Nuclear Resurgence: British Government’s Maneuvers, EU Policy, and the Nuclear-Fossil Collusion, Sergio Oceransky.................... 366<br />
<br />
Chapter 32 | Japan as a Plutonium Superpower, Gavan McCormack................... 373 <br />
<br />
Chapter 33 | A Different Perspective on the US-India Nuclear Deal,<br />
Peter Custers............................................................................................................389<br />
<br />
Chapter 34 | Peak Uranium, Energy Watch Group.................................................. 398<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 9: Whither Coal: Expanded Production, Leaving it in the Ground, or Simply Running Out?'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 35 | Bone and Blood: the Price of Coal in China, China Labour Bulletin.................................................................................................. 406<br />
<br />
Chapter 36 | Leave it in the Ground: the Growing Global Struggle Against Coal,<br />
Sophie Cooke........................................................................................................ 424<br />
<br />
Chapter 37 | Peak Coal, Energy Watch Group.......................................................... 431<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 10: Agrofuels as the Geopolitical Handmaiden of the Petrol Industry: A Tale of Enclosure, Violence and Resistance'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 38 | Global Agrofuel Crops as Dispossession, Les Levidow and<br />
Helena Paul.......................................................................................................... 439<br />
<br />
Chapter 39 | Brazil as an Emergent Power Giant: the “Ethanol Alliance,”<br />
Camila Moreno.................................................................................................... 453<br />
<br />
Chapter 40 | Dynamics of a Songful Resistance Tatiana Roa Avendaño and<br />
Jessica Toloza........................................................................................................ 465<br />
<br />
Chapter 41 | Call for an Immediate Moratorium on EU Incentives for Agrofuels,<br />
EU Imports of Agrofuels and EU Agroenergy Monocultures, Diverse Organizations........................................................................................ 476<br />
<br />
Chapter 42 | Some Brief News Reports from Direct Action-based Resistance From<br />
Around the World: Brazil, UK, Germany and the Philippines...................... 482<br />
<br />
==Section 4: Possible Futures: the Emerging Struggle for Control of the Globally Expanding Renewable Energy Sector and the Roads Ahead==<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 11: Emerging Social Conflicts in the Renewable Energy Sector: the Example of Wind'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 43 | Denmark: Politically Induced Paralysis in Wind Power’s Homeland and<br />
Industrial Hub, Preben Maegaard..................................................................... 489<br />
<br />
Chapter 44 | The Situation of Employees in the Wind Power Sector in Germany<br />
Martina Winkelmann/IG-Metall. ..................................................................... 495<br />
<br />
Chapter 45 | Fighting the Enclosure of Wind: Indigenous Resistance to the Privatization<br />
of the Wind Resource in Southern Mexico, Sergio Oceransky..........................505<br />
<br />
Chapter 46 | Two mini case-studies: 1) The End of One Windmill Cooperative 2) Chinese Peasants Killed in Land Conflict Over Windmills....................... 523<br />
<br />
Chapter 47 | Stop Presses! Vestas Workers Occupy Wind Turbine Blade Factory and<br />
Call for Nationalization of the Plant................................................................. 526<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 12: Time to Speed Up! Renewable Energy as a Possible Way Out of the World economic crisis?'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 48 | The Political, Economic and Ecological Reasons for Establishing the<br />
International Renewable Energy Agency, IRENA: Sharing the Benefits Instead of the Burden, Hermann Scheer/World Council for Renewable Energy....... 530<br />
<br />
Chapter 49 | The Role of IRENA in the Context of Other International Organizations<br />
and Initiatives, IRENA Secretariat.................................................................... 535<br />
<br />
Chapter 50 | Accelerated Global Expansion of the Renewable Energy Sector as<br />
a Response to the World economic crisis: the Example of Wind, Preben Maegaard ... 545<br />
<br />
Chapter 51 | Another Capitalism is Possible? From World Economic Crisis to Green<br />
Capitalism, Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis......................................... 554<br />
<br />
Chapter 52 | “Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Remain the Same”:<br />
Reflections on Obama’s Energy Plan, George Caffentzis................................ 564<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 13: Towards a Transition Based on Decentralization, Common Ownership, Dignified Work, and Community Autonomy'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 53 | Sustainability and Just Transition in the Energy Industry, Brian Kohler/<br />
