Commons.fi

collective-action problem in an open network context

How do you know that a given document, certificate or dataset -- or a vote or "digital identity" asserted by an individual -- is the “real thing” and not a forgery? 

online “ledger” that keeps track of all transactions of all bitcoins

set of transactions known as the “block”

a kind of permanent record maintained by a vast distributed peer network

blockchain technology could provide a critical infrastructure for building what are called “distributed collaborative organizations.”

to give its members specified rights within the organization, which are managed and guaranteed by the blockchain

blockchain technology is not confined to digital currency

reliable systems to manage their inter-relationships on network platforms.

Bitcoin 2.0 projects

a way to create distributed networks of solar power on residential houses

Transactions would be near-instantaneous, and transaction costs would be minimal.

traditional issues related to shared common-pool resources—such as the free rider problem or the tragedy of the commons—could be addressed with the implementation of blockchain-based governance, through the adoption of transparent decision-making procedures and the introduction decentralized incentives systems for collaboration and cooperation.

to reach consensus and implement innovative forms of self-governance. The possibility to record every interaction on a incorruptible public ledger and the ability to encode a particular set rules linking these interactions to a specific transactions (e.g., the assignment of cryptographic tokens) makes it possible to design new sophisticated incentive systems

Decentralized blockchain technologies bring trust and coordination to shared resource pools, enabling new models of non-hierarchical governance, where intelligence is spread on the edges of the network instead of being concentrated at the center

commons-based peer-production communities

have had a hard scaling up, without turning into more bureaucratic and centralized institutions

could overcome many collective-action challenges that cannot be easily solved by conventional institutions today

Who guards the guards? 

blockchain technology does offer more formidable tools for better protecting the perimeter of the commons and for empowering commoners to decide their own fate

reliance on horizontal networks and distributed power within communities

opposed to the competition between hierarchical organisations

inequality

contradictions

Empowerment in an era of growing inequalities

the exact opposite of capitalism

the exact opposite of homo economicus’ iconic egotism

Two main groups of criticism have emerged: one on ownership structures and the other on employment.

Growing economic inequalities

fueled both by patrimonial inequalities

income inequalities

If we want to assess whether it should be seen as the first part of a new economic paradigm or as capitalism’s latest trick to survive at all costs, we have to analyze its likely effects on inequality.

From a collective standpoint, it might well be better to have access to a resource rather than owning it.

But if someone asks you to free yourself from all earthly possessions, you should always ask: if it’s not mine, then who owns it?

Sometimes, owning is a way not to be owned!

sharing economy: after all, it mostly consists of venture capitalist-backed startups

Employees and customers are but a mean to an end, and in general, a good way to maximize return on investment is to get your customers to pay as much as possible (non-price competitiveness) and on the other side to pay your employees as little as possible (price competitiveness).

shareholders are not peers (from Latin par, “equal”), but overlords

your business model is based on your ability to sustain a community

This point is the most controversial of all. Sharing economy services could accelerate the phenomenon of job destruction.

Despite all those nice speeches about empowerment and entrepreneurship, people in the sharing economy are nothing but an extreme precariat

Real wages started stagnating while productivity per capita continued to increase.

a new deal had to be made: people would no longer be paid according to the value they actually produced, but they would get — seemingly — unlimited access to credit.

computers and robots will soon replace most human labor anyway. Wage labor cannot be saved, and rather than fighting long-lost battles, people should start thinking seriously about solutions such as Universal Basic Income.

neo-liberal revolution has left the basic structures of welfare

relatively untouched

If you cannot predict something with a reasonable amount of certainty, stop arguing endlessly about it and start acting towards the outcome you would like to see

What happens next, no one can tell. Are Silicon Valley venture capitalistss currently being fooled into creating the embryo of a P2P economic paradigm, in which they will lose most of their influence? Or are the enthusiasts talking about empowerment being tricked into creating a new kind of serfdom?

ancient Skeptic philosophers

epoché

remarks

I will make two

First, we should avoid using the concept of a “sharing economy”

Men are both altruistic and egoistic, and that’s perfectly fine.

Will big companies be able to face new competition from startups and win over new customers? If that is your main concern, you should probably stop talking about communities and peers. If the collaborative economy cannot help you solve our growing inequality problem, it should be of no interest to you.

Monotheism arose

May Day became a day to honor the saints, Philip and James, who were unwilling slaves to Empire.

it was always a celebration of all that is free and life-giving in the world. That is the Green side of the story. Whatever else it was, it was not a time to work.

Therefore, it was attacked by the authorities. The repression had begun with the burning of women and it continued in the 16th century when America was "discovered," the slave trade was begun, and nation-states and capitalism were formed.

The people resisted the repressions. Thenceforth, they called their May sports, the "Robin Hood Games." Capering about with sprigs of hawthorn in their hair and bells jangling from their knees, the ancient charaders of May were transformed into an outlaw community, Maid Marions and Little Johns.

Thus began in earnest the Red side of the story of May Day. The struggle was brought to Massachusetts in 1626.

Thomas Morton settled in Passonaggessit which he named Merry Mount. The land seemed a "Paradise"

With the proclamation that the first of May At Merry Mount shall be kept holly day

The Puritans

the Puritans were the imperialist, not Morton, who worked with slaves, servants, and native Americans

Merry Mount became a refuge for Indians, the discontented, gay people, runaway servants, and what the governor called "all the scume of the countrie."

