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==Stefan Meretz:== | |||
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More extensive review by Stefan Merten at | More extensive review by Stefan Merten at | ||
http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard/PeerconomyReview | http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard/PeerconomyReview | ||
==Stefan Merten== | |||
'''Peer production as a concept:''' | |||
In the first two chapters Christian describes some basic principles of peer production. He mentions a lot of important concepts like contributions to a project made by volunteers. He explains that these contributions are made because of Selbstentfaltung - though he doesn't use that word - and that the projects maintain internal and external openness. | |||
In the second chapter he also addresses the topic of means of production. Christian explains that in contemporary peer production projects the means of production are usually privately owned or payed for. Christian also mentions forks in peer production projects - which are possible because at least a part of the means of production are available to anybody. | |||
'''Problems to solve:''' | |||
Then Christian goes on to explain two problems he sees as important. The first problem is how it can be made sure that the societal needs are met by peer production projects. In fact a question which capitalism unfortunately can not always answer. He states that user needs and producer needs are not the same and that there must be some mediation between them. | |||
The second problem Christian perceives is how to deal with limited resources and goods. He shortly mentions fabbers but as the sole solution dismisses them quickly. | |||
'''Non-harmful ways to deal with lack of volunteers:''' | |||
Christian perceives tasks for which there are no volunteers as the basic problem. In fact this can be seen as one of the important problems of peer production - though capitalism has to deal with the lack of workers as well. Christian mentions two important ways to deal with these problems not harming basic peer production principles but are rather expressions of the logic of peer production. | |||
The first way is automation by which unwanted task are simply automated away by moving them to machines. In fact the first peer production project of Free Software is almost completely about automation. Software more or less is a mean to automate tasks away which generally could be done by hand also. | |||
The second way is to raise the fun of some task. This is something which people did throughout history - for instance by singing together while doing hard work. In peer production it would modify a task in a way someone can see it as Selbstentfaltung. | |||
These two ways even complete each other. Automation often shifts the work needed for some task to another realm. This realm often is more likely to be Selbstentfaltung because it employs your creativity. | |||
The first chapters of Christian's book are just fine and they are more or less perfectly aligned with peer production. What is really annoying is that after these chapters he leaves this path and develops a system which in my opinion is structurally equal to capitalism and thus contradicts peer production. The rest of my review deals with this and thus is far more critical." | |||
For the critical parts of the review see here at http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard/PeerconomyReview | |||
=More Information= | =More Information= | ||
Revision as of 05:14, 17 September 2008
Book: Christian Siefkes. From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World. Ed. C. Siefkes, 2007
Website: http://www.peerconomy.org/wiki/Main_Page
Fulltext URL: http://www.peerconomy.org/text/peer-economy.pdf
Introduction
From the author:
The big text I was working on for the last nine months is ready. It is about the question of the potential of peer production — the way free software is produced. We know that this new mode of production is of great importance in regard to free software — success stories like GNU/Linux, Apache or Wikipedia speak for themselves.
However, is this mode of production only relevant for information goods? Or is there a potential for more, maybe a revolution of the entire sphere of production?
The results of my considerations are now published under the title “From Exchange to Contributions: Generalizing Peer Production into the Physical World”. Initially it was intended to be a long article, but due to the complexity of the topic it became a book!
The entire text of the book can be downloaded as a PDF (155 pages). A smaller 2-up version (two pages on one, 77 pages) is also available, on letter or A4 paper.
The text can be modified and copied under the conditions of the Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike-Licence.
A paperback print is also available and costs 9.50 euros — recommendable for all, who want to do their eyes, their printer, or simply me a favor:-)
I will be happy about feedback, critics, and inspired debates. If my book leads to a reflection that a post-capitalist economy is no longer as utopian as might seem, then its ends are achieved.
Summary
A new mode of production has emerged in the areas of software and content production. This mode, which is based on sharing and cooperation, has spawned whole mature operating systems such as GNU/Linux as well as innumerable other free software applications; giant knowledge bases such as the Wikipedia; a large free culture movement; and a new, wholly decentralized medium for spreading, analyzing and discussing news and knowledge, the so-called blogosphere.
So far, this new mode of production--peer production--has been limited to certain niches of production, such as information goods. This book discusses whether this limitation is necessary or whether the potential of peer production extends farther. In other words: Is a society possible in which peer production is the primary mode of production? If so, how could such a society be organized?
Is a society possible where production is driven by demand and not by profit? Where there is no need to sell anything and hence no unemployment? Where competition is more a game than a struggle for survival? Where there is no distinction between people with capital and those without? A society where it would be silly to keep your ideas and knowledge secret instead of sharing them; and where scarcity is no longer a precondition of economic success, but a problem to be worked around?
It is, and this book describes how.
Excerpts
Contributions to a debate on the main concepts, originally published as a series on http://keimform.de:
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/christian-siefkes-on-hint-based-stigmergic-systems/2008/02/02
- http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/christian-siefkes-on-distribution-pools/2008/02/11
Review
Stefan Meretz:
"Peer Economy. A Transition Concept.
Inside the critical left there is a small group refering to free software and free culture movement being already start points (»germ forms«) for new possibilities beyond commodities, money, market, and state. Such approaches on their part are critized as to be limited to reproducible information goods and being unable to reach the world of physical good.
Christian Siefkes now has presented the »Peer Economy« concept dealing with this central critique of germ form ideas. In his english book »From Exchange to Contributions« Siefkes generalizes the principles of free software and free culture production into the physical world.
Starting point is the consideration, that people have to spend efforts during the production of their living conditions. While capitalism uses the market as an »indirection« to allocate produced goods---although afore it is not clear, if they are needed or can be sold---peer production does not distribute goods, but the effort to produce them. Doing this it will only be produced what is needed---the relationship between needs and products is »direct«.
