Reed C. Kinney responding to, P2P Accounting For Planetary Survival, by Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis
[The page numbers included below correspond to those on the PDF, Accounting for Planetary Survival]
The Bauwens “Commons,” is “misplaced.” Rather, the commons is contingent upon decentralized, self-managed, place-based, sovereign communities.
Bauwens assures the reader that the P2P format does not intervene in the Self-determination of decentralized economic social organization, DESO; except that all must agree upon the undisclosed “P2P way of life,” “its” digitized, global monetized organization, global, “open ledgers,” and P2P “distributive” ideology, all managed by the well meaning techno-specialists at the “central office.” The P2P plan is insidious, the harbinger of globalized totalitarianism. I will explain that conclusion in this critique.
DESO communities and confederations are inter-communicated to the degree needed for the permanence and expansion of their decentralized civilization. DESO monetized organization is exclusive to itself, and is effective for community and confederation self-capitalization.
The technological “juggernaut” that Michael Bauwens alludes to is “built on sand,” proportional to the availability of diesel. And were P2P realized, its expansion would cause significant increases of critical minerals extraction.
The technology of “Midlevel Europe” is more than adequate for local, food self-sufficient, productive communities. And, add; local, natural powered, renewable electricity, which would enable specialized production.
At the end of the Bronze Age in England, bronze was recycled for a century; and then, another century generalizing Iron. Stone tools filled the gaps. Nonetheless, whatever is worthy of preservation from western civilization, in the way of knowledge and investigation, is welcomed while “that” contributes to the permanence of decentralized civilization.
51 – Bauwens, “Chapter 2 Tools and technologies for integrated, fair, and sustainable ecosystems of production... Introduction”
Responding to page 53: P2P has three administrative departments, each inaccessible to the people. The executive department is shacked to amoral computerized instruments for monitoring and measuring planetary human activity, particularly production and distribution. In the P2P context, all productive agency, material and non material, is “rewarded” with “tokens;” particularly important is “spontaneous” kindness that is noted and rewarded with “tokens.” (Pavlovian)
B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two is Behaviorism applied to humanity. In the P2P context, those benefitted by that techno -“hyper-object,” would feel the significant enforcement needed to preserve the “operation.” In the P2P context everyone delivers functions to society, “freely,” in the context of exacerbated, universal alienation by grace of both direct and subliminal conditioning deployed from the “central office,” and its “intelligence” matrix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
Total conformity to any regime cannot be “induced” by “sleight of hand.” Fascism uses the people as the means to private objectives, and deploys rhetoric structured to induce fear, or apprehension, of false dangers, “opening” the subconscious to succor from the “higher authority,” the spokesmen for that ideology, who, by repeating, scripted “suggestions,” always increasing subjective psychosis (a crime against humanity) so that “loyal,” uncritical minions are created.
Responding to p. 54;
DESO contains its autonomous “open ledger” in the mutual community bank, MCB, spanning all enclaves of DESO communities. DESO monetized organization is designed to function for the specific context of small, egalitarian communities and their confederations. Two experts reviewed the model:
“Fred Foldvary, lecturer, Economist at San Jose State University, discussed economics with me. He read my early economic format and said, “It’s good.” I appreciate his kind encouragement. ....
With gratitude to my friend, Hernán Garza Villarreal, Telecommunications and Financial Inclusion Expert, graciously evaluated the model for the DESO Mutual Community Bank and concluded that it is “well thought out,” and functional for its intended purpose. (Ideology of Decentralized Civilization and Egalitarian Community..., Acknowledgments, p. 18,)
Responding to pp. 55 – 58:
Rather than designing the groundwork for local production for local use, P2P assumes that existing production and distribution should be managed “externally” by a global, computerized “demiurge.”
Responding to p. 58:
The people’s economy, while dependent on markets, is distracted from food self-sufficiency in community. DESO’s food self-sufficiency in community, and its production based economy, would benefit from temporal, inter confederation agreements. Confederations are self-managed by respectively sovereign communities. Transparency into the production and distribution of other confederations is needless, a distraction from the self-management of each community’s and confederations’ permanent, internal economy.
