New Economic Paradigm, Collaborative Commons

[jae208]

Talking about non violent solutions is also a bit of a luxury problem. I'm not at all certain that no conflict of interest will occur about some basic necessities of life, such as drinking water for example. I'm also not that confident that the peaceful solution will prevail when things go sour even a little bit. The sustainability of the rapid growth of human population is another thing I'm not very certain of, but that might partly be caused by me having grown up in rather densely populated country. I'm bearish about the organization, structure and philosophies of most current market-leader countries and I've been expecting an economic "crisis" on a far bigger scale than the one we're in at the moment, for quite a while now.

From what I gather even though the current human species is a lot older than our recorded history, our modern civilization and success coincides with the recent period of unusual stable climate (from the last ice-age up till now). In that regard I don't have high hopes that our current specialized system of food production is very robust against even small climate changes which are bound to happen, pollution or not. I wonder what'll remain of human civilization and sensibilities once the going gets though. Of course I don't know if we'll life to see changes on that scale, but I'm hearing signals of a change from several different sources, from studies of repeating patterns in history (some matching it to some kind of 300 year or so climate cycle of our sun), right up to NASA predicting imminent climate changes based on their measurements. Curiously most seem to suggest things will start to get interesting sooner rather than later with estimates from the latter part of 2014 or 2015 extrapolated from patterns in human-history and NASA estimating a tipping point in climate change around the 2025 mark.

So for me the efforts to create robust, self-regenerative, corruption resistant means of communication and collaboration are also partly motivated out of hope to create a framework to help overcome bad times. In that regard I hope the short term estimates of 2015 are wrong, because I think of open-source, bitcoin, bitshares-dacs and the like as only the first small steps and I don't think they've penetrated human consciousness and culture far enough to cope with the effects of a short term more significant global downtrend.

I'm no pacifist.  I fully expect others to resort to violence in certain circumstances, and I fully support good, peace loving people being prepared to use violence to defend themselves if necessary.  I don't support lowering the standards to which we hold ourselves regarding the initiation of violence simply because we consider violence to be inevitable.  I'm very optimistic about the possibility of new technologies and structures reducing the occurrence of violence, but I think it's important to remain ready, since it will always only take one senselessly destructive person to break the peace.

Live and let live. If everyone followed this there wouldn't be as much violence.

[Troglodactyl]

Talking about non violent solutions is also a bit of a luxury problem. I'm not at all certain that no conflict of interest will occur about some basic necessities of life, such as drinking water for example. I'm also not that confident that the peaceful solution will prevail when things go sour even a little bit. The sustainability of the rapid growth of human population is another thing I'm not very certain of, but that might partly be caused by me having grown up in rather densely populated country. I'm bearish about the organization, structure and philosophies of most current market-leader countries and I've been expecting an economic "crisis" on a far bigger scale than the one we're in at the moment, for quite a while now.

From what I gather even though the current human species is a lot older than our recorded history, our modern civilization and success coincides with the recent period of unusual stable climate (from the last ice-age up till now). In that regard I don't have high hopes that our current specialized system of food production is very robust against even small climate changes which are bound to happen, pollution or not. I wonder what'll remain of human civilization and sensibilities once the going gets though. Of course I don't know if we'll life to see changes on that scale, but I'm hearing signals of a change from several different sources, from studies of repeating patterns in history (some matching it to some kind of 300 year or so climate cycle of our sun), right up to NASA predicting imminent climate changes based on their measurements. Curiously most seem to suggest things will start to get interesting sooner rather than later with estimates from the latter part of 2014 or 2015 extrapolated from patterns in human-history and NASA estimating a tipping point in climate change around the 2025 mark.

So for me the efforts to create robust, self-regenerative, corruption resistant means of communication and collaboration are also partly motivated out of hope to create a framework to help overcome bad times. In that regard I hope the short term estimates of 2015 are wrong, because I think of open-source, bitcoin, bitshares-dacs and the like as only the first small steps and I don't think they've penetrated human consciousness and culture far enough to cope with the effects of a short term more significant global downtrend.