ICEM.............................................................................................................569<br />
<br />
Chapter 54 | Keeping the Investors at Bay: Towards Public Ownership and Popular Acceptance of Renewable Energy for the Common Good,<br />
Preben Maegaard................................................................................................. 577<br />
<br />
Chapter 55 | Technology for Autonomy and Self-reliance: International Technology<br />
Transfer for Social Movements, Andrea Micangeli, Irene Constantini, Simona Fernandez/Self-reliance and Environment Technologies Unit ...587<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Part 14: Alliances and Conflicts Along the Road to an Anti-capitalist Energy Revolution'''<br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 56 | Saving the Planet From Capitalism: Open Letter on Climate Change<br />
From the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales..................................................... 595<br />
<br />
Chapter 57 | Charging the Resistance with Renewable Energy Sources: A Solidarity<br />
Project with the Zapatista Communities and DIY Wind Generators for Autonomous Spaces, FARMA Collective.......................................................... 600<br />
<br />
Chapter 58 | The Yansa Group: Renewable Energy as a Common Resource, Sergio<br />
Oceransky/Yansa CIC......................................................................................... 608<br />
<br />
Chapter 59 | Sparking an Energy Revolution: Building New Relations of Production,<br />
Exchange and Livelihood Kolya Abramsky...................................................... 628<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
=Excerpts=<br />
<br />
<br />
* Excerpt 1: Chapter 14, Part 4. David Hall on behalf of Public Services International Research Unit<br />
<br />
See: [[Struggles Against Privatization of Electricity Worldwide]]. <br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
[[Category:Energy]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Books]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Best books of 2011]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=J%C3%B6rg_Grossman&diff=58599Jörg Grossman2012-01-23T00:42:47Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>=Bio=<br />
<br />
"Graduate in Film Business Administration, born in West-Berlin, Germany.<br />
<br />
Jörg Grossmann studied sociology, music and audiovisual communication at the Free<br />
University (FU) and the University of Fine Arts (UdK) in Berlin and completed his degree in<br />
Film Business Administration, Film Production and Film Economy at the Konrad Wolf Film<br />
University Potsdam-Babelsberg.<br />
<br />
He has been working as line producer, production manager and producer for fiction and<br />
documentary films for over 20 years. He was a lecturer and production manager at the<br />
German Film and TV Academy in Berlin (DFFB) and offers consulting for new media,<br />
Internet-TV and traditional film production.<br />
<br />
Since 2007, Jörg Grossmann has also been managing director of the German-language<br />
Internet TV channel www.green.tv/de, an international media platform for environment and<br />
sustainable development in cooperation with the British www.green.tv.<br />
In 2008, Jörg Grossmann founded greenfilm production, consulting & producing feature<br />
films, documentaries, cross-media and Internet tv (www.greenfilm.eu).<br />
<br />
I am planning with Colleagues the „TransOver-Town“ a new Transition Town Project in Brandenburg/Havel with:<br />
<br />
More generation housing, free-school, 0- CO2 emission, + energy Houses, no plastic/oil products, music and art center, multimedia e-learning center, eco-farming, own independent biogas and solar energy production, in one word: TransOver- Town will be a model for future City with 100% sustainable live style. Kick off meeting project group start March 2011. For more info’s please ask Jörg Grossmann mail@transover.net"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Germany]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Open_Source_Earth&diff=58598Open Source Earth2012-01-23T00:42:28Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''= an International Non-Governmental Organization whose mission is to educate people of Earth about Open Source and Resource Based practices''' (founded by Mathew Marlin Mallory Phillips and is based in Rüsselsheim, Germany.)<br />
<br />
<br />
URL = http://OpenSourceEarth.ning.com<br />
<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
"Open Source Earth is an International Non-Governmental Organization whose mission is to educate people of Earth about Open Source and [[Resource Based]] practices, and to get people to use those principles to create what is needed to sustain Human life. <br />
<br />
