Für alle, die meinen man könnte mittels Peer Production keine materiellen Produktionsmittel produzieren und deswegen die gesellschaftliche Relevanz des Konzeptes bezweifeln.

Das ganze stammt auch von einem sehr interessanten Projekt mit einem ebenso interessanten Blog (via). Dort heisst es:

Factor E Farm. We are not a factory farm. Agricola sum. We are farmer scientists. Our life is an experiment: living sustainably, high appropriate tech, on the cheap. Why e? It is a transcendental number. We aim to transcend. We push towards open source. Factor 10 reduction in price. Or at least e. Ten times cheaper means ten times the freedom. Evolve to freedom. In these pages you will find the unfolding story of how we started with raw land, and what we are up to on an ongoing basis. This is the first experiment of Open Source Ecology. The challenge is to see how far we can reach into human prosperity on a small scale. Can we create advanced, largely self-sufficient civilization on the scale of a farm? What else is needed?

Stefan Merten wrote a harsh critique of the Peer-Economy Model Christian has developed. Due to the text being very long, I only re-post the headlines giving a good overview of the direction of the critique. I find it very useful, that Stefan explained his critique in this long text, although I did not share his views. I hope, that I will find the time to discover the shortcuts of the critique. But maybe others will do this too.

The headlines:

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Wow, nach dem »NerdAlert«-Interview von gestern gleich heute noch eines bei »Dr. Bunsen« auch vom FSK Hamburg. Wir haben versucht, an das Gespräch von gestern anzuküpfen, aber ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob uns das gelungen ist. Schreibt mal was dazu, wenn ihr die Sendung gehört habt.

Hier ist die Sendung (ohne Musik) zum Download bei archive.org in verschiedenen Formaten.

Eine Schwierigkeit besteht darin, das doch recht abstrakte Konzept der Peerconomy verständlich und kurz rüber zu bringen, und das aus dem Ärmel. Praktische Beispiele, auf die man verweisen könnte, gibt es eben noch nicht. Deswegen ist immer eine Menge gedanklicher Übertragungsleistung von Projekten notwendig, die nur Anfänge davon repräsentieren.

Unklar geblieben ist nach meinem Eindruck auch der Unterschied zu Tauschringen. Das Peerconomy-Konzept sieht halt doch ähnlich aus wie Marktwirtschaft oder auch Tauschringe. Eine Kopplung von Geben und Nehmen hat halt immer auch einen gewissen Tauschcharakter, auch wenn das nicht mit dem Tausch auf dem Markt vergleichbar ist. Wie ich schon mal in einem Kommentar angeregt habe, wäre es vielleicht sehr hilfreich, eine FAQ-Seite zur Peerconomy zu erstellen.

[This is the German translation of the original english article]

Auf der Oekonux-Mailingliste gibt es eine interessante Debatte über das Verhältnis von Privateigentum und gesellschaftlicher Veränderung, insbesondere wenn es um die commons-basierte Produktion stofflicher Güter geht. Raoul Victor aus Frankreich schrieb:

Die ursprüngliche Frage war, wie mit der Eigentumstransformation umzugehen ist, wenn sie die materiellen Produktionsmittel betrifft. Ich bestand auf der Tatsache, dass dies zu dem einem oder anderen Zeitpunkt (wahrscheinlich noch viele Jahre hin) zu einer allgemeinen sozialen Konfrontation mit dem Kapitalismus führt, wobei die “Arbeiter der Welt” die Hauptrolle spielen werden und die Keime der Peer-Produktionspraxen — hauptsächlich im Bereich frei reproduzierbarer Güter — dann eine wichtige Rolle bei der Evolution ihres Bewusstseins gespielt haben werden. Aufgrund der Natur des Kapitalismus ist diese Konfrontation unvermeidlich.

Das ist meine Antwort:

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[Es gibt eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels]

On the Oekonux-Mailinglist there is an interesting debate about the relationship between private ownership and societal change, especially when it comes to commons based production of physical goods. Raoul Victor from France wrote:

The original question is how to deal with the ownership transformation when it concerns material means of production. I insisted on the fact that, at one moment or another (probably many years ahead), this will lead to a general social confrontation with capitalism, where “the workers of the world” will play a major role, the germs of peer production practices, mainly in the freely reproducible goods domain, having played an important role in the evolution of their consciousness. This confrontation is inevitable because of the nature of capitalism itself.