Economic mutualism for the food self-sufficiency of each community (and confederation) is the ground of sovereignty, and economic mutualism is the subsequent economic premise. The conditions needed for decentralized civilization are incommensurable with P2P “distributive ideology.”
DESO integrates Nature. The individuation of each person is contingent upon the economic premise of economic mutualism.
The impasse between DESO and P2P is met at this juncture:
Regarding page 58...
An excerpt from my book, Ideology of Decentralized Civilization and Egalitarian Community...
“The Ambiguity of Technology
“The Ambiguity of Technology is Manageable [“Public power” in this excerpt, is meant to mean community, communal power.]
Other ideas can come into play regarding these formulations, including, for convenience, the computerized management of recorded, MCB reserves and their transfers.
The physical exchanges facilitated by community paper currency cannot be digitalized. That paper currency’s accrued value can be recorded in either computer files, or in “hard copy” ledgers, at community discretion.
Electronic systems of organization can be invasive, alienating people by overreaching their understanding. This model for decentralized monetized organization can function, using pre-electronic accounting methods, simple enough for the people’s self-management. It functions in the specific context of DESO’s internal, production-based economy. DESO’s flexible, work-based, monetized organization is a municipal service within the democratized economy of decentralized civilization.
The Exchange Element, EE, of decentralized civilization surpasses commodities and exchange-value. The Exchange Element of community in decentralized civilization is self-realization, self-actualization, self-fulfillment, individuation in the context of economic mutualism and conviviality, community in Nature.
Artificial intelligence has reached the developmental level of self-teaching and learning with mass data. Artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are monopolized by the powerful private concerns of mass centralist society within the class of wealth. Advanced technologies can be used to entrench universal alienation. Cybernetic systems require management by specialists. Invariably, positions of control attract interlopers and private concerns.
The danger posed to decentralization is that such systems when deployed in conjunction with controlling the vital sectors of the economy can be used for intervening in public power, subsequently endangering public, economic social power. The people in decentralized civilization must be universally educated to the point of understanding technology well enough to maintain its civic organizations within the parameters of self-managed public power. The efficiency of the civic economy is not compromised while its technology is controlled by the community.
The militia of the confederation must use modern technology to defend their civilization. That prospect opens caveats that must be dealt with by the constitutionally confederated communities to prevent internal, centralized power from outreaching their control.
Culture [economic premise] determines the development and the application of technology.
Nonetheless, “…there can be unintended consequences of introducing new technologies, and technologies are often highly ambiguous and contradictory, combining positive and negative functions and effects.” (Douglas Kellner, New Technologies and Alienation: Some Critical Reflections, p. 5)
Ambiguous and contradictory technology is rendered manageable in the context of decentralized civilization by virtue of its Constitution of the Confederation that defends the wellbeing of the subsequent seven generations. Enforcing the articles of the Constitution of the Confederation is the responsibility of its sovereign communities, which responsibility is shared equally in decentralized civilization.
The public structure for reaching unanimity in a production-based economy generates wisdom from their people, “born from” their “spiritual communion” with Nature. Technology and its applications are self-managed by each independent, sovereign community in conjunction with their confederation. For “us,” the significance of human evolution, and its meaning, is experiential; economic complementarianism self-validates the Sacredness of Life.” (Ideology of Decentralized Civilization and Egalitarian Community...,” pp. 62-64)
59 - Bauwens, “More specifically, Holochain creates the conditions that may allow diverse economic entities to mutualize and share resources more freely and agree on common rules of conduct that can be enforced in a P2P fashion.” (Bauwens)
It’s a “smoke screen (!)” behind which is full mobilization for technocratic totalitarianism.
There is no need for that. P2P is a distraction, ignoring the fundaments of human sanity, which is contextually embedded in place-based, egalitarian community, culturally attentive to Nature’s directives, which are immediate and grounded in natural, far reaching ecosystems.
DESO expands spontaneously and exponentially, sophisticated savants with communal praxis. DESO needs Land, and primary resources, and always more people.
The people that will actualize DESO will be attentive to whatever contributes to their social economic permanence, and expansion; inherent in DESO are self-duplicating, “fractal” components.
