“From a Value-Added Economy to a Value-Restorative Society”—and other ways Spring relates to capitalism

We launched our political project Spring on March 1st - see blog and presentation here - and we have generated a great range of enquiries and critiques. We’ll take this week of blogs to cite sources that answer them - before formulating a full written/video response ourselves.

One set of sharp questions was from the Scottish radical blog Bella Caledonia, which we’ll engage with over this week. Their first one was blunt: how does this relate to capitalism?

One answer from sources can be found in the commons’ theorist Michel Bauwens’s quotes for the day on X. We post a selection below from recent months.

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We are … entering an era with a multiplicity of ownership designs (X post): "One age builds upon the last. We do not go back, but carry forward the former ages in new ways. In the industrial age, we industrialized agriculture. In the age of finance, we financialized industry.

As we move into a more ecologically sensitive era, we will need to ecologize finance. And we will need to socialize it — make it more inclusive, less elite.

Redesigning the social architectures of our economy is a vital part of transformation—as vital as redesigning the physical architectures of our energy and product system.

My sense is we are … entering an era with a multiplicity of ownership designs – a time of biodiversity in social architecture, beyond the monoculture of the corporate form." - Majorie Kelly https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Peerproperty#Short_Citations

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With the advent of the P2P Mode of Production, the community and its common is now the appropriate scale (X post): "We’re seeing something that is historically shocking—the reduction to zero of the cost of an especially valuable part of capital, which materializes directly knowledge (free software, free designs, etc.). And above all we see, almost day by day, how the optimum size of production, sector by sector, approaches or reaches the community dimension.

The possibility for the real community, the one based on interpersonal relationships and affections, to be an efficient productive unit is something radically new, and its potential to empower is far from having been developed.

This means that we are lucky enough to live in a historical moment when it would seem that the whole history of technology, with all its social and political challenges, has coalesced to put us within reach of the possibility of developing ourselves in a new way and contributing autonomy to our community.

Today we have an opportunity that previous generations did not: to transform production into something done, and enjoyed, among peers. We can make work a time that is not walled off from life itself, which capitalism revealingly calls “time off.”

That’s the ultimate meaning of producing in common today. That’s the immediate course of every emancipatory action. The starting point." - David de Ugarte https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Peerproduction#With_the_advent_of_the_P2P_Mode_of_Production,_the_community_and_its_common_is_now_the_appropriate_scale

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Peter Pogany on the Emergence of a Third, Thermo-Dynamically Stable, Global System (X post):

1. "History has recorded two distinct global systems thus far: “laissez faire/metal money,” which spanned most of the 19th century and lasted until the outbreak of World War I, and “mixed economy/weak multilateralism,” which began after 1945 and exists today.

The period between the two systems, 1914-1945, was a chaotic transition. This evolutionary pulsation is well known to students of thermodynamics. It corresponds to the behavior of expanding and complexifying material systems.

The exhaustion of oil and other natural resources is pushing the world toward a third global system that may be called “two-level economy/strong multilateralism.”

It will be impossible to get there without a new chaotic transition. No repeated warnings, academic advice, moral advocacy, inspired reforms, or political leadership can provide a shortcut around it.

But if it took “1914-1945″ to make a relatively minor adjustment in the global order, what will it take to make a major one?” (https://integralpermaculture.wordpress.com/peter-pogany/?)

2. "His theory predicts that global society is drifting toward a new form of self-organization that will recognize limits to demographic-economic expansion – but only after we go through a new chaotic transition that will start sometime between now and the 2030s." (https://integralpermaculture.wordpress.com/peter-pogany/?)

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The Two Criteria to Increase the Health of the Planet (X post): "Valerie Brown lists two criteria that should guide human behaviour if we hope to avoid serious damage to the natural processes that maintain systemic health. We need to i) “consume nature’s flows while conserving the stocks (that is, live off the ‘interest’ while conserving natural capital” and ii) “increase society’s stocks (human resources, civil institutions) and limit the flow of material and energy” (Brown et al., 2005). Both are central aspects of a regenerative culture." - Valerie Brown (as summarized by Daniel Christian Wahl) https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Thermodynamic_Efficiencies

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The tradeoff between efficiency and resilience is confronted by every sector of society (X post): "Resilience is the capacity to experience an interruption in the supply of a required input without suffering a serious, permanent decline in the desired output.