Resource based comes from the concepts of Jacques Fresco and the Venus Project. An example of a Resource Based practice as opposed to current economic practices is for example if a school is falling down, people in charge of keeping that building from falling down might say that there is no money to fix it, even though there is endless concrete, endless steel and other materials to fix it. Since many of the resources are owned, it is possible to grow the resources that are needed, specifically for these projects.<br />
<br />
Open Source Earth could also be an answer to what seems to be happening in the global economy today. If we backup our computer data, why not have a backup for how we live. Open Source Earth was formed as a Trans-National Social Movement Organization and has 3,500+ people in it's network around the world. It was formed to use the power of numbers, and increased probability to solve the problems that face humanity today. Sharing knowledge for alternative ways to live and inspiring people to use these technologies where they are in the world to better conditions.<br />
<br />
With Open Source Earth, Technologies are Open Sourced, giving the concepts and designs away rather than patenting them for sale or licencing, empowering people with the tools to create what is needed to live and flourish. Technologies such as BioGas Digesters, the effluent of which can be used to grow food, textile, medicine, plants that can be used as building materials, oil producing plants, fuel, plastic or other crops in an organic hydroponics system. <br />
<br />
Open Source Earth has partnered with Omega Garden of Canada and Dewpointe of the USA to buy their systems wholesale to send to Haiti to create long term solutions to the disasters that have occurred there. <br />
<br />
Open Source Earth is holding it's first meeting at the Frankfurt am Main Main Train Station on March 28th, 2010 at 12:00 noon using the Open Space Meeting format, where everyone will have a voice."<br />
(http://www.prlog.org/10559189-open-source-earth-meeting-to-discuss-open-source-and-resource-based-sustainability.html)<br />
<br />
<br />
=More Information=<br />
<br />
The website is at http://OpenSourceEarth.ning.com and the email is at OpenSourceEarth@gmail.com. Open Source Earth has a Facebook group and fan page. The contact telephone number is 0173 1606 349.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Category:Movements]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Ecology]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Manufacturing]]<br />
<br />
[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Sustainable_Agriculture_and_Off-Grid_Renewable_Energy&diff=58597Sustainable Agriculture and Off-Grid Renewable Energy2012-01-23T00:41:54Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
<hr />
<div>'''* Report: Sustainable Agriculture and Off-Grid Renewable Energy. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho. ISIS contribution to UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2011'''<br />
<br />
URL = http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/SustainableAgricultureOffGridRenewableEnergyFull.php<br />
<br />
<br />
=Description=<br />
<br />
"An emerging scientific consensus that a shift to small scale sustainable agriculture and localized food systems will address most, if not all the underlying causes of deteriorating agricultural productivity as well as the conservation of natural soil and water resources while saving the climate<br />
<br />
To substantially improve living standards, access to modern energy is also crucial. Small agro-ecological farms are known to be highly productive, and are ideally served by new renewable energies that can be generated and used on site, and in off-grid situations most often encountered in developing countries<br />
<br />
A model that explicitly integrates sustainable farming and renewable energies in a circular economy patterned after nature could compensate, in the best case scenario, for the carbon emissions and energy consumption of the entire nation while revitalising and stimulating local economies and employment opportunities."<br />
<br />
<br />
=Discussion=<br />
<br />
'''The importance of small family farms'''<br />
<br />
"There is an emerging scientific consensus that a shift to small scale sustainable agriculture and localized food systems will address most, if not all the underlying causes of deteriorating agricultural productivity as well as the conservation of natural soil and water resources while saving the climate [10-13].<br />
<br />
Small, family farming is the dominant form of agriculture in the world, especially in the developing world of Africa and Asia. Approximately 3 billion people live in rural areas in developing countries, which also include 80 percent of the poor in the developing world. Around 2.5 billion are involved in agriculture as farmers or workers, and at least 75 percent of farms in the majority of Asian and African countries are 2 ha or less [14]. As Ulrich Hoffmann points out [12], MDG (Millennium Development Goal) 1 aims at eradicating extreme hunger and poverty; and one of the most effective ways of halving both the number of hungry and poor by 2015 is to make the transition towards more sustainable forms of agriculture “that nourish the land and people and provide an opportunity for decent, financially rewarding and gender equal jobs.” It would at the same time meet health targets from MDG 3 and 6 in providing a more diverse, safe, nutritious and affordable diet (see also [10]).<br />
<br />
Notably, small farms generally produce more per hectare than large farm; so much so that economists have long observed and debated this apparently paradoxical inverse relationship between farm size and productivity [14]. Small farms are 2 to 10 times as productive and much more profitable; and not just in the developing world [15]. A US Agricultural Census in 1992 found a sharp decline of net income from $1 400/acre to $12/acre as farm size increased from 4 to 6709 acres [16]. <br />
<br />
Small farms are associated with [14] “intensive use of household and community labour, high levels of motivation and much lower supervision and transaction costs”, which may well account for the economic advantages, but not the actual productivity. Small farms are highly productive because they are typically biodiverse systems integrating multiple crops and livestock that enable them to maximise synergetic relationships while minimizing wastes; turning wastes such as farmyard manure into fertilizer resources. In effect, they embody the circular economy of nature [10] where energy and nutrients are recycled within the ecosystem for maximum productivity and carbon sequestration both above and below ground. This ‘thermodynamics of organisms and sustainable systems’ is derived and explained in detail elsewhere [17].<br />
The importance of renewable energy<br />
<br />
To substantially improve living standards, sustainable farming is not enough, access to modern energy is also crucial. Lack of access to modern energy is generally recognized as the biggest obstacle to sustainable development. The International Energy Agency 2010 report on energy poverty stated [18]: “Lack of access to modern energy services is a serious hindrance to economic and social development and must be overcome if the UN Millennium Development goals (MDGs) are to be achieved.” This view is echoed in the report of the 6th Annual Meeting of the African Science Academy Development Initiative (ASADI) [19]: “Access to modern energy services, defined as electricity and clean cooking fuels, is central to a country’s development.” <br />
<br />
Worldwide, 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity, 85 percent in rural areas, and 2.7 billion still rely on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating [18]. The greatest challenge is sub-Saharan Africa, where only 31 percent of the population has access to electricity, the lowest level in the world. If South Africa is excluded, the share declines to 28 percent.<br />
<br />
There is close correlation between income levels and access to modern energy. Countries with a large proportion of the population living on an income of less than $2 per day tend to have low electrification rates and a high proportion of the population relying on traditional biomass.<br />
<br />
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.45 million people die prematurely each year from household air pollution due to inefficient biomass combustion; a significant proportion young children. This is greater than premature deaths from malaria or tuberculosis.<br />
<br />
Small agro-ecological farms are ideally served by new renewable energies that can be generated and used on site, and in off-grid situations most often encountered in developing countries [20, 21]. The renewable energies generated can also serve local businesses, stimulate local economies and create plenty of employment opportunities.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Off-grid renewable power systems entering mainstream worldwide'''<br />
<br />
Within the past few years, off-grid power systems have entered the mainstream, driven by the ready availability of renewable energy options that can cost less than grid connections.<br />
<br />
A UK company advertises on its website [22]: “Homes across the UK and Europe are looking at the potential benefits of supplying some, if not all their domestic power requirement from off-grid sources” for a variety of reasons: connection to the grid is too expensive, reducing energy bills, protect from power cuts and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solar panels, wind turbines, and small generators are suitable for most homes, and a system with a battery connected to a battery charger/inverter is the most convenient.<br />
<br />
The UK government Office of Fair Trading has launched an investigation into the off-grid market for renewables and mainstream energy in January 2011, following energy price hikes and supply issue over the winter [23].<br />
<br />
<br />
Examples of small scale off-grid renewables are found across Scotland [24], such as remote ferry waiting rooms on the Western Iles and the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial hut on Ben Nevis using small wind turbrines. Photovoltaic (PV) installations integrated with battery are often used where only a small amount of power is required, as for lighting, maintaining power for monitoring equipment or maintaining water treatment facilities.<br />
<br />
