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Re: Goal of a money reform? (was: Re: [ox-en] There IS such a thing as peer money)



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This is not a good time for me to answer but just a few remarks:

- peer to peer dominance does not mean 'only peer to peer', just as
capitalism has never meant 'only capitalism' ... So, even in a full peer to
peer society, moved by the overall logic of peer to peer dynamics for its
key value creation, there will still be other modes, and therefore, there
will be peer-informed. So this is a operative concept, not just now or in a
transition period, but <always>

- money is abstraction, I agree, but, this abstraction can have different
rules. And human exploitation does not just happen in production, as
Marxists claim, but at the level of distribution and consumption. For
example today, relative little money is creamed off in the production
system, and profits in the manufacturing sector are low, but the financial
system creams of value created by civil society outside of the production
system (see adam arviddson's work on this)

- your claim that other money logics do not work is only the result of your
being un-informed. Read Bernard Lietaer's account of the first medieval
renaissance, read the concrete experience of the Worlg (
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Worgl_Shillings) or the 70-year success of the
WIR in Switzerland, which has 65,000 B2B members and a proven
counter-cyclical effect on economic crisis (
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/WIR_Economic_Circle_Cooperative).

As for Argentina, the reason it failed is not just in an abstract way that
they used complementary currencies, but that it was in the hand of mafia's
that printed money for their own benefit, and other specific reasons. Like
everything, it can be done well or not, and was has to learn from past
mistakes.
See this report,
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Argentine_Social_Money_Movement

Stefan, really, have you ever done any real study on the matter? You should
spend if only just a week of your life to do some serious reading on the
issue, and not just issue blanket statements about topics you do not take
the effort to be seriously informed about ..

The reason why we need monetary transformation is simple: peer production is
not dominant, and exists in mutual dependence with the existing economy.
When this existing economy is in tatters, when there are 20% or more
unemployed because of the dysfunctions of a particular financial system,
when the very logic of interest-bearing money forces infinite growth and the
ultimate destruction of the biosphere, you have a vital interest in changing
that. Similarly on a more local scale, if you are embedded in a local region
or economy, and you want to preserve the economy of your locale, you have a
vested interest in having a local complimentary currency system which keeps
more wealth inside that locale.

The better and more just the external physical economy, capitalist or not,
the more peer production can thrive.

I would also recommend that you read up on the importance of invisible
architecture in distributed networks (such as money flow), and of protocally
power (see http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Protocollary_Power). Money is not
just abstraction, but concrete abstraction, and its logic is driven by the
way it's production and circulation is conceived and designed.
Value-sensitive design can be in the interest of a tiny minority, as it was
in the shadow banking system that now collapsed, or it can be in the
interest of the majority.

You probably agree that after the meltdown, new financial regulations are
needed, to prevent a return of the destructive neoliberal ponzi scheme, but
in agreeing on that, you are one step removed from the rules of the money
itself. It's not just what you can do with the money that is important, but
the money itself. Imagine that there is a hidden digital chip in every piece
of money that you use, that unconciously limits your choices and drives you
to a certain behaviour ... Once you realise that this is exactly what
happens, you obviously want to change it.

If peer to peer is your desire, you would want the peer production of what
exactly??, just of free software, expand it to hardware (so far, I think you
agree), but then you inexplicably stop ... oh no, not the peer production of
money, that has to remain the prerogative of private banks ...  So, would
you also oppose the peer production of energy, under the logic that 'energy'
is just an abstraction, and therefore it should remain centralized,
polluting, non-renewable?,  Or would you rather say, it has to be renewable
(you change it's protocol), and produced everywhere, so that its control
shifts to the whole population, not just centralized capital or state
utilities?

So we have here a post-Marxist that staunchly defends that money should
remain capitalist, force infinite growth, stimulate accumulation of it as a
scarce asset , give political blackmail power to those who have accumulated
it, and force a general short-termism in our behaviour and thinking (it is
not a coincidence, but the actual cause, that cathedrals and pyramids were
built in societies with demurrage-based money).


Michel

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 2:21 AM, Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:

Hi Michel and all!

