Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 14:58:35 +0200
On 2008-07-09 11:55, Michel Bauwens wrote:
I think we'll have to do without money from the very start,
otherwise the transition simply won't take place.
From the very start?
This means you are going to outlaw the use of any money, and use
dramatic coercion to achieve that effect.
I'm sorry, but that sounds like a Polpot-ian scheme, and I believe,
extremely dangerous.
Uhh, big misunderstanding.
It is simply not possible "to outlaw the use of any money", we all need
money to reproduce our lives. This is a fact, and *this* is coercion.
The question is: How do we conceptualize our projects? Do they base on
money, market success, and exchange or not? Free software does not.
Yes, there is a lot of money involved, but free software by its core
functioning does not base on it. This is the dialectical property of
free software: it bases on selbstentfaltung and also supports making
money, but it does not function by making money (the contrary is true:
is replaces proprietary only-made-for-money production).
Next question: How can a project making no money survive in an
environment, where things are bought with money? Here, it is useful to
distinguish between internal project relationships and the
relationships to the outside world: Inside a project the relationships
should be free of money and exchange, while it may not avoidable to
have money-based relationships to the outside money driven world.
Again Christians peerconomy model. We don't have that peereconomy based
society yet. How can we start? If we want to create a peerconomy
project (or better a bunch of), then the project need things from the
capitalist world which we cannot produce self. Thus you need money.
Now, this need of money *must* be decoupled from the internal
functioning of the project in the sense, that, say, products from the
project can not be "exported" to the money world, in order to finance
the project. The "money interface" should be as slim as possible. For
instance bounty-based. Or by fixed contributions by the members. Or, as
Christian proposed, bringing money into the project is viewed as
a "task" and accepted as a "contribution" (in the special meaning of
his concept) like other tasks done are contributions. Etc. Assuming
there are more peerconomy projects, then the relationships
between these projects must be as money-free as the project-internal
relationship are. Ok, I stop here -- this needs a careful discussion
and a lot of new ideas.
Conclusion: We'll have to do our projects without money from the very
start in the sense, that money must not be part of the project core
principles. Perform this test: If you beam the project into a
peerconomy society, then generally the project have to work the same way
as it works being an island in the capitalist ocean.
I resonate much more with this approach:
Charles Eisenstein:
"In a highly specialized, technological society, most of us need to
perform exchanges to live. To do so we need a medium of exchange –
money. Some people, noting this inescapable fact, can see no
alternative but to return to a primitive society, to undo the
millennia-long course of civilization, which they quite
understandably view as an enormous mistake.
Outch, I don't want to read more of this crazy stuff. It declares
exchange to an intrinsic human property, it identifies money with
civilization, it lifts capitalism to heaven and so on.
A negative-interest currency is a step toward the gift economies of
No, this is money botching. And these Gesellian approches are *really*
dangerous.
Ciao,
Stefan
--
Start here: www.meretz.de
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