However, it is in developing countries where power requirements are generally low, and where rapidly improving electronic lighting and telecommunication equipment that have low power requirements and perform reliably with little or no maintenance that off-grid renewable energy is coming to its own [21].<br />
<br />
Three examples of large scale off-grid renewable energy use with varying degrees of success are the Grameen Shakti f or renewables of Bangladesh [25], Lighting Africa [26] and Biogas for China’s Socialist Countryside [27]. <br />
<br />
Grameen Shakti is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 to promote, develop, and supply renewable energy to the rural poor of Bangladesh. It has become one of the world’s largest and fastest growing renewable energy companies through a system of microfinancing, training of technicians (mainly women) for installation, maintenance and repair, provision of services including buy-back. It runs technology centres for training throughout the country (see [25] for details). At the end of May 2011, Grameen Shakti had installed 636 322 solar home systems, 18 046 biogas plants and 304 414 improved cooking stoves. It also trained a total of 28 932 technicians in 46 technology centres nationwide, covering all districts. Its beneficiaries are 40 000 villages and around 4 million people [28].<br />
<br />
What began as a grassroots endeavour to provide solar light for the rural population has now attracted the backing of the World Bank. It started by training “barefoot women engineers” for installing, maintaining and repairing solar panels, lights, telephone charging, batteries and other accessories.<br />
<br />
Lighting Africa is now a joint World Bank and International Finance Corporation programme that aims to help develop commercial off-grid lighting markets in sub-Saharan Africa as part of the World Bank Group’s wider efforts to improve access to energy [29]. It aims to provide safe, affordable, and modern off-grid lighting to 2.5 million in Africa by 2012 and to 250 million by 2030. The market for off-grid lighting products is projected to grow at 40 to 50 percent annually. In 2010 alone, the sales of solar portable lanterns that have passed Lighting Africa’s quality tests grew by 70 percent in Africa, resulting in more than 672 000 people with cleaner, safer, reliable lighting and improved energy access.<br />
<br />
Provision of biogas is an important part of China’s New Socialist Countryside programme launched in 2006 to improve the welfare of those living outside booming cities, which include the country’s 130 million migrant workers and the rural poor. China is one of the first countries in the world to use biogas technology and it has been revived in successive campaigns by the current government to provide domestic sanitation and energy off-grid and to modernize agriculture (see [27, 30] for details). The anaerobic digester producing biogas is typically combined with a greenhouse for growing vegetables and other crops with a pigsty, so that pig and human manure can be digested while carbon dioxide generated by the pigs boosts plant growth in the greenhouse. The biogas produced (typically 60 percent methane and 40 percent carbon dioxide with traces of other gases) can be used as cooking fuel and to generate electricity, while the residue is a rich fertilizer for crops. It is an example of the circular economy that has served Chinese peasants well in traditional Chinese agriculture [31]. More elaborate models include orchards and solar panels. According to the latest update from China’s Ministry of Agriculture [32], 35 million household biogas tanks have been installed by the end of 2009 in 56 500 biogas projects. This exponential growth phase that started around 2001 is set to continue, along with medium and big digesters for community and industrial use. Anaerobic digestion of organic wastes is a key renewable energy technology for a truly green circular economy off-grid that could make a real difference for improving the lives of the rural poor.<br />
<br />
<br />
'''Integrating sustainable farming and renewable energies in a circular economy'''<br />
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A model that explicitly integrates sustainable farming and renewable energies is ‘Dream Farm 2’ that operates according to circular economy principles (see final chapter in [10]). It is patterned after environmental engineer George Chan and the dyke-pond system of Pearl River Delta [31] that Chinese peasants have perfected over thousands of years, a system so productive that it supported 17 people per hectare in its heyday. An ideal Dream Farm 2 is presented in Figure 1. <br />
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The diagram is colour-coded. Pink is for energy, green for agricultural produce, blue is for water conservation and flood control, black is waste in the ordinary sense of the word, which soon gets converted into food and energy resources. Purple is for education and research into new science and technologies. This ideal Dream Farm is complete with laboratory facilities for education, as well as a restaurant to take advantage of all the fresh produce. It is a perfect setting for developing cottage industries such as food preservation, processing, wine and cheese making, bread-making, not to mention electronic workshops, battery charging, retailers of renewable energy components and electronic devices. The synergies between agriculture and industries are obvious especially in the case of food industries, as they are close to the source of production. Moreover, the organic wastes from these industries can go right back into anaerobic digestion to be converted into energy and nutrients for agriculture."<br />