To the degree needed, electrification would be local from natural powers, salvaged and recyclable minerals for components, used for specific production. P2P and AI cannot exist in an electronically disconnected, “hostile,” environment.
Nonetheless, western technology and infrastructures are needed for dismantling WMD safely, disposing of ionized radiation safely, mitigating ionized radiation “hemorrhages,” toxic waste, and for stifling extraction.
The P2P thesis is generally coherent within its own context; however, it is not contextually related to Nature. P2P obliges everyone’s conformity to its totalitarianism through planned and controlled Behavior Modification. * Thereby, facilitating the “free” capitalization of its anonymous, “decentralized,” global, bureaucratic autocracy.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_modification
The “vision” of this P2P presentation is too generalized for realization. The P2P economic proposition pertains to an exclusivist administration alien to the people.
60 – Bauwens, “Contributors of value to the network are rewarded with tokens, which in turn gain their value from the usability of the application offered. Subsequently, tokens may also be circulated among different decentralized organizations in the ecosystem to support or benefit from each other’s services.”
The P2P coercive, “token” “rewards system” is colonialism “in sheep’s clothing.”
DESO is an internally expansive, non-coercive economy, in communalism. All of the “virtues” and benefits claimed by P2P as among its objectives are inherent in the model for DESO.
61 – “Tools for Circulation and Exchange “
“Open source ecology” by Marcin Jakubowski, is among the components of the model for DESO. https://www.opensourceecology.org/marcin-jakubowski/
63 - Bauwens, “Regardless of its limited scope, it showcases how small-group dynamics of high-trust communities can be scaled on a global level, facilitated by a technological infrastructure that embodies their shared values and aspirations.”
The apologia is appreciated. The model for DESO already delivers the alleged purposes of P2P, and more. The matter of scale, and time, is moot, because P2P is undeliverable. The model for DESO is the method for actualizing a biophilic economy of the people, by the people, for the people.
66 – “Circles: A decentralized basic income”
DESO delivers a sane, self-capitalized modus vivendi for everyone.
DESO begins at the first roundtables for independence from western civilization.
P2P is static, a “fixed,” redundant, “hyper object;” enforcing “its” “arbitrary” rules.
By contrast, DESO is flexible, always able to respond to emerging reality from its position of independence, the volition of the people alone, which is more than enough to cover the P2P “bases,” and much more.
The urgency of globalization is that fascists do not recognize themselves, and can pander ecological rhetoric independent from the fundamental condition of Life at large. P2P cybernetic technology cannot be generalized, fully integrating the individual, except through unrelenting terror (Orwell, 1984). “Minions” are not part of the objective for regenerative agriculture. Quite the opposite is the case.
67 - Bauwens, “The Envienta framework is composed of: a) a platform, as a unique interface for the management of user accounts and projects; b) an innovation hub, mapping a global network of maker-spaces and their respective capabilities; and c) an education system, oriented towards the sharing of knowledge and solutions in an online facilitated environment.” (Underline, mine)
That “online facilitated environment” is a prospective option for the class of wealth for maintaining economic social “control,” while conveniently “side-stepping” moral responsibility by transferring that domain to allegedly impersonal, “a-political,” transnational, AI programmed economic social systems, enabling global totalitarianism.
The most powerful economic condition of communal food self-sufficiency is the structured opposite of P2P. Although DESO “nests” (alleged) P2P “precepts,” it does so via the economic premise of economic mutualism.
P2P’s “education system” would divorce children from objective reality in order to “breathe life” into that needless “hyper object,” ad infinitum. I think that P2P “taxes” “contributors’” by controlling economic social options. P2P requires a “dominant group.” And, AI designated, people subversive to that domination are eliminated.
In decentralized civilization psychopathic initiatives can’t hide for long, and the confederated organization establishes that the people cannot coexist with private, executive power; obdurate traitors are executed at the grand council, in front of everyone.
Nonetheless, empathetic cultures integrate idiosyncratic personalities. In decentralized civilization the Peace of empathetic culture provides community support for individuation. In that scenario, the widest spectrums of values coexist; tested in community openly. Whatever mastery, aesthetics, self validated psychic perception, contribute to, or do not interfere with; the permanence of DESO’s self-realization (self-realizational civilization) are applauded by all, and in “kinship” with Nature; always producing beautiful cultural creations for the sake of Life.
73 - Bauwens, “...intelligent environmental monitoring”
I agree, since that is an essential part of DESO at all levels of consideration. Support for Ability is always needed.
Responding to page 74:
In the model for DESO; if anyone, or family, for whatever reason, want to depart from decentralized civilization, such people can give their holdings to loved ones, sell them to community persons, or the community or confederation purchases their holdings; and, if needed, their community will “grubstake” them, at whatever location.
77 – “Evolution of Accounting”
78 – “Chapter 3 Evolution of Accounting”
79 – Bauwens, “...the types of institutions that can foster sustainable forms of social production.”
DESO does not generate “institutions,” per se. Distinctions must be made between communal organization and “institutionalization.” Confederated, matrifocal culture does not permit the institutionalization of private, executive power. Everyone in community is both responsible, and supported. Each person is viewed as values maker, as well as being their own, respective, authority. Realizing sociosensual cultures is an ideal, and a quest (relevant to, Darcia Narvaez).
80 – “WHICH KIND OF MONEY DO WE NEED?”
82 - Bauwens, “Our thesis is that in order to reward all the participants in P2P economic activity, and thus to incentivize contributions and make participation sustainable for everyone, we need to do contribution accounting: record everyone’s contribution, evaluate these contributions, and calculate every participant’s fair share. This method for redistribution of benefits must be established at the beginning of the economic process, in a transparent way. It constitutes a contract among participants, and it allows them to estimate their rewards in relation with their efforts. We call this the contribution accounting system.””
By contrast, DESO is structured to deliver a guaranteed minimum standard of service, GMSS, at each person’s need, and discretion. This is feasible, because community women self-manage their community, communal surplus production, and distribution; easily accomplished with fewer than five hundred to each sovereign community. The confederation’s municipal services are generous.
88 – “Reporting 3.0... Direct access to a representation of matter and energy flows in interconnected supply chains”
The P2P economic proposition robs the people’s self-agency for local, economic self-management.
93 –“Accounting for Impact and Externalities”
DESO’s production-based economy can begin by accessing appropriate conventional production facilities, scaled for community use... suppliers are accessed for DESO, more importantly; Marcin Jakubowski relies on stranded, recyclable, salvageable minerals for his small foundry, and their “multi-machines,” “flexible machines;” each can be reassembled different ways to function variously, only requiring the knowledge of a normal mechanic. Community tool production is essential for operating small holdings.
Land, primary resources, and people are the foundation of Independence.
“Measure and counter measure,” cannot be exerted, unless, from a position of decentralized independence. The “market” does not exist in DESO, per se; local production for local use. The community “Importation” of some materials is sometimes necessary with direct trade, or with community support (Mutual Community Bank, Federal Reserve Notes Department [JAK model of Sweden]), which is expected.
“The Jews do not have a country, so wealth is their country.” Israel is secondary to Zionists, because the compulsion for executive power is realized with capital wealth.
The Divergent Perspective from P2P
“OUR OBJECTIVE
Our objective is to annul exclusivist power through the creation of decentralized, production-based society that is self-managed by its members with Authentic Democracy. In production-based economy, work relations are actualized through the equal ownership of, and the self-management of the vital sectors of their economy [civic-economy]. Conviviality is spontaneous within that permanent independence. Their intention is the courageous, generous, individuated self-realization, self-actualization, of all members and the cultural growth of their community. In that civilization, self-realization is the most valued Exchange Element. Mature happiness in conviviality is genuine wealth, consequent of economic mutualism.
Each community’s productive forces generate non-material rewards, the cream of human aspiration, responsible love; love integrated with fear produces fearlessness, expansive, humane self-identities, courage, and generosity being the greatest expression of courage [ideas, Four Arrows]. Paulo Freire said something to the effect that, our primary vocation is to always become more human.
Through the community educational organization, throughout its participatory society, the division of labor, so to speak, is actualized through the natural predilections of each member. People want to grow in skill and knowledge for their individuated satisfaction, effectiveness with recognition, and for the greater good.
Ephemeralization, more production from less input, which is what technology and science provide, serves in the community’s best interest. Theoretically, there reaches a point where the Guaranteed Minimum Standard of Service easily meets members’ existential needs. That is well and good, leaving more discretionary time for greater cultural productivity and individuated development in conviviality.
Nonetheless, members never lose sight of the structured foundation of their community organization, which is the source of their independence, their sovereignty, and their safety. The importance of that cannot be overstated. Community in DESO is antithetical to any form of institutionalized, centralized power concentrated beyond the control of the people.
Confederated Communities cooperate and work concertedly to safe-guard global, environmental safety; and global services such as the prevention and control of diseases, whatever members agree is needed, but with marked discrimination - “Lord” deliver us from the horrors of centralized power concentrated beyond the control of the people.
THE EXCHANGE ELEMENT OF A CIVILIZATION DETERMINES ITS SOCIAL STRUCTURES
The subsequent civilization is based on an entirely different Exchange Element, and because of that, its entire socioeconomic structure differs from that of the former civilization. Community in decentralized civilization uses self-realization, self-actualization, individuated and cultural, as its Exchange Element. That is the reason for adopting dialogical consensus-based community decision making processes, Authentic Democracy. That is the reason for creating a production-based economy. In community in decentralized civilization, Authentic Democracy and education through art are integral to its Superstructures, its productive forces, and its means of production. The purpose of that type of organization is to engender individuated self-realization, and cultural self-realization, in conjunction with economic stability.
The development of technology, in and of itself, is not the cause of civilizational advance. The Exchange Element of a civilization is what determines its social structures. In commodity-based civilization the exchange-element is exchange-value, debt-based money, which is its capital. To ever-expand private capital for the few owners of the vital sectors of the economy is implicit in its productive forces and in its material means of production, to the exclusion of all other considerations. In the absence of mutualism, work relations are exploitative, and communication is market oriented, or war directed. Media reports include instigated, mortal shocks that distract the people from the corporate takeover of their country, its accompanying ecological destruction, and the scrapping of their legal protections from tyranny. The goal of centralized, economic-political power is the private monopolization of all resources for the purpose of universal tyranny, psychopathology.
However, regardless of their alienated condition, there is discontent among people regarding their existential needs going unmet and the amount of violence used to keep them atomized, disorganized, and distracted. A saving grace of technology is that it facilitates modern communication among people cognizant of the prevailing circ*mstances, who respond constructively, each within their capability, to contribute to decentralization.
The Spirit of the new civilization is self-realization, individuated and cultural. There is no class division in community in decentralized society. Class oppression is not needed for realizing maximum productivity that meets the needs of community and confederated communities. Members decide what production is needed to provide their guaranteed minimum standard of service, and then, once attained, they maintain it (production-based economy). Community members strive to produce what they need without causing undue damage to the ecosystems and the biosphere that they depend on for the permanence of their modus vivendi. *
* The way that a person or group of people lives with their means to sustenance, a practical arrangement that allows for diverse values among its people – that allows potentially conflicting people to coexist.
Temporal, inter-community cooperation develops into permanent confederation, which is essential for the respective, economic stability and cultural growth of each community. Permanent confederation requires that all communities produce the surpluses needed to afford it.
Confederated confederations, temporal and permanent, are essential for coherence among numerous community confederations. The benefits of that kind of organization include effective health services, scientific research, higher education, and the concrete defense of the sovereignty of each community. DESO adapts readily to changing conditions.
Community militia is participatory and “information based,” not exclusively authoritarian. (9) (See: chapter four)
INDOCTRINATION, DOES NOT EXIST IN DESO
Creating an unalienated civilization includes shaking off the indoctrination of our “commodity-based” civilization. “Prescription”, indoctrination, does not exist in DESO, no institutionalized religious dogma, no transnational corporations, and no centralist governments. Prescription is a weapon used by centralized power to dominate people’s lives. It imposes fear and shock to prevent rational thinking. DESO and prescription are incompatible.