The Maypole was cut down. The settlement was burned.

Thomas Morton was a thorn in the side of the Boston and Plymouth Puritans, because he had an alternate vision of Massachusetts. He was impressed by its fertility; they by its scarcity. He befriended the Indians; they shuddered at the thought. He was egalitarian; they proclaimed themselves the "Elect". He freed servants; they lived off them. He armed the Indians; they used arms against Indians.

In England the attacks on May Day were a necessary part of the wearisome, unending attempt to establish industrial work discipline. The attempt was led by the Puritans with their belief that toil was godly and less toil wicked. Absolute surplus value could be increased only by increasing the hours of labor and abolishing holydays.

Two bands of that rainbow came from English and Irish islands. One was Green. Robert Owen, union leader, socialist, and founder of utopian communities in America, announced the beginning of the millennium after May Day 1833. The other was Red. On May Day 1830, a founder of the Knights of Labor, the United Mine Workers of America, and the Wobblies was born in Ireland, Mary Harris Jones, a.k.a., "Mother Jones." She was a Maia of the American working class.

The history of the modern May Day originates in the center of the North American plains, at Haymarket, in Chicago

in May 1886.

Virgin soil, dark, brown, crumbling, shot with fine black sand

a green perspective

The land was mechanized. Relative surplus value could only be obtained by reducing the price of food.

It became "Hello" to the hobo. "Move on" to the harvest stiffs. "Line up" the proletarians. Such were the new commands of civilization.

Thousands of immigrants, many from Germany, poured into Chicago after the Civil War. Class war was advanced

Nationally, May First 1886 was important because a couple of years earlier the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, "RESOLVED... that eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor, from and after May 1, 1886.

Haymarket Square

On 4 May 1886

176 policemen charged the crowd that had dwindled to about 200. An unknown hand threw a stick of dynamite, the first time that Alfred Nobel's invention was used in class battle.

All hell broke lose, many were killed, and the rest is history.

May Day, or "The Day of the Chicago Martyrs" as it is still called in Mexico "belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the revolution," as Eugene Debs put it in his May Day editorial of 1907.

Kaikessa yksinkertaisuudessaan Brynjolfssonin teesi on se, että teollinen vallankumous muutti maailman perusteellisesti.

höyry ja sähkö toivat ihmisen käyttöön tuhansia kertoja enemmän voimaa

yhteiskuntarakenne mullistui ja luotiin demokratian, sosiaaliturvan ja työttömyyskorvauksen kaltaisia innovaatioita.

Teollinen vallankumous korvasi fyysistä, mekaanista työtä. Nyt ensimmäistä kertaa koneet ovat alkaneet laajassa mitassa korvata ajattelutyötä. Kaikenlainen rutiinitietotyö postin lajittelusta röntgenkuvien analyysiin on siirtymässä koneille.

Ensimmäisessä vaiheessa koneet oppivat tekemään rutiinitietotyötä. Sellaista joka pystytään koodaamaan yksiselitteisiksi käskyiksi. Tämä vallankumous on ollut käynnissä jo pari vuosikymmentä.

Toinen vaihe on iskenyt toden teolla lävitse vasta aivan viime vuosina. Se perustuu koneoppimiseen, joka tarkoittaa sitä että emme opeta koneelle valmiita sääntöjä. Vaan annamme koneelle tietynlaisen hermoverkoston ja sen jälkeen laitamme sen opettelemaan jotakin asiaa antaen jatkuvaa palautetta onnistumisesta.

jatkuvan palautteen ansiosta se kehittyy huimaa vauhtia

itseoppivat verkostot avaavat koneille aivan uusia maailmoja kasvojentunnistuksesta itsenäiseen autolla ajamiseen

Robotti osaa nykyään ajaa myös polkupyörää

Kokeilemalla ja kaatumalla tarpeeksi monta kertaa.

Yhä useammat ihmistoiminnot tulevat korvautumaan koneilla ja ohjelmilla lähivuosina etenkin länsimaissa, joissa ihmistyö on kallista.

1) Opetusjärjestelmä pitää uudistaa. Työ ja elämä tulee jatkossa muuttumaan sellaista vauhtia että koulu ei kykene opettamaan niitä taitoja mitä kahdenkymmen vuoden tai edes kymmenen vuoden päästä työelämässä tarvitaan. Siksi koulun kannattaa keskittyä metataitoihin: Luovuuden ja yrittäjämäisen asenteen opettamiseen sekä itse oppimiskyvyn vahvistamiseen, jotta ihminen kykenee elämänmittaiseen oppimiseen.

2) Yrittäjyyteen tulee panostaa. Murros tulee kadottamaan ison osan vanhoista työpaikoista. Yhdysvalloissa arviolta puolet nykyisistä työtehtävistä on vaarassa seuraavan kahdenkymmenen vuoden aikana ja Etlan selvityksen mukaan Suomessakin kolmasosa on vaarassa kadota. Toisaalta murros synnyttää myös uusia mahdollisuuksia ja työtehtäviä. Valtion tai muun tahon on kuitenkin vaikea keskusjohtoisesti keksiä mitä uusia ammatteja voi murroksen myötä syntyä. Parhaiten ne löytyvät ruohonjuuritason kokeiluilla eli sillä että ihmiset ryhtyvät yrittäjinä kokeilemaan jotakin uutta ja sitten parhaat kokeilut kasvavat ja alkavat työllistää ihmisiä.