(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableAgricultureOffGridRenewableEnergy.php)<br />
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[[Category:Articles]]<br />
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[[Category:Agrifood]]<br />
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[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Category:Biofuel&diff=58596Category:Biofuel2012-01-23T00:41:09Z<p>Kardan: Category:Energy</p>
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<div>[[Category:Energy]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Climate_Farmers&diff=58595Climate Farmers2012-01-23T00:40:42Z<p>Kardan: +Category:Biofuel</p>
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<div>= romoting farming practices that conserve resources, reduce emissions and improve the land through less intensive chemical use.<br />
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URL = http://www.najk.nl/ondernemende-jongeren/projecten-en-activiteiten/projecten/climate-farmers/<br />
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=Description=<br />
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'The Climate Farmers campaigners are promoting farming practices that conserve resources, reduce emissions and improve the land through less intensive chemical use. They also seek to influence the future of European Union’s farm support programme, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).<br />
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Policy debates and research into what can be done to reduce the environmental footprint of food production often do not translate into useable information for farmers, said Sander Kerkhoffs, one of the leaders of the Climate Farmers project.<br />
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“A lot of research is done by universities and other institutions, but a lot of those results from the research don’t fit to the practical circumstances at the farm level,” Kerkhoffs said.<br />
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“So we wanted to look at practical measures which are already implemented on some farms which have proven their effect in lowering emissions, for example, or can be further introduced to colleague farmers.”<br />
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Climate Farmers has produced information on sustainable farming methods in Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden and wants to share their recommendations across Europe. A website supported by the European Council of Young Farmers and the Dutch Young Farmers Organisation was launched at the end of 2011.<br />
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The campaigners use case studies to show that farmers can play a role in trimming carbon emissions, cutting pesticide and fertiliser use, and reducing their water footprint while improving crop output and animal husbandry.<br />
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The methods are as basic as reducing ploughing, mixing cover crops to raise organic matter in soil, and letting animals graze more to cut the reduce the need for imported feeds. At one farm, manure is being used to create biogas to run tractors and generate electricity while reducing methane pollution that is a byproduct of animal waste."<br />
(http://www.euractiv.com/cap/climate-farmers-highlight-green-agriculture-practices-news-510039)<br />
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[[Category:Movements]]<br />
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[[Category:Biofuel]]</div>Kardanhttps://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Open_Source_Geiger_Counter&diff=56527Open Source Geiger Counter2011-12-16T10:57:51Z<p>Kardan: /* More Information */ added https://we.riseup.net/opensourcehardware/geiger-counter-dosimeter</p>
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= Geiger Maps Jp, a portal for radiation maps and visualizations. The site is made up of three sections: (1) A curated list of radiation maps and visualizations, (2) Tutorials for setting up your own Geiger counter, and (3) Technical information to help people better understand radiation. <br />
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URL = http://geigermaps.jp/Main_Page<br />
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=More Information=<br />
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* [[Product Hacking]]<br />
* [https://we.riseup.net/opensourcehardware/geiger-counter-dosimeter Open Source Hardware Projects: geiger counter] (we.riseup.net)<br />
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[[Category:Energy]]<br />
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[[Category:Manufacturing]]</div>Kardan