Peer2Politics

"Rodrigo Davies has thought a lot about civic crowdfunding, first as an adviser to Spacehive, then as an MS student at MIT and, now, as a PhD student in the Work, Technology and Organizations group at Stanford University. Davies is currently on leave from his doctoral research and working as Head of Product at Neighbor.ly, where he is helping build a platform that will allow community members to invest in their cities by purchasing municipal bonds." (http://www.shareable.net/blog/civic-crowdfunding-and-the-public-good)

"The only hindrance to a work system that could include everyone who needs or wish to work, the only obstacle to an economic system that could distribute wealth, is the public work assigned for life. Public temporary jobs activate an harmonic social rotation.

(note: this version was originally written at the request of Jay Wallsjasper of On the Commons, slightly expanded and updated on July 13; it’s a little more elaborate than the first informal assessment shared here before)

"The Ecuadorian government is intending to develop a Social Knowledge Economy (SKE) that would change the parameters of the countryʼs intellectual property legislation and create public policies to promote an open commons knowledge economy. 

"Project Cybersyn was a Chilean attempt at real-time computer-controlled planned economy in the years 1970–1973 (during the government of president Salvador Allende). It was essentially a network of telex machines that linked factories with a single computer centre in Santiago, which controlled them using principles of cybernetics. The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn)

Open State is an experimental working collective seeking to overcome the existent, deficient model of society in an Open-Source manner.

"Share N Save makes visible the often hidden networks of co-operation and collaboration. By highlighting all the great work that communities are already doing, it invites more people to participate, encourages replication of existing activities and uptake of initiatives happening elsewhere, as well as sparking completely new ideas.

Firstly, the term ‘social commons’ is meant to be analogous with the protection of the so-called ecological ‘commons’. Defending ‘the commons’ means focusing on that which is shared by all human beings. It is the very foundation of collective life of humanity. It also means resisting the current commodification of everything and a breakaway from the dominant logic. The ‘social commons’ are human-made commons, meant to protect individuals and societies.

In many countries in Latin America the people in power do not call themselves political parties anymore. Rather there are civic movements. There is a civic coalition in Ecuador. There is a social movement in Bolivia. And there is a kind of rejection of political parties in that part of the world because they are seen as representing narrow interest-based politics.

"Non-market public production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity in advanced democratic nation-states. Yet here in the United States the public economy’s ability to function productively on behalf of the citizenry is seriously imperiled.

PRINCETON – A specter is haunting the world economy – the specter of job-killing technology. How this challenge is met will determine the fate of the world’s market economies and democratic polities, in much the same way that Europe’s response to the rise of the socialist movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the course of subsequent history.

The Multitude movement enters a new era, where its processes can be supported by truly p2p infrastructures. Bitcoin is now a well-known symbol of a new breed of value exchange systems, called cryptocurrencies, money without the bank, stateless money, a new currency that looks and feels like your ATM card, but it is entirely decentralized, under the control of those who use it.

The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Hendrik Spruyt. Princeton University Press, 1996. [2]: "The present international system, composed for the most part of sovereign, territorial states, is often viewed as the inevitable outcome of historical development. Hendrik Spruyt argues that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the state system, however. Examining the competing institutions that arose during the decline of feudalism--among them urban leagues, independent communes, city states, and sovereign monarchies."

"Cybersyn’ comes from a synthesis of the two concepts driving the project, ‘cybernetics’ and ‘synergy’. The abbreviation ‘Synco’ conveyed the objective of the project, namely ‘Sistema de Informacion y Control’. The project name has also appeared as ‘Sinco’ or ‘Cinco'," (http://informatics.indiana.edu/edenm/EdenMedinaJLASAugust2006.pdf)

"The Carnegie UK Trust has been a supporter and advocate of community led initiatives and ‘bottom up’ approaches to decision making and development throughout our 100 year history. Whether it was our early support for rural community councils or more recently community ownership of land, our Trustees have long recognised the power of community led activity to transform wellbeing.

"This booklet is about how public service workers, with their fellow community members, are not only defending public services but also struggling to make them democratic and responsive to people’s needs and desires. It is also about how these alliances are working at different levels – local, national and international.

"Since the declaration of Sharing City, Seoul has been one of the pioneers on city-driven sharing movement. The current mayor Won-Soon Park, whose background is from non-profit social sector, is very much eager to realize transparency and citizen engagement through sharing resources of the city.

"We should link up social-public partnership and Commons-Public Partnerships. The important point to highlight is that social or commons must precede the state. Our elected representatives need to become again public servants and arrogant masters need to be rapidly recalled." (email, February 2014)