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Jukka Peltokoski

The Revolution will (not) be decentralised: Blockchains - Commons TransitionCommons Tra... - 0 views

commonstransition.org/t-be-decentralised-blockchains

ethereum blockchain commons commonstransition bollier

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 11 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Decentralised topologies and non-discriminatory protocols have been all but replaced by a recentralisation of infrastructure, as powerful corporations now gatekeep our networks. Everything might be accessible, but this access is mediated by a centralised entity. Whoever controls the data centre exercises political and economic control over communications. It’s difficult to see how we can counteract these recentralising tendencies in order to build a common core infrastructure.
  • These centralising tendencies have also reared their head in cryptocurrencies.
  • powerful mining pools now control much of the infrastructure and rent-seeking individuals control a lion’s share of Bitcoin’s value.
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • the underlying architecture has potentials not only for the future of money, but also for the future of networked cooperation.
  • Blockchain-based technologies may still have a role to play.
  • Just as Bitcoin makes certain financial intermediaries unnecessary, new innovations on the blockchain remove the need for gatekeepers from other processes
  • The broader implication is that the blockchain could support the activities and resources necessary to the commons
  • A lot of what follows is pretty speculative, but worth discussing in the context of peer-production.
  • The blockchain is the distributed ledger that keeps track of all transactions made using the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. Arguably this is Bitcoin’s key innovation
  • the blockchain could support new forms of peer-production, and fully decentralised infrastructures for applications as varied as finance, mesh networks, cloud databases and share economies.
  • claim is that blockchain-based technologies such as Ethereum can support and scale distributed forms of cooperation on a global scale.
  • There are a number of start-ups and groups currently innovating in this space such as Ethereum, Ripple and Mastercoin.
  • extends the decentralised capabilities of Bitcoin beyond financial transactions
  • Bitcoin involves two parameters: a trustless database (more on this later) and a transactions system capable of sending value from place to place
  • Ethereum builds a generalised framework that extends the capabilities of the blockchain to allow developers to write new consensus applications.
  • Distributed Organisations & the Trust Web:
  • Decentralised Autonomous Organisations.
  • it doesn’t matter whether I believe in my fellow peers just so long as I believe in the technical efficiency of the blockchain protocol.
  • Where questions about how to reach consensus, negotiate trust and especially scale interactions beyond the local are pervasive in the commons, the blockchain looks set to be a game changer.
  • ‘consensus’ algorithms
  • Cohen and Mougayar have dubbed this innovation the “trust web”
  • Ethereum incentivises participation, encouraging actors to contribute without introducing centralisation
  • Node Incentivisation:
  • In order to use an Ethereum application, users make micropayments to the developers in ether, Ethereum’s coin, or ‘cryptofuel’ as they term it.
  • Monetary transactions aside, this encourages people to contribute to the commons and puts systems in place to try and protect its resources from commercial expropriation.
  • a change to infrastructure
  • Decentralised Infrastructures:
  • Instead, we can imagine infrastructure as something immaterial and dispersed, or managed through flexible and transient forms of ownership.
  • The payoff seems to be that new blockchain-based technologies have the potential to support new forms of commons-based peer production, supplying necessary tools for cooperation and decision making, supporting complementary currencies and even provisioning infrastructures.
  • Other issues concern the design of trustless architectures and smart property.
  • Trustless Architectures: First of all, what kind of subjectivity does the blockchain support?
  • ‘trust in the code.’
  • proof-of-work is not a new form of trust, but the abdication of trust altogether as social confidence in favour of an algorithmic regulation
  • the blockchain could support not only cryptocurrencies but also other financial instruments like equity, securities and derivatives; smart contracts and smart property; new voting systems; identity and reputation systems; distributed databases; and even the management of assets and resources like energy and water.
  • proceeds from a perspective that already presumes a neoliberal subject and an economic mode of governance in the face of social and/or political problems. ‘How do we manage and incentivise individual competitive economic agents?’ In doing so, it not only codes for that subject, we might argue that it also reproduces that subject
  • Smart Property:
  • new controls implied by smart property also have worrying implications
  • Property doesn’t disappear, but instead it is enforced and exercised in different ways. If rights were previously exercised through norms, laws, markets and architectures, today they are algorithmically inscribed in the object.
  • There is real potential in the blockchain if we appreciate it not as some ultimate techno-fix but as a platform that, when combined with social and political institutions, has real possibilities for the future of organisation.
Jukka Peltokoski