How can this work? Here the peer principle comes into play. The term »peer production« was introduced by Yochai Benkler in order to describe the open and cooperative type of production of free information goods. Individual people (»peers«) work together on a voluntary basis, in fact from a single reason: they want to do it. They make contributions to a project to bring it to success. Intensity, extent, and duration is determined by each person themself. On the other side peer projects depend on contributions and will do everything to be attractive for participation.
Peer production bases on so called Commons being ressources without owner controlling the usage. As a rule results of peer project are on the other hand part of the commons. Currently this does not apply to physical means of production, they are private property of the peers being contibutors.
Free cooperation is an additional fundament of peer projects. Coercion as a mean to organize the production does not exist, because means of coercion are absent. Participation is voluntary and there are no sanktions when leaving a project. Inside peer projects formal status and its symbols, but also other criteria like gender, origin, age etc. don't play a role. What counts are the contributions one makes. They determine reputation, credit, and confidence one gets.
Now, how can needs of the producers be coordinated with the needs of the consumers? Today peer projects can function, because peers dispose of production means and because non-physical goods being once created can almost arbitrarily be reproduced. This does not apply to the physical world. Peer projects of physical goods have to demand an adequate compensation for the taking of goods requiring each time anew an effort to produce them.
But which contribution is adequate? This question is decided by the project. It weights the contributions using the time duration inversely proportional to its popularity: unpopular tasks only require a small contribution, while popular tasks require a big contribution. This sounds similar to role the economic value is playing in market economy.
The economic value maps complex actions on simple once. However, while always complex actions are manifolds of simple once---resulting in less volume of spending---a generalized peer production tend to function the other way around: Simple tasks no one likes to do will be highly weighted to guarantee its execution, while popular and often highly qualified tasks get a lower weight. The weighting---according to the proposal---is nothing static, but is permanently adjusted. This adjustment is done automatically using an »auctioning system« mediating demand and supply. Thus one hour garbage removal can thoroughly correspond to one week writing computer programs.
Concerning the allocation of the goods peer projects join together and form distribution pools, in order to be able to provide a larger bandwith of useful goods. At the same time the project extent should (but not need to) be straightforward, problems should be handled directly »peer to peer«. Everybody contributing something to a local project can gather goods from the respective distribution pool. Depending on the type of goods the ways of disribution differ, from flat rate allocation to preference weighting.
It is remarkable, that Siefkes concretely discusses a number of critical questions, which are usually avoided by refering to a future »where everything will be solved«: How will limited resources and goods be distributed? What about infrastructures and meta-tasks? How will decisions be made, how conflicts be solved? How will global projects be organized? What about people being not able or willing to make a contribution? Who decides what a »contribution« is? What about migration? Are laws further on necessary?
To my opinion the presented concept is a pragmatic transition model, not a general model of a post-capitalist society. Main limitation is the interlinking of contribution and taking. However, it is well imaginable, that the strict interlinking between contribution and taking during the phase of competition to capitalism will be resolved after its overcoming.
Christian Siefkes has not written his book in terms of a notion critique, but pragmatically oriented at discourses of the english language area."
More extensive review by Stefan Merten at http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard/PeerconomyReview
Stefan Merten
Peer production as a concept:
In the first two chapters Christian describes some basic principles of peer production. He mentions a lot of important concepts like contributions to a project made by volunteers. He explains that these contributions are made because of Selbstentfaltung - though he doesn't use that word - and that the projects maintain internal and external openness.
In the second chapter he also addresses the topic of means of production. Christian explains that in contemporary peer production projects the means of production are usually privately owned or payed for. Christian also mentions forks in peer production projects - which are possible because at least a part of the means of production are available to anybody.
Problems to solve:
Then Christian goes on to explain two problems he sees as important. The first problem is how it can be made sure that the societal needs are met by peer production projects. In fact a question which capitalism unfortunately can not always answer. He states that user needs and producer needs are not the same and that there must be some mediation between them.
The second problem Christian perceives is how to deal with limited resources and goods. He shortly mentions fabbers but as the sole solution dismisses them quickly.
Non-harmful ways to deal with lack of volunteers:
Christian perceives tasks for which there are no volunteers as the basic problem. In fact this can be seen as one of the important problems of peer production - though capitalism has to deal with the lack of workers as well. Christian mentions two important ways to deal with these problems not harming basic peer production principles but are rather expressions of the logic of peer production.
The first way is automation by which unwanted task are simply automated away by moving them to machines. In fact the first peer production project of Free Software is almost completely about automation. Software more or less is a mean to automate tasks away which generally could be done by hand also.
The second way is to raise the fun of some task. This is something which people did throughout history - for instance by singing together while doing hard work. In peer production it would modify a task in a way someone can see it as Selbstentfaltung.
These two ways even complete each other. Automation often shifts the work needed for some task to another realm. This realm often is more likely to be Selbstentfaltung because it employs your creativity.
The first chapters of Christian's book are just fine and they are more or less perfectly aligned with peer production. What is really annoying is that after these chapters he leaves this path and develops a system which in my opinion is structurally equal to capitalism and thus contradicts peer production. The rest of my review deals with this and thus is far more critical."
For the critical parts of the review see here at http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard/PeerconomyReview
More Information
Presentation of his book
Topical selections from the P2P Foundation blog
- Effort Sharing vs. Market Allocation
- On the difference between a Peer Economy and a Market Economy
- On Money and State Forms in the Peer Economy
- On possession, not property, as the basis of the Commons
- On Decision Making and Conflict Resolution in Material Peer Production
- On Local Associations for Organizing Material Peer Production
- On Distribution Pools
- On Distributing Effort through Weighting Labor
- On Hint-based Stigmergic Systems
- Understanding Material Peer Production