I'm no pacifist.  I fully expect others to resort to violence in certain circumstances, and I fully support good, peace loving people being prepared to use violence to defend themselves if necessary.  I don't support lowering the standards to which we hold ourselves regarding the initiation of violence simply because we consider violence to be inevitable.  I'm very optimistic about the possibility of new technologies and structures reducing the occurrence of violence, but I think it's important to remain ready, since it will always only take one senselessly destructive person to break the peace.

[puppies]

I appreciate your honesty and depth of consideration.  I think we'd get much further on these widespread political debates if people acknowledged the role violence plays in human interactions.  I think there's certainly a case to be made that certain levels of destruction of the environment in which others are attempting to live constitutes an attack and justifies defensive violence, but I've never seen a case in which it was anywhere close to sufficiently clear that I would personally feel morally justified in using force against it.

I view legitimate government authority as the aggregation of voluntarily delegated moral authority, so I think that if a person could not morally justify using force themselves for something, they should not support their government using force for it.

The most obvious alternatives are protest and boycott for general use.  I agree about elephant tourism being a non-generalizable solution.

Oh snap.

Did this conversation just get really interesting?   

Thanks for both of you looking past the labels and getting down to the really important question.

P.s.  I really like the way you stated the aggregation of voluntary moral authority.   I've spoken at length of the bundling of rights,  often to no avail.   I will definitely use this to better explain myself.

[JoeyD]

Talking about non violent solutions is also a bit of a luxury problem. I'm not at all certain that no conflict of interest will occur about some basic necessities of life, such as drinking water for example. I'm also not that confident that the peaceful solution will prevail when things go sour even a little bit. The sustainability of the rapid growth of human population is another thing I'm not very certain of, but that might partly be caused by me having grown up in rather densely populated country. I'm bearish about the organization, structure and philosophies of most current market-leader countries and I've been expecting an economic "crisis" on a far bigger scale than the one we're in at the moment, for quite a while now.

From what I gather even though the current human species is a lot older than our recorded history, our modern civilization and success coincides with the recent period of unusual stable climate (from the last ice-age up till now). In that regard I don't have high hopes that our current specialized system of food production is very robust against even small climate changes which are bound to happen, pollution or not. I wonder what'll remain of human civilization and sensibilities once the going gets though. Of course I don't know if we'll life to see changes on that scale, but I'm hearing signals of a change from several different sources, from studies of repeating patterns in history (some matching it to some kind of 300 year or so climate cycle of our sun), right up to NASA predicting imminent climate changes based on their measurements. Curiously most seem to suggest things will start to get interesting sooner rather than later with estimates from the latter part of 2014 or 2015 extrapolated from patterns in human-history and NASA estimating a tipping point in climate change around the 2025 mark.

So for me the efforts to create robust, self-regenerative, corruption resistant means of communication and collaboration are also partly motivated out of hope to create a framework to help overcome bad times. In that regard I hope the short term estimates of 2015 are wrong, because I think of open-source, bitcoin, bitshares-dacs and the like as only the first small steps and I don't think they've penetrated human consciousness and culture far enough to cope with the effects of a short term more significant global downtrend.

[Troglodactyl]

I appreciate your honesty and depth of consideration.  I think we'd get much further on these widespread political debates if people acknowledged the role violence plays in human interactions.  I think there's certainly a case to be made that certain levels of destruction of the environment in which others are attempting to live constitutes an attack and justifies defensive violence, but I've never seen a case in which it was anywhere close to sufficiently clear that I would personally feel morally justified in using force against it.

I view legitimate government authority as the aggregation of voluntarily delegated moral authority, so I think that if a person could not morally justify using force themselves for something, they should not support their government using force for it.

The most obvious alternatives are protest and boycott for general use.  I agree about elephant tourism being a non-generalizable solution.

[gamey]

Probably off topic, but you've got me curious about your "environmental solutions" philosophy also.  Do you view pollution/environmental damage as violence against others that justifies defensive violence against them?  Obviously the framing of that question says a lot about where I'm coming from.