Co-operative Commonwealth: De-commodifying Land and Money Part 2 | Commons Transition - 0 views

commonstransition.org/odifying-land-and-money-part-2

cooperative commonwealth land osuuskunta maanomistus velka debt osuuskuntakeissi Conaty commonstransition

shared by Jukka Peltokoski on 08 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Usury is little discussed today but it is crucial in policy terms.
  • in Germany, Christian Christiansen championed the founding of a number of rural savings and loan co-operatives that went by the acronym JAK, short for Jord Arbete Kapital (“Land Labour Capital”)
  • There were other models that flourished. Dr. Thomas Bowkett introduced a mutual organization in the 1840s to provide housing and smaller loans interest-free.(7) Twenty years later, Richard Starr made some adjustments to the system, and the “Starr-Bowkett” societies spread fast.
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  • in Brazil today. CoopHab is a major housing federation of co-operative savings societies.
  • During the industrial revolution English working people were excluded from bank lending though pawnbroking was rife. Mutual aid savings clubs developed interest-free lending systems for housing. The most successful were the Terminating Building Societies for buying land and building houses.
  • Sweden
  • Operationally, JAK is very similar to a credit union, except that members do not earn any interest on their savings or dividends on their shares.
  • The total cost of a JAK loan covers four things:(12)loan appraisal and set-up cost at a fee that is 2-3% of the approved loan value.an annual administration fee equal to 1% of the loan.an annual fee of approximately $30 to support the JAK educational system and volunteer services.(13)an equity deposit equal to a 6% of loan value to cover risk on any loan in the portfolio.
  • Members are strongly encouraged to pre-save in order to qualify for a loan.(15) Members also contract to continue saving while they are repaying their loans.
  • The Greenbacks would not be backed by gold, but by the farmers’ crops, which would be stored in sub-Treasury warehouses paid for by the government.
  • Swiss WiR
  • President Lincoln
  • free Greenback dollars
  • Lincoln
  • he had led the introduction of a paper money not backed by gold or silver, and had shown that the government could create, issue, and circulate by fiat the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.
  • the privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
  • National Farmers Alliance and Co-operative Union, led by Charles Macune, developed the Sub-Treasury Plan.
  • JAK banking, CoopHab and Community Land Trusts work well but are below national policy radar. This is not entirely the case for co-operative commonwealth systems.
  • So this was not simply a co-operative currency. It was a new national currency under a co-operative and state partnership to expunge the debt peonage imposed by merchants and bankers.
  • Infuriated, farmers and workers created their own party in 1891 to carry forwardmonetary reform and a co-operative economy. The new Populist party won some local, state and Congressional elections before falling into decline after 1895.
  • A.C. Townley launched the Non-partisan League (NPL)
  • Bank of North Dakota
  • Henry Ford and Thomas Edison suggested a novel solution.
  • proposed that new money be created by issuing interest-free government bonds
  • Frederick Soddy
  • made the first case for an ecological economics free of debt
  • “100% money.”
  • 100% reserve requirement.
  • Clifford H Douglas
  • He argued that a clear-cut and labour-saving solution would be for Government to create new money, interest-free as “Social Credit.”
  • First all citizens would receive a National Dividend.
  • Second, Douglas proposed that publicly-owned producer banks be set up in each region of the UK to provide finance debt-free to industry and enterprises.
  • From 1929 monetary reform attracted a wide audience In the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada with growing grassroots calls ranging from public banking to universal basic income.(34) The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt took inspiration from John Maynard Keynes.
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