3) Resurssien tehokkaampi uudelleenjako. Automatisaatio johtaa hyvin helposti ’winner takes all’ -tyyppiseen talouteen, jossa marginaalinen joukko yritysten omistajia nousee miljardööreiksi, mutta keskipalkkaista ja matalapalkkaista työtä on yhä vähemmän tarjolla.

työn osuus BKT:stä ja yritysten voittojen osuus BKT:stä kehittyivät jokseenkin tasatahtia toisesta maailmansodasta lähtien, mutta vuodesta 2002 jälkimmäinen on lähtenyt hurjaan nousuun ja edellinen laskuun.

nykyisen yhteiskuntajärjestelmän puitteissa automatisaation taloudelliset hyödyt valuvat harvalukuisen joukon taskuun, kun taas isoa osaa erityisesti vähänkoulutetusta työvoimasta uhkaa työttömyys.

Miten sitten huolehditaan tasaisemmasta tulonjaosta ja siitä, että kaikilla on mielekästä tekemistä myös tulevaisuudessa?

perustulokokeilusta

Valitettavasti vaikka tietoisuus murroksesta on lisääntynyt, ei selkeitä ratkaisuja tai politiikkasuosituksia tunnu vielä olevan hirveästi tarjolla.

collectively our choices and agency are the ultimate guarantors of any values we may wish to secure

They can create their own cultural spaces to deliberate, collaborate and share resources without market and state structures that are often cumbersome, expensive, anti-social or predatory. 

A key political challenge of our time is to figure out new ways to preserve and extend the democratic capacities of ordinary people and rein in unaccountable market/state power, otherwise known as neoliberalism. 

Neoliberal economics and policy insist upon debt-driven economic growth, extractivist uses of the Earth, consumerism and nationalism

the creative use of new digital technologies on open network platforms could inaugurate liberating new forms of “open source governance.”

The superstructures of law and governance can achieve only so much without the consent of the governed.

Benkler

Rifkin

Tapscott

Mason

Bauwens

potentially transformative Commons Sector

the innovations now unfolding in various tech spaces suggest the outlines of new post-capitalist institutions

new types of group deliberation and governance software platforms such as Loomio and Co-budget; digital platforms that enable better management of ecological resources; and “blockchain ledger” technology, which is enabling new forms of network-native self-organization, collective action and “smart contracts”

online guilds

commons

open design and manufacturing communities

citizen-science

a process of commoning

to create functioning commons

The collaborative communities now emerging on digital platforms do not worry so much about resource-depletion or free riders – problems that affect the management of water, fisheries and land – as how to intelligently curate information from the multitudes and design effective self-governance structures for virtual collaboration.   

The point of the commons paradigm, despite its many different flavors, is this:  It provides “protected” space in which to re-imagine production and governance. 

“digital divide”

more accessible and transparent than conventional state democracy and more solidly grounded through bottom-up participation and ethical accountability

Digital networks are becoming deeply entangled with all aspects of life

our lives with digital technologies are profoundly affecting how we regard property, political life, and economic life

Facebook, Google, Uber, Airbnb and other corporate “gig economy” players

Unlike these capital-driven enterprises, the collaborations that I am describing are fundamentally non-market and socially mindful in character. They are less defined by technology per se than by the new social forms and political /cultural attitudes that they engender. 

to move people beyond the producer/consumer dyad and formalistic notions of citizenship, and enable people to enact a more personal, DIY vision of self-provisioning and governance. 

The state, having cast its lot with capital accumulation and growth, is losing its credibility and competence in addressing larger needs. 

With the rise of market-centrism and rational choice economics, government was devalued and allowed a role only in cases of ‘market failure.’ 

standard economics today largely ignores the fundamental, affirmative role that government plays in facilitating functional, trustworthy markets.

popular distrust of government has soared.  And why not?  Government has lost its actual capacities to serve many non-market social and ecological needs. 

Given this void and the barriers to democratic action, many citizens who might otherwise engage with legitimate state policymaking have shifted their energies into “transnational, polycentric networks of governance in which power is dispersed,”

the solidarity economy, Transition Towns, peer production, the commons

Thus the impasse we face today:  The neoliberal market/state agenda is inflicting grievous harm on the planet, social well-being and democracy – yet the market/state remains largely unresponsive to popular demands for change.

The (Still-Emerging) Promise of Open Source Governance

commons based on open tech platforms will play a central role in transforming our politics and polity

Electronic networks are now a defining infrastructure shaping the conduct of political life, governance, commerce and culture.

many legacy institutions and social practices continue to exist.  But they have no choice but to evolve

online commons are lightweight social systems that, with the right software and norms, can run quite efficiently on trust, reciprocity and modest governance structures

that enable users to mutualize the benefits of their own online sharing

Rifkin notes that the extreme productivity of digital technologies is lowering the marginal costs of production for many goods and services to near zero.  This is undercutting the premises of conventional markets, which are based on private owners using proprietary means to extract profits from nature, communities and consumers.

We are glimpsing at the outlines of a new economic system based on sharing and the collaborative commons. It is the first new paradigm-shifting system since the introduction of capitalism and communism. 

The “collaborative commons” that Rifkin describes is a hybrid capitalist/commons economy that is able to exploit the efficiencies and higher quality produced on open networks. 

“prosumers”

are able to create their own goods and services

But when some good or service is offered for at no cost, it really means that the user is the product:  our personal data, attention, social attitudes lifestyle behavior, and even our digital identities, are the commodity that platform owners are seeking to “own.”  

To combat corporate exploitation of open platforms, many efforts are now afoot to establish digital commons as viable alternatives.  The new models are sometimes called “platform co-operativism.

Digital commons are materializing in part because it is easier and more socially satisfying to participate in a commons

the most valuable networks are those that facilitate group affiliations to pursue shared goals – or what I would call commons

Open source tools and principles could unleash this value – but it would subvert the business model.

“hacktivists,” makers, software programmers and social media innovators who are consciously attempting to build tech platforms that can meet needs in post-capitalist ways, often via commons

Option 1: Euro-reformism

One (fast receding) option is the standard variety of euro-reformism, practised typically by social democrats who argue for ‘more democracy’,

dynamic analyses

The EU’s institutions are incapable of being reformed through the standard process of inter-governmental deliberations and gradual treaty changes.

Option 2: Lexit

This (Lexit) option raises concerns regarding its realism and probity. Is its agenda feasible? In other words, is it a realistic prospect that, by (in Kouvelakis’ words) calling for referenda to leave the EU, the Left can block “the forces of the xenophobic and nationalist Right from winning hegemony and diverting the popular revolt”? And, is such a campaign consistent with the Left’s fundamental principles?

the EU was constructed intentionally as a democracy-free zone designed to keep the demos out of decision-making

Option 3: DiEM25’s proposal for disobedience

the Left should demand common minimum wages in exchange for its support for the Single Market

xenophobic Right

do they truly believe that the Left will win the discursive and policy war against the fossil fuel industry by supporting the re-nationalisation of environmental policy?

Given that the EU has established free movement, Lexit involves acquiescence to (if not actual support for) its ending and for the re-establishment of national border controls

Instead, DiEM25 proposes a pan-European movement of civil and governmental disobedience with which to bring on a surge of democratic opposition to the way European elites do business at the local, national and EU levels.

national parliaments and governments have power

a progressive national government can only use this power if it is prepared for a rupture with the EU troika.

a clash with the EU establishment is inescapable.

wilfully disobeying the unenforceable EU ‘rules’ at the municipal, regional and national levels while making no move whatsoever to leave the EU.

Undoubtedly, the EU institutions will threaten us

Only through this pan-European network of rebel cities, rebel prefectures and rebel governments can a progressive movement become hegemonic in Italy, in Greece, in England, indeed anywhere.

It is the difference between: (A) Clashing against the EU establishment in a manner that preserves the spirit of internationalism, demands pan-European action, and sets us fully apart from the xenophobic Right, and (B) Walking hand-in-hand with nationalisms that will, inescapably, reinforce the xenophobic Right while allowing the EU to portray the Left as populists insufficiently distinguishable from Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen etc.

The Left’s traditional internationalism is a key ingredient of DiEM25, along with other constituent democratic traditions from a variety of political projects (including progressive liberalism, feminist and ecological movements, the ‘pirate’ parties etc.).

DiEM25 proposes a rebellion to deliver authentic democracy at the levels of local government, national governments and the EU.

This leftwing objection to DiEM25’s call for a pan-European movement is interesting and puzzling. In effect, it argues that democracy is impossible on a supranational scale because a demos must be characterised by national and cultural homogeneity.

The Left, lest we forget, traditionally opposed the bourgeois belief in a one-to-one relationship between a nation and a sovereign parliament. The Left counter-argued that identity is something we create through political struggle (class struggle, the struggle against patriarchy, the struggle for smashing gender and sexual stereotypes, emancipation from Empire etc.).

in order to create the European demos that will bring about Europe’s democracy

Consider the profound difference between the following two situations: The EU establishment threatening progressive Europeanist governments with ‘exit’ when they refuse to obey its authoritarian incompetence, and Progressive national parties or governments campaigning alongside the xenophobic Right for ‘exit’.

The question for Europe’s Left, for progressive liberals, Greens etc. is, now, whether this struggle, this project, should take the form of a campaign to leave the EU (e.g. Lexit) or, as DiEM25 suggests, of a campaign of civil, civic and governmental disobedience within but in confrontation with the EU

to those who berate DiEM25 and its call for a pan-European democratic movement as utopian, our answer is that a transnational, pan-European democracy remains a legitimate, realistic long-term goal, one that is in concert with the Left’s time honoured internationalism. But this objective must be accompanied by pragmatism and a precise plan for immediate action:

Oppose any talk of ‘more Europe’ now

Present Europeans with a blueprint (a comprehensive set of policies and actions) of how we plan to re-deploy Europe’s existing institutions

ensure that the same blueprint makes provisions for keeping internationalism alive in the event that the EU establishment’s incompetent authoritarianism causes the EU’s disintegration

“The EU will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!”

We cannot predict which of the two (democratisation or disintegration) will occur. So, we struggle for the former while preparing for the latter.