I would think so, although I've never thought of it like that.  For laws to be effective, they do have to be backed by violence.  So yes.  I've come to frame individual freedom issues as "Is this worth putting a man in a cage via the imminent threat of death?".  Something like that..  I'm sure it comes across as being a crank to some, but anyone with half a brain should realize that it is actually a truer statement than most.

The problem with pollution etc is that it does not readily go away.  While society constantly changes, the earth will not ever go back to the equilibrium that existed 100 years ago. So the polluters (for lack of a better word) are not just committing "violence" against us, they are committing it against unborn generations upon generation. 

To assuage feelings of guilt due to my foray into mining, I told myself I was going to write a website like one of those carbon footprint calculators, but actually measure how much damage it does.  Maybe 1 person only adds .00000000000001 (or whatever) to the problem, but when you multiply that by everyone for generations and generations it becomes a completely different thing. 

Outside of violence, what other solutions are there ?  I once went to a Libertarian website and looked up their solutions to ecological problems.  They pointed to elephants in Africa becoming a tourist attraction with funds directed to conservation.  That is great and noble, but it just doesn't work with 99% of the other problems.

I read something recently how environmentalists are relatively disliked as a whole.  That pretty much tells you where the world is headed..... So I give up.  I'm here on this world to make money so I can **** ******* and have  good time for the rest of my life.

[Troglodactyl]

Trog, I agree with you and liked the article.

Many are instantly dismissive because something seems to be similar to communism or socialism.

In a similar way, I am dismissive of these people, because I have my own stereotypes I put people's thoughts in. 

I can't even figure out if I am liberal or conservative.  I like libertarians but I don't find their environmental solutions convincing in the least.  I guess I'd call myself progressive.  The problem with being a liberal is it is a bit of a catchall for anything that doesn't fall under the conservative umbrella. 

Simplifying things into labels is rarely good for truly understanding whats going.  Using labels is good for conjuring up preconceived ideas and thereby manipulating people and/or avoiding truths.

I think if we apply some "unbundling" to our politics, some exciting things will happen.  Even assuming you think both should exist, what good reason is there for the FDA to be affiliated with the NSA or the SSA?  That's an absurd bundling of almost completely unrelated products.  The problems with labeling are related to the tradition of bundling the issues and then grouping people by which political party's bundle they choose.  People choose a bundle because it contains at least something they like (even if that's only avoiding another bundle) and because they can tolerate the other contents, or consider it the lesser evil.  When labeling people, we tend to assume they wholeheartedly support everything in their chosen party or group's bundle.

Probably off topic, but you've got me curious about your "environmental solutions" philosophy also.  Do you view pollution/environmental damage as violence against others that justifies defensive violence against them?  Obviously the framing of that question says a lot about where I'm coming from.

[gamey]

Trog, I agree with you and liked the article.

Many are instantly dismissive because something seems to be similar to communism or socialism.

In a similar way, I am dismissive of these people, because I have my own stereotypes I put people's thoughts in. 

I can't even figure out if I am liberal or conservative.  I like libertarians but I don't find their environmental solutions convincing in the least.  I guess I'd call myself progressive.  The problem with being a liberal is it is a bit of a catchall for anything that doesn't fall under the conservative umbrella. 

Simplifying things into labels is rarely good for truly understanding whats going.  Using labels is good for conjuring up preconceived ideas and thereby manipulating people and/or avoiding truths.

[bytemaster]

gamey, I think these are the trends you're looking for: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/10/fred-wilson-on-bitcoin-unbundling-data-leakage-and-health-care/

I think most of the BitShares projects and most of the BitShares community is based on the idea of making the world a better place (creating value) by freeing the market from the overhead, inefficiency, and barriers to entry that are inherent in traditional hierarchical structures.  There's nothing anti-capitalist about collaborating, if you can find the right people with whom to collaborate such that it increases your productivity.  In fact, if collaboration is the most efficient approach, those who refuse to collaborate will not be able to compete and succeed in a free market.  The suggestion of a new system that is "not competition based" implies tyranny, because the two ways to get people to accept a new system are competing to convince them that it is best so they'll accept it voluntarily, or trying to force them to accept it.  No one has to be forced to collaborate if collaboration is to everyone's benefit, and no one needs to be forced to look for alternatives to scarce resources.