Humanity lives on a finite planet that started with a fixed amount of each resource input. To support population and economic growth, consumption of the planet’s finite resources has increased. As a result, the resources have been continuously depleted and deteriorated.

The fertility of agricultural land, the concentration of mineral ores, the quality of surface waters, and the populations of marine fish are among thousands of indicators that show the long-term average quality of resources is declining. Producing ever greater output from ever diminishing inputs has forced production to become more and more efficient.

However, even enormous technological advance has not altered the fact that consumption deteriorates resources. It has merely reduced the rate of deterioration by reducing the rate at which we use resources to produce each unit of what we want." - Dennis Meadows

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From a Value-Added Economy to a Value-Restorative Society (X post): "The present political economy is geared entirely toward "value-added" operations within a worldview of exponential growth. As you identify policies or activities that are geared toward *value-restored* or *value-replenished* operations within in a framework of logistic growth (e.g., carrying capacity), I think we may find the leverage points we are seeking." - James Quilligan https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Thermodynamic_Efficiencies#From_Value-Added_to_Value-Restorative

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“The defining question of our age is not whether we can achieve the impossibility of sustaining more than nine billion people on a western industrial model of development, but how to deliver prosperous lives for the global population within the regenerative biocapacity of one planet." - Sharon Ede https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Thermodynamic_Efficiencies

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The response to anthropogenic climate change will need to be equally anthropogenic. " In its current commercial form, the primary purpose of planetary-scale computation is to measure and model individual people in order to predict their next impulse. But a more aspirational goal would be to contribute to the comprehension, composition and enforcement of a shared future that is more rich, diverse and viable. Instead of reviving ideas of nature, we must reclaim the artificial — not fake, but designed.

“For this, human-machine intelligence and urban-scale automation become part of an expanded landscape of life, information and labor. They are part of a living ecology, not a substitute for one. Put more specifically: The response to anthropogenic climate change will need to be equally anthropogenic." - Benjamin Bratton https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Civilizational_Analysis

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Engage Global, Test Local, Spread Viral (X post) John Boik: "No matter how promising the design of a new system might be, it would be unreasonable to expect that a nation would abruptly drop an existing system in favor of a new one. Nevertheless, a viable, even attractive strategy exists by which new systems could be successfully researched, developed, tested, and implemented.

I call it engage global, test local, spread viral.

Engage global means to engage the global academic community and technical sector, in partnership with other segments of society, in a well-defined R&D program aimed at computer simulation and scientific field testing of new systems and benchmarking of results. In this way, the most profound insights of science can be brought into play.

Test local means to scientifically test new designs at the local (e.g., city or community) level, using volunteers (individuals, businesses, non-profits, etc.) organized as civic clubs. This approach allows testing by relatively small teams, at relatively low cost and risk, in coexistence with existing systems, and without legislative action.

Spread viral means that if a system shows clear benefits in one location (elimination of poverty, for example, more meaningful jobs, or less crime) it would likely spread horizontally, even virally, to other local areas. This approach would create a global network of communities and cities that cooperate in trade, education, the setup of new systems, and other matters. Over time, its impact on all segments of society would grow.

Cities, big and small, are the legs upon which all national systems rest. Already cities and their communities are hubs for innovation. With some further encouragement and support, and the right tools and programs, they could become more resilient and robust, and bigger heroes in the coming great transition." https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Mutual_Coordination

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Jack Ma of Alibaba on the Prospects of Planning (X post): "Over the past 100 years, we have come to believe that the market economy is the best system, but in my opinion, there will be a significant change in the next three decades, and the planned economy will become increasingly big.

Why? Because with access to all kinds of data, we may be able to find the invisible hand of the market. The planned economy I am talking about is not the same as the one used by the Soviet Union or at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The biggest difference between the market economy and planned economy is that the former has the invisible hand of market forces. In the era of big data, the abilities of human beings in obtaining and processing data are greater than you can imagine.

With the help of artificial intelligence or multiple intelligence, our perception of the world will be elevated to a new level. As such, big data will make the market smarter and make it possible to plan and predict market forces so as to allow us to finally achieve a planned economy." https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Mutual_Coordination

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