DiEM25’s Progressive Agenda for Europe will be pragmatic, radical and comprehensive. It will comprise policies that can be implemented immediately to stabilise Europe’s social economy, while:

affording more sovereignty to city councils, prefectures and national parliaments, proposing institutional interventions and designs that will reduce the human cost in case the euro collapses and the EU fragments, and setting up a democratic Constitution Assembly process that enables Europeans to generate a European identity with which to bolster their reinvigorated national cultures, parliaments and local authorities.

Conclusion:

The EU is at an advanced stage of disintegration. There are two prospects. The EU is not past the point of no return (yet) and can, still, be democratised, stabilised, rationalised and humanised The EU is beyond the point of no return and incapable of being democratised. Therefore, its disintegration is certain, as is the clear and present danger of Europe’s descent into a postmodern version of the deflationary 1930s

So, what should progressives do?

Campaign vigorously along internationalist, cross-border, lines all over Europe for a democratic Union – even if we do not believe that the EU can, or ought to, survive in its current form Expose the EU Establishment’s authoritarian incompetence Coordinate civil, civic and governmental disobedience across Europe Illustrate through DiEM25’s own transnational structure how a pan-European democracy can work at all levels and in all jurisdictions Propose a comprehensive Progressive Agenda for Europe which includes sensible, modest, convincing proposals for ‘fixing’ the EU (the euro even) and for managing progressively the EU’s and the euro’s disintegration if and when the Establishment brings it on.

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.

yritykset voivat lähettää juristinsa lakimuutosta valmistelevaan sosiaali- ja terveysministeriöön kertomaan, ettei esitys ole mieleinen ja jos se toteutuu, luvassa on haaste kansainväliseen välimiesoikeuteen

Investointisuoja muuttaa neuvottelutilannetta olennaisesti

TTIP-sopimuksen investointisuojan turvin yhdysvaltalaiset sijoittajat voivat kyseenalaistaa eurooppalaisen demokraattisen lainsäädäntötyön, viranomaisten hallintopäätökset sekä riippumattomien oikeuslaitosten tuomiot. Kyse huomattavasta julkisen vallan siirrosta kansalaisyhteiskunnan ja muun kontrollin ulottumattomiin.

tähän mennessä nostettu noin 600 kannetta, joista reilu puolet on ratkaistu. Välimiesoikeuksien toiminta on osoittautunut ongelmalliseksi

– Tiedämme tähän mennessä ratkaistujen juttujen perusteella, että lopputulos riippuu merkittävästi kokoonpanosta. Samoilla faktoilla on tehty vastakkaisia ratkaisuja – eikä niistä voi valittaa, Koskenniemi sanoo.

uhka demokratialle ja oikeusvaltiolle

painostuskeinon vaikuttavuutta lisää se, etteivät välimiesoikeuden ratkaisut ole ennakoitavissa

ulkomainen investoija voi nostaa itseään koskevan oikeusjutun eurooppalaisen oikeusjärjestelmän ulkopuolella. Toisin sanoen, kansainväliset investoijat saavat oman oikeusjärjestelmän

investointisuojamekanismeja

Yhdysvaltalaisten investointien osuus Suomessa ja Euroopassa on monikymmenkertainen, eivätkä kymmenien miljoonien oikeudenkäyntikulut ole merkittäviä suursijoittajien näkökulmasta. Yhdysvalloissa on myös hyvin aggressiivinen oikeusperinne, jossa suuryritykset ja sijoittajat pyrkivät vaikuttamaan sääntelyyn oikeusteitse.

Investointisuojajärjestelmä on kolonialistinen strategia

pysyvää yhteiskomissiota, jossa EU:n ja Yhdysvaltain edustajat ottaisivat kantaa kaikkeen lainsäädäntöön vapaakaupan näkökulmasta.

Yhteiskomissio toimisi poliittisesti merkittävässä roolissa ilman demokraattista vastuuta.

korppikotkarahastoja, jotka ostavat talouskriisiin ajautuneiden valtioiden velkakirjoja murto-osalla niiden nimellisarvosta ja vaativat sitten koko summaa maksettavaksi investointisuojan nojalla oikeusteitse

korppikotkarahastot pystyvät ajamaan kriisivaltiot perikatoon estämällä velkajärjestelyt

Aika näyttäisi olevan TTIP-sopimuksen vastustajien puolella. Sopimuksen sisältö pitäisi saada neuvoteltua valmiiksi tämän vuoden loppuun mennessä, jotta Yhdysvaltain nykyhallinto ehtisi viedä asian kongressiin ennen presidentinvaaleja 2016.

Koskenniemi arvioi TTIP-sopimuksen kaatuvan, sillä hänen mukaansa EU:lla ei ole valtuuksia hyväksyä sopimusta kansallisten parlamenttien ohitse.

sekasopimus

epävirallisissa keskusteluissa EU-komission virkamiesten kanssa on käynyt selväksi, ettei ole sellaista tahoa, joka katsoisi EU:n voivan ratifioida vapaakauppasopimuksen yksin.

Se tarkoittaa, että sopimuksen täytyy mennä 28 EU-valtioon – eikä se tule hyväksytyksi tämän kaltaisella investointisuojajärjestelmällä 28 EU-valtiossa. Sama koskee CETA-sopimusta.