Four Arrows has provided volumes that include the means of simple, structured, self-hypnosis processes that restore mental health; health stemming from our innate, life affirming affinity in Nature. Despite distress, Love is there.” (Ideology of Decentralized Civilization and Egalitarian Community..., pp. 161 – 163)
P2P BEHAVIORISM is based on the “induced,” mental “lock step” for supporting the management of the “token” incentive, the incentive for “spontaneous” kindness. (Pavlovian)
94 – Bauwens, “Positive social externalities are contributions that bring value to a productive project and that are generally not recognized, for example, domestic and care work is not recognized as ‘valuable’ by market society”
Bauwens view is patriarchic, or the first association in his mind would have been “housewifery” as slavery (Abdullah Ocalan).
94 - Bauwens, “Negative environmental externalities are the unrecognized damage done by economic entities. There is presently no systemic way to finance such generative activities, i.e., those that produce positive outcomes or help repair or undo negative ones, except for financing through taxation and philanthropy, which are not structurally integrated in the production process itself.”
Western civilization is profit oriented; absent the prospect of short term profit, investment is withheld.
For meeting start up costs, DESO welcomes external, philanthropic support, which capital would be used to create DESO’s “internal economy,” independent from the conventional, central bank.
Modern, electronic technology enabled the global tree survey, “senses,” which is a valuable service. There are yet, inaccessible places with forests, significantly more trees than were expected.
97 - Bauwens, “A potential application of the Regen model could be in regenerative agriculture, which encompasses a system of farming principles and practices that increase biodiversity, enrich the soil, improve watersheds, and enhance ecosystem services. For instance, no-till farming has been widely discussed as a farming practice that enhances soil quality and reduces the risk of erosion....
In this context, Regen can provide methods to differentiate between till and no-till farming, using remote sensing and GIS, to assess agricultural lands and monitor the long-term changes in soil health due to these management practices. These data can be embedded in different ESPs to determine desired ecological outcomes and linked to the use of these practices. In turn, farms that adhere to regenerative practices according to the sequestration results they yield can be financially rewarded using the XRN token system.” (Bauwens)
The instruments you envision for monitoring and “rewarding” the conforming “diggers” supposes an absence of self-managed community. “Open source ecology” already exists on the internet. As demonstrated by the Indigenous, autonomous colleges are expected. Education in that context includes an evolving culture, the community “Life Plan,” with science, and the “science of man” (Martin Buber), not to mention cultural affinity with Nature.
There is one option, the reconstruction of the Indigenous for contemporary times.
97 – Bauwens, “...to achieve global carbon drawdown.”
“...carbon drawdown” is inherent in the model for the reconstruction of the Indigenous for contemporary times, and much more. Confederations would have enough coherent force to impact, to effectively overturn mass centralist society’s glaring dangers.
98 - Bauwens, “The Common Good Accounting System: Competing for positive impact”
Disconnected from Life and no further comment
99 - Bauwens, “Multi-layer integration: How the new technologies fit together...”
The heightened degree of alienation that is required for life within the P2P controlled, economic social system is an untenable prospect, and one that raises mental health issues.
P2P intends to manage all production and distribution externally, thereby reducing damage to the natural environment. However, Bauwens admits the enormous amount of capital investment needed for the actualization of P2P. The magnitude of the project’s immediate impact on the extraction of critical minerals, with diesel, is another consideration.
Techno-utopian P2P is a “dead end road,” and a closed “philosophy.” Whether well intentioned, or planned obfuscation; P2P’s administration (position of control) is easily occupied by private concerns, amoral criminality posing as “God.”
102 – Bauwens, “Production for social needs within planetary boundaries”
102 – Footnote, 108. ... ““Helotism” characterizes the ability for any member to have horizontal knowledge of what the others are doing, but also the vertical knowledge related to the aims of the project...”
Michel, that “ability for any member” is exclusive to decentralized, place-based, egalitarian community in decentralized civilization. In DESO, the “horizontal knowledge of what the others are doing” is inherent, as is the “vertical knowledge” of participatory organization. The ontology of decentralized civilization includes the integration of spirit and corporality.
103 – Bauwens, “Productive communities may, thereby, decide how to reward contributions and develop mechanisms for the recognition of multiple forms of value, thus enhancing their value sovereignty.”