Where BitShares and blockchain technologies fit in is reducing economic friction such that anyone can be their own bank, and participate in global business of many other types, not just the well established and well connected.  This reduction to the barriers to entry, and expansion of reach for potential business relationships and collaboration streamlines free market capitalism, reducing overhead costs and creating more value for everyone.

And the result is a competitive advantage.   

Improve society through making the right thing to do more profitable and competitive than the wrong thing. 

[Troglodactyl]

gamey, I think these are the trends you're looking for: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/10/fred-wilson-on-bitcoin-unbundling-data-leakage-and-health-care/

I think most of the BitShares projects and most of the BitShares community is based on the idea of making the world a better place (creating value) by freeing the market from the overhead, inefficiency, and barriers to entry that are inherent in traditional hierarchical structures.  There's nothing anti-capitalist about collaborating, if you can find the right people with whom to collaborate such that it increases your productivity.  In fact, if collaboration is the most efficient approach, those who refuse to collaborate will not be able to compete and succeed in a free market.  The suggestion of a new system that is "not competition based" implies tyranny, because the two ways to get people to accept a new system are competing to convince them that it is best so they'll accept it voluntarily, or trying to force them to accept it.  No one has to be forced to collaborate if collaboration is to everyone's benefit, and no one needs to be forced to look for alternatives to scarce resources.

Where BitShares and blockchain technologies fit in is reducing economic friction such that anyone can be their own bank, and participate in global business of many other types, not just the well established and well connected.  This reduction to the barriers to entry, and expansion of reach for potential business relationships and collaboration streamlines free market capitalism, reducing overhead costs and creating more value for everyone.

[gamey]

I disagree.  I think there is actually quite a bit more to this thread and think you do yourself a disservice pigeonholing things. 

Some people have a huge tendency to start ranting communism and socialism at any hint of something vaguely related.  I recall wanting to warn against this in one of my posts.

I have no doubt the book is not particularly informative if you are someone who takes in a lot of the world/media.

I do think it brings about an interesting discussion about where American society is currently heading. 

I also have no doubt the book is full of trend-speak (not having read it.) but it is about trends.. shrug

The questions to me are more like where are these trends headed ?   If anyone hasn't noticed, wealth distribution in this country has become more and more skewed.  I personally don't think this is healthy, but there are people that'll declare socialism/communism for having these views. IMO the pendulum has started to swing in the other direction.  So what are the repercussions ?  Where do blockchain/bitcoin 2.0 technology fit in ?

[Troglodactyl]

I stumble upon a good debunking of Rifkin's nonsense by Eric Raymond, prominent advocate of open-source, author of The Cathedral and The Bazaar:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5558

[...]
The book is a blitz of trend-speak. Thomas Kuhn! The Internet of Things! 3D printing! Open source! Big data! Prosumers! But underneath the glossy surface are gaping holes in the logic. And the errors follow a tiresomely familiar pattern. What Rifkin is actually retailing, whether he consciously understands it that way or not (and he may not), is warmed-over Marxism – hostility to private property, capital, and markets perpetually seeking a rationalization. The only innovation here is that for the labor theory of value he has substituted a post-labor theory of zero value that is even more obviously wrong than Marx’s.

All the indicia of cod-Marxism are present. False identification of capitalism with vertical integration and industrial centralization: check. Attempts to gin up some sort of an opposition between voluntary but non-monetized collaboration and voluntary monetized trade: check. Valorizing nifty little local cooperatives as though they actually scaled up: check. Writing about human supercooperative behavior as though it falsifies classical and neoclassical economics: check. At times in this book it’s almost as though Rifkin is walking by a checklist of dimwitted cliches, ringing them like bells in a carillon.
[...]