2 weeks (20 days) ago Michel Bauwens wrote:
I would just like to clarify something, about the concept of peer money,
taking into account's Stefan's critique

First of all, I agree with Stefan that peer production should be
exclusively
used to moneyless processes involving voluntary contributions and
universal
availability of the resulting common value.

In this sense, peer money is contradictory.

Good that we agree on this :-) .

However, at present, peer to peer dynamics exist within a broader field
dominated by market (and state) processes,

Yes. Because peer production is still in its `expansion step`_.

.. _expansion step:
http://www.oekonux.org/texts/GermFormTheory.html#expansion-step-the-germ-form-becomes-an-important-dimension

and it is of interest to peer
producers that the context in which it operates is as close as possible
to
the non-alienating values of p2p.

Yes.

Thus it is legimate that it is our wish to move towards a peer-informed
society and context, at least until such time as a presumable fuller p2p
society would exist, in which even lots of physical resources could
possible
be produced and distributed in such a way.

I think I understand what you mean by 'peer-informed society' - an
intermediate society between capitalism and a peer production based
society in its `dominance step`_. But is it possible to find a better
wording? May be I'm also just lacking some common English phrase here.

.. _dominance step:
http://www.oekonux.org/texts/GermFormTheory.html#dominance-step-the-germ-form-becomes-the-dominant-form

Anyway, this is a very difficult question. Not that this is legitimate
wish - of course such a wish is legitimate. But such a move implies
difficult questions.

Foremost I'd like to ask: What is the goal of such a move(ment)?

I thought a bit about this question and the following possible answers
came to mind - more of course are welcome.

* I would like to live in a *future* peer production based society as
 soon as possible and therefore I want to accelerate this historical
 movement.

 If that is the goal then it is likely but not automatically given
 that some intermediary societal change will help. In earlier times
 people would have said that we need a revolution for that change -
 though in germ form thinking a revolution AFAICS is at best a small
 part of the whole change process.

* I would like to benefit from peer production processes *now* as much
 as I can and that is why I want to live in such a context as much as
 possible.

 Then it must be clear what in peer production is beneficial for you
 and what can be done to help you to get as much of this benefit as
 possible now. Then such an peer-informed context needs to implement
 these benefits for you. And you should have an idea of what is
 beneficial for you actually.

* I have a nice life now but it is part of my Selbstentfaltung to
 think about society and I like the idea of being a obstetrician for
 a new society.

 In this case an intermediary context makes only sense if it helps
 the birth of a new society. However, the time scale doesn't matter
 much.

I think that the goal of such a move(ment) is important and implies a
lot. To everyone with that wish: What is your goal?

The question then is how to accomplish such a move(ment). This
question is worth a couple of more too long posts ;-) . However, I
tried to start that discussion with the topic of current limitations
of peer production.

I think it is crucial to think about such distinctions,

Absolutely. Clear concepts - implying clear distinctions - and good
questions are absolutely crucial for a deeper understanding. In that
sense I want to emphasize that it is all but nitpicking to insist on
clear concepts - as I often do ;-) .

between peer money
and peer-informed money and processes, the latter not being a
contradiction
in terms

Yes.

But I guess you agree that the current money system co-exists with
peer production. Funnily the same saying Marc used - "don't fix it
unless it's broken" - came to my mind some days ago when I thought
about these things.

For nearly all goals a move towards a peer production based society
IMHO should *improve* the conditions for peer production. And here I
can not see what's wrong with the current money system *for peer
production*. Regardless whether some money trickery would work or not
I'd like to know what problems of *peer production* a reform in the
money system solves.

(however, there remains a theoretical possibility of peer money: if there
were some unconditional way to reward peer producers, with some form of
value that were usable outside the peer production process itself, that
could probably be characterized as peer money?)

You don't need to reward peer producers. They do it because they like
it. They are rewarded by what they do already. We need to be careful
here.

Apart from that I'd say that in this case the meaning of the money
"outside the peer production process" dominates. It makes sense in
this "outside" and thus is clearly a part of it. For the peer
production process itself it is thus also something outside. Therefore
I would not call it peer money.

