[ox-en] Material peer production (Part 4: What Difference Does It Make?)
- From: Christian Siefkes <christian siefkes.net>
- Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:47:26 +0100
Hi list,
This part concludes my series. Thanks for your patience.
We have seen that it is indeed possible to generalize peer production to
material production in such a way that its essential traits--it is based on
contributions, on free cooperation, and on commons and possession--are
preserved. So far, peer production has been largely limited to the
immaterial sphere of information goods, but this limitation is not
essential and might sooner or later disappear.
At this point, the reader might be inclined to ask: So what? So we can
either have an economy based on markets (a _market economy_, a.k.a.
_capitalism_) or an economy based on peer production (a _peer economy_),
but, in the end: what difference would it make?
The core difference is that the peer economy _directly_ achieves the goal
which the market achieves only _indirectly_ (if at all): fulfilling
people's _needs and desires,_ making it possible for them to get what they
want to have and to live the way they want to live. In the peer economy,
you cooperate with others to get the goods you like to have, while in the
market economy you produce one thing to get money which _then_ allows you
to get other things. _Peer production cuts out the middle layer--the need
to sell so you can buy._ This change goes very deep, since in capitalism
the apparently harmless middle layer (the need to make money) takes over
and becomes the primary goal of production, shifting the original goal
(fulfilling people's needs and desires) into the background.
In the market, you need money to get the goods you like to buy. If you
don't have enough money, you need to sell something, and if you don't have
anything else, you need to sell your own labor power. But if nobody wants
your labor power, you are out of luck. You are _unemployed_ and will
generally remain poor and unable to get most of the things you would like
to have.
In peer production, _there is no exchange, and hence no need to have
anything to sell._ You will often be expected to spend some effort to get
the things you like to have, but this is only to _contribute_ your share to
the overall effort. If there is nothing left to do, there is no reason to
work, hence the term "unemployment" does not even make sense in the context
of a peer economy. People might _expect_ you to contribute (in order to
reduce their own workload), but they will also _allow_ you to contribute
(for the very same reason).
With exchange, you must have something to sell that others want to buy
(your labor power, if nothing else), and you have to _compete_ with others
who have to do the same. But in a contribution-based economy, you don't
have to out-compete your co-contributors: instead, they will just "move
over" to let you take your part of the overall effort, because it makes
sense for them to do so. In the peer economy, _there is no need to
out-compete the others. But there are still incentives to do better,_ such
as your desire to decrease your workload or to increase your reputation.
This is due to the fact that _peer production is demand-driven, while
market production is profit-driven._ In peer production, things are
produced and services are organized if there are people who want to have
them and who are willing to jointly spend the effort that is necessary to
get them. There is no need to out-compete anybody in order to reach these
aims--on the contrary, cooperation with those who pursue similar goals will
generally be advantageous for reaching your goals, since it can allow you
to improve your efficiency and reduce your workload.
On the other hand, in the market economy, which is based on the _exchange_
of products produced by independent private producers competing with each
other, each producer _must_ try to out-compete its competitors, otherwise
they will fail to sell their products and lose in the market. Companies
_have_ to reduce the cost of production as far as possible, or else the
customers will tend to flock to competitors who are able to produce and
hence sell cheaper. And they _have_ to keep their level of profits similar
to those of competing companies and of other sectors, or the capital they
need to keep or extend their market share will tend to flow elsewhere. The
rules of market competition ensure that companies _must_ think primarily of
their profits, if they want to survive as market players. They _cannot_
choose to cut profits out of other considerations, unless all their
competitors do the same (which they will hardly do, unless forced by law).
The necessity to outdo your competition ensures that prior demand is
neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for market production. On
the one hand, a company might work very hard on instilling demand in
potential customers, if it feels it can make a profit from selling a line
of products. On the other hand, demand, no matter how urgent, is not enough
to get a good produced. The market will not satisfy demand if potential
producers cannot make a profit from selling to those who have the demand,
or if they can make a higher profit by producing something else.
Profit is not just an arbitrary personal goal that market producers might
or might not choose to pursue--it is a forced upon them by the rules of the
market. Personally, market producers might consider their participation in
the market just as a means to an end (to get what they want or need), but
the market forces them to consider profit as an end of its own, if they
want to succeed. Peer production is not organized by private producers who
try to sell something and have to compete with others who try to do the
same, but by people who cooperate which each other, who join forces in
order to help each other reach to their goals, because it makes sense for
them to do so. In peer production, _there are no intermediate means that
might become an end of their own._
In peer production, it is reasonable to cooperate instead of competing, to
share your knowledge and experiences instead of keeping them secret.
Therefore, innovations will spread much faster. The tendency of the market
to keep innovations secret or to treat them as property imposes a large
amount of additional labor that is unnecessary in a peer economy. In peer
production, there is no need to reinvent any wheels that have already been
invented by others.
And there are lots of other activities that are necessary or useful in a
market context but won't be needed in a peer economy. Peer projects have
little or no reason to instill demand for their products. The whole
overhead of acquiring and retaining capital and keeping shareholders happy
will be gone, and so will be the necessity to manage money and profits,
which keeps a whole industry busy as of today.
Capitalism also entails a huge overhead outside the regular production
process. People spend innumerable hours trying to look for a job
(especially those who cannot find one) or training for better jobs without
getting them, and a huge bureaucracy is needed to deal with the jobless.
The control structures imposed by current society--laws, police, prisons,
governments--are mainly needed to upkeep the private property regime that
the market requires (to prevent people from selling or using things that
are supposed to be owned by others) and to prevent people from acquiring
money in ways that are considered socially unacceptable. A peer economy,
where there is no need to earn money and where people can get whatever they
want by contributing to a project of their choice, will only need much
leaner versions of such structures, if at all.
_Not only will peer production grant people an unprecedented amount of
control over their own lives, it will also require much less work for doing
so._ Without the need for all the overhead activities imposed by the market
and the private property regime, peer production can reach an efficiency
the most ardent advocates of the market cannot even dream of.
Best regards
Christian
--
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian siefkes.net ---------
| Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/ | Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
| Peer Production in the Physical World: http://www.peerconomy.org/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and
security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and
starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we
were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there
is no reason to go on being foolish forever.
-- Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness