Re: Role of markets (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: Fundamental text by StefanMn and Stefan
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:59:03 +0200
Thanks Stefan for seeing the difference in the approach.
Stefan Meretz writes:
Franz then wrote another comment:
Markets have traditionally existed at the borders of communities,
mediating relations to remote sources of indespensible or luxurious
goods.
Its imagineable that in local communities there is an arrangement
similar to moral economies of the past, but on a much more developed
scale: to mutually complement each others needs by a ?virtual cycle?
of producers or producing communities. Such an arrangement could be
built on the decentralized powers of production and automation and a
keen material resource flow scheme similar to natural biotopes.
It seems much more difficult to close such cycles on a large scale;
so maybe for a long time external markets coexist with ?local
communisms?. The productivity disadvantage that made such ?local
communisms? obsolete in earlier times is gradually disappearing.
This is a different question and worth to evaluate: The coexistence of
markets and local communisms/commonisms. There, the local communities
do not reproduce via market relations, but they interact with outside
markets in some way. The type of "way" is essential.
exactly. I do not think there will ever be more successful market players
but capitalist corporations. The question is, can such corporations - or
maybe cooperative corporations based on market activities - coexist with
regional p2p clusters as described in the book of Christian Siefkes,
voluntary agreements in non-market style to take over the full range of
productive activities? Can in othe words something like a "change in
dominance" happen?
For me its imagineable, but the pressure and the politics involved are
hard to imagine. I always stress the fact that there is a large void of
productive activities necessary that cannot be filled any more by
capitalist production. The local provision of food, the caring for elders
and so on - we see lots of trials on the capitalist side to fill the void,
but with little success. The same goes for the caring of landscape, for
cultural heritage and so on. If these "voids" - also in a spatial sense -
can be populated with "global villages" - voluntary communities linked by
multifunctional networks, supplied with productive technologies etc. - we
might see a gradual or sudeen "shift in demand" away from everyday life
provision to sophisticated prosumer tools. I see the linked intelligence
of global villages talking the lead in design, in product definition - and
I see corporations competing for that market "following the demand". So
the market is a specific market - for totally effective prosumer tools
that require lots of material input, economy of scale etc.....and the
"customer" is not a single person, but a community, or maybe a single unit
of a community assigned with a specific task within a virtous productive
cycle of divided labour and in need for the right tools. The monetary side
of this whole arrangement only works if there is a possibility to host
people or groups that earn money by productive activities within the
global industries (thus the meaning of telework) - and if there is a
possibility to include these very people in the life cycle and the
amenities of such communities. It would be a triangle deal, as it is easy
to see. If it ever works, I can only explore by practise. But since the 18
years I am on that track, I have not found one corporation that did more
than lip service to this market model (For example Georg Kapsch declaring
"we follow the Global Villages approach"). Again, reality never is the
proof against an idea.
Franz
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