Message 04678 [Homepage] [Navigation]
Thread: oxenT04643 Message: 44/166 L8 [In index]
[First in Thread] [Last in Thread] [Date Next] [Date Prev]
[Next in Thread] [Prev in Thread] [Next Thread] [Prev Thread]

Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"



On 2008-07-09 11:55, Michel Bauwens wrote:
I think we'll have to do without money from the very start,
otherwise the transition simply won't take place.

From the very start? 

This means you are going to outlaw the use of any money, and use
dramatic coercion to achieve that effect.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like a Polpot-ian scheme, and I believe,
extremely dangerous.

Uhh, big misunderstanding.

It is simply not possible "to outlaw the use of any money", we all need 
money to reproduce our lives. This is a fact, and *this* is coercion.

The question is: How do we conceptualize our projects? Do they base on 
money, market success, and exchange or not? Free software does not. 
Yes, there is a lot of money involved, but free software by its core 
functioning does not base on it. This is the dialectical property of 
free software: it bases on selbstentfaltung and also supports making 
money, but it does not function by making money (the contrary is true: 
is replaces proprietary only-made-for-money production).

Next question: How can a project making no money survive in an 
environment, where things are bought with money? Here, it is useful to 
distinguish between internal project relationships and the 
relationships to the outside world: Inside a project the relationships 
should be free of money and exchange, while it may not avoidable to 
have money-based relationships to the outside money driven world.

Again Christians peerconomy model. We don't have that peereconomy based 
society yet. How can we start? If we want to create a peerconomy 
project (or better a bunch of), then the project need things from the 
capitalist world which we cannot produce self. Thus you need money. 
Now, this need of money *must* be decoupled from the internal 
functioning of the project in the sense, that, say, products from the 
project can not be "exported" to the money world, in order to finance 
the project. The "money interface" should be as slim as possible. For 
instance bounty-based. Or by fixed contributions by the members. Or, as 
Christian proposed, bringing money into the project is viewed as 
a "task" and accepted as a "contribution" (in the special meaning of 
his concept) like other tasks done are contributions. Etc. Assuming 
there are more peerconomy projects, then the relationships
between these projects must be as money-free as the project-internal 
relationship are. Ok, I stop here -- this needs a careful discussion 
and a lot of new ideas.

Conclusion: We'll have to do our projects without money from the very 
start in the sense, that money must not be part of the project core 
principles. Perform this test: If you beam the project into a 
peerconomy society, then generally the project have to work the same way 
as it works being an island in the capitalist ocean.

I resonate much more with this approach:

Charles Eisenstein:

"In a highly specialized, technological society, most of us need to
perform exchanges to live. To do so we need a medium of exchange –
money. Some people, noting this inescapable fact, can see no
alternative but to return to a primitive society, to undo the
millennia-long course of civilization, which they quite
understandably view as an enormous mistake.

Outch, I don't want to read more of this crazy stuff. It declares 
exchange to an intrinsic human property, it identifies money with 
civilization, it lifts capitalism to heaven and so on. 

A negative-interest currency is a step toward the gift economies of

No, this is money botching. And these Gesellian approches are *really* 
dangerous.

Ciao,
Stefan

-- 
Start here: www.meretz.de
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



Thread: oxenT04643 Message: 44/166 L8 [In index]
Message 04678 [Homepage] [Navigation]