Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing like "peer money"
- From: "Michel Bauwens" <michelsub2004 gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:52:36 +0700
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i dont think we are too far away from each other. i dont advocate that the
donator is completely free to choose where the money goes, but that (s)he
should have a list of (voding) options. you have a "to-do" list directing
investment of time and knowledge by core developers basically set by the
community; why not having a "to-do" list for the community (set by the
developer) which allows each individual to fund the project which is in
his/her best interest?
I think there are several issues. As I understand, the Linux Foundation has
one member, one vote, to avoid large corporations dominating the strategic
setting. If you allow free money to determine what will be done, you have a
market.
In general, I think your scheme is for a cooperative, not peer production,
as in the latter, there can be no link between payment and task.
im not advocating profit-sharing (an association/foundation normally is
not allowed to distribute profits to members), but reasonable payment for
tasks someone does for the community. profit sharing does not require
investment of time and knowedlge for the payout, task payment does
again, in peer production, people choose tasks out of internal motivation,
with payment for task, they choose differently. I think that in many
communities, such as Debian, they opposed bounties and such, because of its
detrimental effects. So, it is either for a cooperative project, where
people get paid to work, or it can be used for the tasks nobody wants to
carry out, and therefore it cannot outcompete the volunteering,.
Also, these paid leaders/committers/maintainers cannot give orders to the
voluntary contributors.
how do you define "giving orders"?
as: "this is what you should do"
i think we agree that some kind of prescribing
directions (like "to-do" lists) is essential - otherwise its very
inefficient investment of time and knowledge.
do these lists really work? I heard from wikipedia they don't really work,
yet a lot gets done. Peer production is not efficient in the sense that what
needs to get done gets done, but that out of the chaos and waste of
probalistic production, enough good is produced that it is still
hyperproductive compared to the command and control for pay model. It is
paradoxically, very inefficient, and hyperproductive at the same time.
but even at a more detailed implementation level of a specific project,
there can occur problems without command and control (note that im not
saying the traditional command and control mechanism is the way to go):
example: last week we had an mexican food day with a focus on authentic
recipes and made to a large extent with fair trade products. authenticity
was a key "selling argument" (there is only one tex-mex restaurant in
graz) and very attractive to people.
unfortunately, the mexican cook wasnt available that day (btw, if we had
paid, he most likely would have been there) so we prepared a couple of
things the day before the mexican way. on the dinner day, we had
a really good professional (austrian) cook who volunteered and took over -
understandably, he wanted to "selbstentfalt" himself and gave some
austrian touch to this. while it
tasted good, it lost lots of "authenticity"'.
how do you cope with such
situations where the selbstentfaltung of a key individual directly
contradicts the interest of the community absent some kind of command and
control? i dont think its gonna be the rule, but it'll occur enough to
mention it and think about it
you need one mechanism for unconditional voluntary production, which creates
value as a surplus, but if you need something specific, mexican food done by
a mexican, you are likely to have to rely on other mechanisms
for example, Linux creates extraordinary value, but, if you need something
done for the market or a client, you cannot rely on it, you need a market
intermediary (or a cooperative) that engages itself for result, but that is
no longer peer production, but a market overlay over peer production.
whether money, 'by itself', has problematic aspects ..
True and I absolutely agree with the goals; unfortunately, one problem is
that quality has much to do with talent and lots of (talented) people are
attracted by money (this is just the way it is and personally im not
blaming them given the society we are living in). there is a (very?)
limited number of people who are able to provide high quality works on a
sustainable basis; there is also lots of money outthere to "lure" those
people spend their creativity and time in exchange for money; closely
related, there is also lots of money available to push the creations of
those few to people (advertising). So, its not gonna be easy outcompete
them on quality. :)
I disagree. This may be true on a short term basis. But on the long term:
take a company that pays experts and produces closed proprietary value for
the market; and let it compete with a for-benefit association that draws on
passionate volunteers, and in most cases, in the end, the value and results
will be higher. This is the story of Linux, Firefox, Wikipedia.
I think that what you are trying to do is to create some new kind of
cooperative production competing with the market. It's fine to try, but it
is not peer production and in that situation, you are indeed competing with
the market on its own terms. I like cooperatives, but they have not proven
to outcompete private production, while peer production has proven to do
that.
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