TTIP- ja CETA-ratkaisut ovat voimakkaasti poliittisia päätöksiä, koska sopimukset kajoavat yhteiskunnan perusrakenteisiin

EU-komission tilaaman selvityksen mukaan sopimus kasvattaisi lähivuosina talousalueen bruttokansantuotetta keskimäärin 0,05 prosenttia vuodessa – mikä on esitetyistä arvioista positiivisin. Sopimuksen kriitikot pitävätkin mahdollisia hyötyjä riskeihin nähden olemattomina. Toisissa laskelmissa TTIP-sopimuksen taloudelliset seuraukset on arvioitu negatiivisiksi.

TTIP-ratkaisu on nimenomaan poliittinen

Entrepreneurs could sidestep the VCs by turning to a “swarm” of small investors — and maybe supplant the entire VC system. By the end of the summer, he’d raised more than a million dollars in cryptocurrency. The legality of the model is uncertain,

High hopes for a liberating Internet have devolved into the dominance of a few mega-companies and the NSA’s watchful algorithms. Platforms entice users to draw their communities into an apparently free and open commons, only to gradually enclose it by tweaking terms of service, diluting privacy, or charging fees for essential features.

Facebook started flocking to Ello

The line between workers and customers has never been so blurry. Online platforms depend on their users

looking for ways to build platforms of their own.

VC-backed sharing economy companies like Airbnb and Uber have caused trouble for legacy industries, but gone is the illusion that they are doing it with actual sharing.

OuiShare, which connects sharing-economy entrepreneurs around the world

it’s becoming clear that ownership matters as much as ever.

Loomio is now being used by governments, organizations, and schools; a significant portion of the current usage comes from Spain’s ascendant political party, Podemos.

new kinds of ownership the new norm. There are cooperatives, networks of freelancers, cryptocurrencies, and countless hacks in between.

aspire toward an economy, and an Internet, that is more fully ours.

Jeremy Rifkin, a futurist to CEOs and governments, contends that the Internet-of-things and 3-D printers are ushering in a “zero marginal cost society” in which the “collaborative commons” will be more competitive than extractive corporations.

People are recognizing that doing business differently will require changing who gets to own what.

form of ownership

Cooperative intelligence

Occupy’s kind of direct democracy and made it available to the world in the form of an app — Loomio

It’s a worker-owned cooperative that produces open-source software to help people practice consensus — though they prefer the term “collaboration” — about decisions that affect their lives.

Enspiral, an “open value network” of freelancers and social enterprises devoted to mutual support and the common good.

Rather than giving up on ownership, people are looking for a different way of practicing it.

The worker cooperative is an old model that’s attracting new interest among the swelling precariat masses

Co-ops help ensure that the people who contribute to and depend on an enterprise keep control and keep profits

multi-stakeholder cooperative — one in which not just workers or consumers are voting members, but several such groups at once

“It’s more about hacking an existing legal status and making these hacks work.”

Sensorica pays workers for their contributions to the product. Unlike Sovolve, they participate in the company democratically. Everything from revenues to internal criticism is out in the open, wiki-style, for insiders and outsiders alike to see.

Only one device has been sold

Bitcoin

makes possible decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs,

The most ambitious successor to Bitcoin, Ethereum,

to develop decentralized social networks,

even an entirely new Internet

Swarm’s competition makes it hard not to notice the inequalities built into the models vying to disrupt the status quo. Bitcoin’s micro-economy holds the dubious distinction of being more unequal than the global economy as a whole. On a sharing platform, who owns, and who just rents? In an economy of cooperatives, who gets to be a member, and who gets left out?

Sooner or later, transforming a system of gross inequality and concentrated wealth will require more than isolated experiments at the fringes — it will require capturing that wealth and redirecting its flows. This recognition has been built into some of the most significant efforts under the banner of the so-called “new economy” movement. They’re often offline, but that makes them no less innovative.

connecting them to large anchor institutions in their communities; hospitals and universities with deep pockets can help a new enterprise become viable much more quickly than it can on its own

Government is an important source of support, too. Perhaps more than some go-it-aloners in tech culture might like to admit, a new economy will need new public policies

The early followers Francis of Assisi at first sought to do away with property altogether

There are many ways to own. Simply giving up on ownership, however, will mean that those who actually do own the tools that we rely on to share will control them.

changing what owning means altogether.

Maapallon kantokykyä kuormittaa eniten väestön rikkaimman kymmenosan kulutus sekä tavat, joilla tuotetaan rikkaiden ostamat tavarat ja palvelut. Taloudellisen eriarvoisuuden vaikutus ilmastonmuutoksen on huima: ”Vain 11 prosenttia väestöstä aiheuttaa noin puolet maailman hiilidioksidipäästöistä.”

Läntisten kulutusyhteiskuntien väestö ja kolmannen maailman rikkain eliitti käyttävät lähes 80 prosenttia maailman luonnonvaroista.

Raportissa todetaankin olevan ironista, että nykyisestä ekologisesta kriisistä on päävastuussa se suhteellisen hyvin koulutettu väestöviidennes, joka asuu lähinnä Pohjois-Amerikan, Euroopan, Japanin ja Australian kulutusyhteiskunnissa.

Raportti nostaa yhdeksi suurimmaksi haasteeksi yhteiskunnan ja kulttuurin alueella tapahtuvat muutokset: "Tehtävä ei ole sen vaatimattomampi kuin korvata nykyinen jatkuvaan kasvuun tähtäävä kulttuuri uudella."  Tosin raportti ei pohdi sitä, miten tämä vaatimus liittyy kapitalismiin ja sen tuottamaan pakkoihin.

kilpailu ja jatkuva taloudellisen kasvun vaatimus ovat nykyiseen kapitalistiseen talousjärjestelmään sisään rakennettuja pakkoja.

Kohti kestävyyden kulttuuria

Nykyinen kulutuskulttuuri on olennaisesti syöpynyt länsimaisen ihmisen mentaliteettiin. Mutta se on myös olennaisesti sidoksissa kapitalistisen markkinatalouden pakkoihin.

Makrotaloudellisesti kirjoittajat korostavat nykyisen rahajärjestelmän kestämättömyyttä.  On vaadittava kansallisten ja kansainvälisten rahamarkkinoiden sääntelyä. He varoittavat ekspotentiaalisesti kasvavan velan johtavan systeemin romahtamiseen. Verotuksen osalta raportin kirjoittajat ehdottavat painopisteen siirtämistä ansio- ja pääomatuloista ekosysteemeille "pahojen" asoiden, kuten luonnonvarojen käytön ja saastuttamisen verotuksen kiristämisen suuntaan. Tämän lisäksi heidän mukaansa tulisi ns. ansiottomia tuloja (pääoman normaalituoton ylittävä voitto, maan arvonousu) verottaa raskaammin. Raportissa nähdään progressiivinen verotus ja marginaalivero, jonka tulisi lähestyä sataa prosenttia tulojen kasvaessa äärimmilleen, välttämättömäksi.

Mitkä ovat Worldwatch-instituutin raportin kirjoittajien mielestä edellytykset siirtyä kestävään elämäntapaan? Heidän mielestään ehdoton edellytys on kulutukseen perustuvasta elintavasta luopuminen

Esimerkiksi nostetaan sijoitusyhtiön johtaja Jon Paulson, joka ansaitsi vuonna 2010 4,9 miljardia dollaria. Vaikka hänen veroprosenttinsa olisi ollut 99 prosenttia, niin hänelle olisi jäänyt käteen lähes miljoona dollaria viikossa.

Raportissa lainataan myös johtavan saksalaisen Wuppertal Instituten vanhempaa tutkijaa Wolfgang Sachsia, joka on esittänyt synkän realistisen kuvan siitä, miten kasvulle perustuva kehitys voi säilyä vielä joitakin vuosikymmeniä kansainvälisen politiikan johtotähtenä, jos maailmanlaajuinen apartheid hyväksytään.

Ekologisen vastarinnan kysymykset

on pohdittava myös ”laittomia taktiikoita, jotta ympäristöuhat voidaan pysäyttää”.

Ongelmana on se, että poliittiset järjestelmät eivät ole kyenneet pysäyttämään tuhoisaa kehitystä. Sen vuoksi raportin kirjoittajan mukaan ”vallitsevaa lakia ja järjestystä on toisinaan lupa ja jopa pakko vastustaa”. Esimerkeiksi nostetaan historiasta Gandhin, Martin Luther Kingin ja Nelson Mandelan toiminta.  Artikkelin lopussa lainataan filosofi Henry David Thoreauta: ”Jos mitään kadun, niin hyvää käytöstäni. Miksi pirussa käyttäydyin niin hyvin?” Artikkeli päättyy toteamukseen: Kysymys on ajankohtainen kaikille.

The organization is structured as a worker co­op, and operates by consensus with a membership comprised of representatives from other worker co­ops.

Even though only 1% of the cooperatives in the United States are worker owned, their organizing success has recently made them a focal point in the struggle for economic justice. Indeed, Occupy Wall Street participants launched a worker-run co-op print shop in Brooklyn called OccuCopy.

Guided by cooperative principle number six, which promotes cooperation amongst cooperatives, partnerships between co­ops were easily realized. They multiplied and soon turned to regional alliances, which snowballed into national networks.

Inspired by the Mondragon cooperative network, the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC) came together in Western Massachusetts in 2005. The group first met at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives Eastern Conference on Workplace Democracy, and they are a direct result of national networks crystallizing at the regional level. What sets VAWC apart is a strategy of co­op-led development. The organization helps start­up or transitioning co­ops get their footing; they provide technical assistance to their membership in the form of skill­sharing and professional guidance.

VAWC recently launched an inter­cooperative loan fund. Through the fund, members tithe 5% of profits to help one another and to invest in new co­op ventures.

information and resources according to the membership’s needs, such as meeting facilitation, or research into health plans

VAWC enjoys an exceptionally cooperative cultural context in the Pioneer Valley, where there is a strong desire for economic democracy, and a history of collective management.

As many look for ways out of the capitalist morass of boom­-bust cycles, worker cooperatives have taken center stage. Cooperatives are democratic enterprises where both ownership and decision­-making power are democratically shared. As a result, they keep money and power in the hands of the community.

A stunningly large network—nearly one out of every five U.S. worker co­ops are part of NoBAWC —most member co­ops are in Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley. Like other membership organizations, NoBAWC grew out of a need to collaborate and share best practices amongst like­-minded organizations.

The members now share resources and incentivize collaboration by offering each other reduced rates on their goods and services.

As the first and primary national hub, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) brings together the full array of players within this movement. After many years of organizing, they were incorporated in 2004 to provide support to their membership, as well as educational outreach to the public. A small organization with a two­-person staff, USFWC’s extensive work to promote cooperation puts them in the center of a dynamic movement.

regular conferences and events

A similarly rich cooperative culture exists across the country, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, or NoBAWC (pronounced "no boss"), is a hub for the region, literally centralized within 30 minutes of each member organization.

USFWC capably handles a membership representing over 1,300 workers

the Democracy At Work Network (DAWN), a peer adviser system

The co­op movement is gaining steam, drawing from new energies and a renewed interest in the model. All movements have these periods of acceleration, times when opportunity comes knocking at every turn. Typically, such are the times when reflection is most needed, because new dynamics can dramatically change the situation.

David Morgan is a worker-owner at the Toolbox for Education and Social Action, a worker-owned cooperative created to democratize education and the economy while furthering the cooperative movement. The Toolbox designs curriculum and next-generation resources for learning, such as Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives."

In Turkey, protesters have been taking to the streets and clashing with riot police for over two weeks in response to government attempts to tear down the trees and resurrect an old Ottoman-era barracks at the location of Istanbul’s beloved Gezi Park.

Now, protests over similar seemingly “trivial” local grievances are sparking mass demonstrations elsewhere. In Brazil, small-scale protests against a hike in transportation fees in Sao Paulo revealed the extreme brutality of the police force

Meanwhile, in Sarajevo, the inability of a family to obtain travel ID for their sick baby — who needs urgent medical attention that she cannot receive in Bosnia-Herzegovina — exposed the fundamental flaws at the heart of the nominally democratic post-Yugoslavian state. On June 5, while the government was busy negotiating with foreign bankers to attract new investment, thousands of people occupied parliament square, temporarily locking the nation’s politicians up inside and forcing the prime minister to escape through a window.

Fed up with increasing inflation, crumbling infrastructure and stubbornly high inequality and crime rates, many Brazilians are simply outraged that the government is willing to invest billions into pharaonic projects that do not only ignore the people’s plight but actively undermine it.

After four nights of violent repression this week, the protests now appear to be gaining momentum.

On Friday, Bulgaria joined the budding wave of struggles that began in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 and that was recently revived through the Turkish uprising. After the appointment of media (and mafia) mogul Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security, tens of thousands took to the streets of Sofia and other cities throughout the country to protest his appointment, which was approved by parliament without any debate and with a mere 15 minutes between his nomination and his (pre-guaranteed) election.

Greece, in the meantime, finally appears to have been waken up from its austerity-induced slumber. Following the decision of the Troika’s neoliberal handmaiden, Antonis Samaras, to shut down the state’s public broadcaster ERT overnight and to fire its 2,700 workers without any warning whatsoever, the workers of ERT simply occupied the TV and radio stations and continued to emit their programs through livestreaming, making ERT the first worker-run public broadercaster in Europe.

At first sight, it may seem like these protests are all simply responses to local grievances and should be read as such. But while each context has its own specificities that must be taken into account, it would be naive to discard the common themes uniting them.

If we take a closer look at each of the protests, we find that they are not so local after all. In fact, each of them in one way or another deals with the increasing encroachment of financial interests and business power on traditional democratic processes, and the profound crisis of representation that this has wrought.

In a word, what we are witnessing is what Leonidas Oikonomakis and I have called the resonance of resistance: social struggles in one place in the world transcending their local boundaries and inspiring protesters elsewhere to take matters into their own hands and defy their governments in order to bring about genuine freedom, social justice and real democracy.

Now that has come to an end. A new Left has risen, inspired by a fresh autonomous spirit that has long since cleansed itself of the stale ideological legacies and collective self-delusions that animated the political conflicts of the Cold War and beyond. One chant of the protesters in Sao Paulo revealed it all: “Peace is over, Turkey is here!”

This is about remarking on the battleground itself: big cities, not nations, as the symbolic and political space for the network society.

In SP, and especially in Istanbul, the mobilizations have had a clear discourse on the development of state authoritarianism

they don’t see themselves reflected or recognized in the social discourse, which is now outdated. The struggles for public space in Istanbul or for access to transportation in Sao Paulo are a lot more than mere municipal policies

But the leaders — and beneficiaries — of this growth, a precarious first generation of a new middle class, lives a hard, intense life, between low-paying jobs and constant training.

turns toward the authoritarian development of the nation-state

movements on the digital, social and even geographic periphery, have created their own centrality and their own logic, which we can summarize in three points as we look to the future:

The starting point and point of conflict with power is in the closest urban policies.

The demands are concrete and clear, and could, in fact, be satisfied by a local administration, but they summarize a much broader social situation

the debate

This authoritarian drift, paired with a reactionary discourse on intellectual property that criminalizes a generation which has made P2P culture a mark of daily identity, seems to be the only way the nation-state knows how to react technological change, trying to exclude, both in the present and in the future, those who somehow feel they could share as they build.

Istanbul and Sao Paulo are a step into a new phase of distributed social movements