This is my answer:

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Die Wochenzeitung »Freitag« hat in ihrer neuen Ausgabe einen Artikel über »Personal Fabricators«. Tenor: Nach den PCs sind jetzt die PFs dran, was heute noch teuer ist, wird morgen billig und allgegenwärtig sein. Was ich bislang nicht wusste, ist, dass der RepRap-Protagonist Adrian Bowyer eine explizit gesellschaftliche Zielsetzung mit PFs verbindet, die allerdings ein wenig altbacken daherkommt: »Eine sich selbst reproduzierende Rapid-Prototyping-Maschine wird ein revolutionäres Eigentum an den Produktionsmitteln durch das Proletariat ermöglichen — ohne den chaotischen und gefährlichen Revolutionskram«. Dass einige ein solcher Revolutionsautomatismus nervt, kann ich nachvollziehen.

[Diesen Artikel gibt es noch nicht auf Deutsch. Wenn du dazu beitragen willst, das zu ändert, beteilige dich bitte an der Übersetzungs-Werkstatt.]

Previous part: Commons and Possession

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?

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[Diesen Artikel gibt es noch nicht auf Deutsch. Wenn du dazu beitragen willst, das zu ändert, beteilige dich bitte an der Übersetzungs-Werkstatt.]

Previous part: Free Cooperation.

Peer production is based on commons and possession, not on property. As long as you use something (by yourself), there is no obvious difference between possession and property. The difference only becomes visible when you stop using it: your property still remains your property, allowing you to sell it to someone else (in return for money or some other equivalent). But possession is bound to usage—if you no longer need something, you cease possessing it and somebody else can start possessing it.

One issue where this becomes relevant is the question of long-term vs. short-term usage. When projects expect people to make contributions in order to get the things they want, there are cases where the length of usage should be taken into account. Otherwise, people who want to use something for a limited period of time would be put at a serious disadvantage, since they would have to contribute just as much as if they wanted to use it “forever.” When the expected “lifespan” of a good exceeds the expected time of usage by any given person, it might thus be appropriate to tie the required contributions to the length of usage, sharing the overall effort between all who use it over time. For example, a project or local association organizing housing for its members might prefer to require contributions for living in a house or apartment for a certain amount of time (instead of for living there forever), thus spreading the effort necessary for building and maintaining houses among all the people who live there over time.

The difference between property and possession is also relevant for the problem of resource allocation. In an economy where everything is based on commons and possession instead of property, it would not make sense to treat natural resources as property—to rely on buying and selling to allocate them. In fact, it would not even be possible: if nothing apart from resources is sold, how should those who lack them be able to buy them?

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[Diesen Artikel gibt es noch nicht auf Deutsch. Wenn du dazu beitragen willst, das zu ändert, beteilige dich bitte an der Übersetzungs-Werkstatt.]

Previous part: Effort Sharing.

Cooperation Between Projects

In the previous part, I have discussed how a project can distribute the effort required for production among those who want to benefit. With these effort sharing models, it is not necessary for participants to produce by themselves what they want to consume—if a project produces different goods (bicycles, cars, etc.), you can take part in producing a good A, and in return get access to any other good(s) B produced by the same project. This allows you to get access to various goods without having to get involved in the production of all of them.

But so far these models have only been considered in the context of a single project, which poses a problem: as consumers, people generally have many diverse needs and desires. In order to satisfy them all, you would either need a project that produces a lot of very different goods, and such a huge project might become inflexible and hard to maintain. Or you would have to contribute to lots of different projects, which would complicate your life enormously.

We can understand this problem better by regarding the different aspects which the participants of a project need to handle:

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[Es gibt eine deutsche Übersetzung dieses Artikels.]

Previous part: Traits of Peer Production.

The first characteristic of peer production is that the effort required to reach the goals of a project is shared among those who care enough to contribute. How this sharing is organized depends on the kind of project.

Projects creating free software or open knowledge use a style which Francis Heylighen [2007] describes as “stigmergic” (hint-based). The work done in such projects leaves “stimuli” or hints motivating others to continue. Examples of such hints are to-do lists, bug reports, and feature requests in free software projects; or “red links” to missing articles and listings of “most wanted articles” in the Wikipedia. They point participants and potential participants to the tasks that are worth doing.

This hinting system also serves as an informal mechanism for prioritizing tasks: the more people care for a task, the more likely it is to be picked up by somebody (since the corresponding hints tend to become more visible and explicit, and since people are more likely to pick up a task they wish to be done). And since everybody is free in choosing the tasks they want to do, participants will generally be more motivated than in a market-based system, where they have to follow the orders of their boss or customer. They also tend to pick up those tasks they think they are good at, ensuring that the different talents and skills of people are applied in the best possible way.

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