Sovereign community in decentralized civilization has no need of external, “interfaced” “bulletin boards,” nor any need for external, economic social administration, and rejects, external, enforceable rules. Within its own context, as noted above, DESO meets all of the economic social and environmental targets professed by P2P.
Responding to 103 -
Stigmergy:
Stigmergy is a word used to describe a particular type of control: the control of the actions of a group of agents via a shared environment. Crucially, the agents do not directly communicate amongst themselves. Instead, each agent is caused (by its environment) to act upon and change the environment. These changes in turn alter the later actions of the agents.
The P2P “engineered” economy is managed from behind “closed doors” for shaping human behavior via “conditioning,” reward and punishment, Behaviorism. People would be “shaped” into uncritical “contributors,” “cogs,” in a cybernetic, “synthetic,” economic social mechanism that “values” “obedience” to its static, impersonal “status quo.”
104 - Bauwens, “As these techno-social solutions remain at the nascent stage, market pricing is expected to remain dominant.”
104 – Bauwens, “In this context, a potentially useful concept is that of “functional governance,” i.e., a form of governance based on the direct management of matter-energy flows in a given system, including their use and exchange.”
The specter of a totalitarian central government “managing” production and distribution, and all “use and exchange” is diabolical.
104 - Bauwens, “Finally, mutual coordination may be permission-less; however, it takes place within a sphere determined by planetary boundaries which must, to a certain degree, be coercive to ensure the survival of the planet and its beings.” (Bauwens)
This proposition supposes complete surveillance and monitoring of all transactions material and social.
104 – Bauwens, “Kate Raworth in her book The Doughnut Economics (2018), provides...” generalizations, not any method for actualization.
108 – 109 – Bauwens, “In conclusion, we have described here a new type of economy that is defined by:
1) [Bauwens,] “...an increasing importance of free (as in freedom) forms of mutual coordination mechanisms, enabled through shared infrastructures;
2) a sphere of circulation and exchange of matter and energy flows, informed by monetary signals which are connected to social and ecological constraints; and
3) ...a layer of planning frameworks determining biophysical thresholds and allocations.” (Bauwens,)
“...determining biophysical thresholds...” relevant to the Land’s carrying capability weighed against human productivity are concerns inherent within community and confederation. Effective coexistence with Nature is best demonstrated by the Indigenous living in the Dao, with the least amount of technology (Freya Mathews).
From my perspective, Bauwens P2P thesis is nominally concerned with humanity and Nature, but is mostly about the prospect of global command and control of production and distribution; for its own sake, managed by an elite group of “well meaning,” no less alienated specialists, inaccessible to the people, and subject to the “needs” of private concerns.
Behaviorism applied to humanity by “external” powers is evil. P2P’s redeeming factor is the impossibility of its actualization. Nonetheless, there is a point to pursuing this inquiry.
109 – Bauwens, “Finally, it is broadly regulated by a Partner State that enables personal and social autonomy, while setting the boundaries in which free association can occur.”
This is a ruse, reminiscent of classic dystopias. In the movie Bananas, by Woody Allen; the dictator commands that, “Everyone must change their underwear daily, and must wear them on the outside so we can check.”
DESO has no need of electronic “distributive ledgers.” DESO is integral, and place based with Nature.
When something of value is determined, it is coveted by amoral criminals.
However, distinctions must be made as to the place of Evil, which is a “thing.” Evil when controlled subjectively by having integrated one’s “hidden complexes” into consciousness, as normal “reference points,” memory, removes their emotive force. Evil’s “place” is contingent on one’s awareness and conscious control, to the extent capable. That does not make it any less evil, but less destructive. One can be “sensitive” to “influxes” of external, evil influences, and deflect them. Also, by integrating one’s evil, evil in one’s immediate surroundings is “disarmed” (ideas Alfred Ribi). But beware, “it” must be watched for, nonetheless. In an emergency, when fearlessness is self-agency, then, transcending morality could be an asset.
By contrast, a devil is one who harbors no “internal” “moral conflict” with the Devil, “transcending” both “good” and Evil, an amoral criminal (idea, Alfred Ribi). Tyranny is not the way to a future.
Best regards,
Reed C. Kinney