Very nice.  I think that about covers this thread.

[BldSwtTrs]

I stumble upon a good debunking of Rifkin's nonsense by Eric Raymond, prominent advocate of open-source, author of The Cathedral and The Bazaar:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5558

[...]
The book is a blitz of trend-speak. Thomas Kuhn! The Internet of Things! 3D printing! Open source! Big data! Prosumers! But underneath the glossy surface are gaping holes in the logic. And the errors follow a tiresomely familiar pattern. What Rifkin is actually retailing, whether he consciously understands it that way or not (and he may not), is warmed-over Marxism – hostility to private property, capital, and markets perpetually seeking a rationalization. The only innovation here is that for the labor theory of value he has substituted a post-labor theory of zero value that is even more obviously wrong than Marx’s.

All the indicia of cod-Marxism are present. False identification of capitalism with vertical integration and industrial centralization: check. Attempts to gin up some sort of an opposition between voluntary but non-monetized collaboration and voluntary monetized trade: check. Valorizing nifty little local cooperatives as though they actually scaled up: check. Writing about human supercooperative behavior as though it falsifies classical and neoclassical economics: check. At times in this book it’s almost as though Rifkin is walking by a checklist of dimwitted cliches, ringing them like bells in a carillon.
[...]

[tipon]

When i talk about capitalism, i refer to the actual system.
The actual structure of the world.
Our system is based and depends of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are centralized ( it need to be centralized ) and tend to create centralized structures.
We could descentralize the production of energy (renewable energies ) , but that would go against the interests of big capital ( the economic elite) .
If we change into a descentralized energy production system, that would be a painful crash in the structure of the world that is gonna selforganize into something new.
And im not sure to call that post fosil system : capitalism.
It would be very different system.
I wont be based on competition or infinite growth..... it would be low energy system.

So the question should be:

how can we use these new technologies for constructing the post-capitalism world?

instead of :

how can we integrate these new technologies into the capitalist market?

I think theres a conflict between centralization and descentralization.
I think descentralization is against capitalism.
Capitalism tend to concentrate power and generate centralized structures of control and command with a top down approach.
We have now the technology for descentralize , miniaturize and integrate to human scale all the components of society but this go against the interests of big capital .

I dont think we are gonna shift from centralized to descentralized in a peaceful way.
Big capital is trying to centralize everything.  For example the internet , they are trying to finish with the "neutrality of internet". They want to recentralize all the architecture of internet.

Descentralization is dangerous for  capitalism.
...

Decentralization I think is a threat to monopolistic capitalism, crony capitalism, fascism, and probably a great many other things, but I don't see how it's a threat to capitalism.  Probably this is a question of what connotations "capitalism" has, depending on your political background.  Decentralization and flattening hierarchical structures doesn't undermine property rights, productivity, or investment, but it lowers the barriers to entry, which I think is a direct decrease on economic friction.  Basically I think it will increase the efficiency of the capitalist system, by making the market more free.

[Troglodactyl]

I think theres a conflict between centralization and descentralization.
I think descentralization is against capitalism.
Capitalism tend to concentrate power and generate centralized structures of control and command with a top down approach.
We have now the technology for descentralize , miniaturize and integrate to human scale all the components of society but this go against the interests of big capital .

I dont think we are gonna shift from centralized to descentralized in a peaceful way.
Big capital is trying to centralize everything.  For example the internet , they are trying to finish with the "neutrality of internet". They want to recentralize all the architecture of internet.

Descentralization is dangerous for  capitalism.
...

Decentralization I think is a threat to monopolistic capitalism, crony capitalism, fascism, and probably a great many other things, but I don't see how it's a threat to capitalism.  Probably this is a question of what connotations "capitalism" has, depending on your political background.  Decentralization and flattening hierarchical structures doesn't undermine property rights, productivity, or investment, but it lowers the barriers to entry, which I think is a direct decrease on economic friction.  Basically I think it will increase the efficiency of the capitalist system, by making the market more free.