So, one of the questions is then, how to reform the market structures?

To accomplish what for peer production?

A crucial aspect of this reform is to reform/transform the monetary
system,
to arrive at a peer-informed monetary system.

See above. Unless it is shown that the current monetary system is a
problem for peer production processes I do not see the improvement. So
why bother?

This involves refusing the
built-in infinite growth protocol of existing capitalist money, and using
money and finances with value-sensitive designs.

I often argued that in the sentence above the words "existing
capitalist" are superfluous making your whole point absurd. The
essence of money is to be abstracted away from real society and *that*
is the problem you are trying to deal with. You either need to destroy
that abstraction - and then it is no longer money you are talking of -
or accept the same problems - and then it makes no sense.

Otherwise we arrive at the, in my opinion, absurd position of Stefan,
which
basically says: until such time as we have a peer to peer society, we are
happy to let capitalist money be, 'because it's all money anyway'.

Well, you know that I would have omitted "capitalist" in the sentence
above which makes it a trivial sentence and not absurd. IMO it's all
about

* What is money?

* Are the characteristics of money we observe inalienable features of
 money or can things be changed to result in something different?

I and others argued over and over again that money is based on labor
and abstraction and that the abstraction lives a life of it's own and
*this* is the problem. You seem to deny that. However, I can not
remember one case where you said why. Why?

But see this post for a couple of other points - especially: Where
does peer production benefit from a money reform?

Such a position is similar as the one saying: fascism and the keynesian
welfare state are all manifestations of bourgeois society, there the same
anyway, so  we don't choose one over the other.

Well, let me say it this way. I'd be glad if someone would be able to
"fix" the money system - or at least make a money based economy a
safer and more humane place. *But* even if this is possible I can not
see what this has to do with peer production! Not even remotely!

IMO you could equally well argue that everybody has to become a
Christian/Hindu/Moslem/Buddhist/... or wear blue shoes or ... and that
this would help peer production.

Any money reform of the sort you are suggesting all the time is at the
very best an internal change inside the money system.

The only thing I can see why this could be useful for peer production
is that peer production still needs some time to take over. In *this*
sense it would be useful if capitalism / money based systems could
still wait some decades until they finally break. If some money reform
can help here that's great.

No, they are not the same, and neither are the current system producing
the
financial meltdown, and alternative value-conscious, peer-informed
monetary
systems that have totally different results for social and natural
externalities.

I'm sorry but so far this is pure theory. Or even worse: Where these
models have turned into practice - such as Argentina - they failed
miserably. And for exactly those reasons I'm pointing out all the time
[1]_. The hype about LETS_ also came down during the last few years
and today I think it is clear to everyone that LETS_ are no real
alternative.

.. [1] In Argentina it was foremost the lack of a power monopoly (aka
      state) preventing counterfeit money.

.. _LETS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LETS

Peer production on the other hand emerged as a *practical phenomenon*.
It is not born from some theorists and is growing since 30 years. This
convinces me.

The money trickery stuff you are suggesting is at least a hundred
years old and it is really boring to hear it over and over again.

I can also not think of a single instance where a peer producer
concerned with real production thought about this or even asked for
that type of money reform. Therefore it seems to me that this whole
discussion is completely alienated from real existing peer production.

So, in this sense, a project like Marc's called peer money for
convenience's
sake, is totally legitimate and important,

Well, I think Marc's project ignores a lot of important insights and
absolutely resembles the patterns of (capitalist) money. But of course
I might be wrong and in ten years time I can see that

* the model works and

* while being on a large scale avoids the same problems of standard
 money.

So go ahead. After all meanwhile there are lots and lots of people
saying very similar things so it should be easy to make a start. I'd
love to see them being successful so we can watch things in practice
instead of discussing things which IMO are at best not thought
through.

In any case I can not see what Marc's project has to do with peer
production. In the contrary: As Patrick found and I emphasized in my
last post Marc's project is obviously opposed to common peer
production practices such as making competition superfluous. So I
guess you'll have a hard time to explain why such a model is helpful
for peer production processes.


                                               Grüße

                                               Stefan
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