Peer2Politics

The Election Commission, which summoned the social media companies to a meeting last Monday, directed them to cooperate in monitoring content.

I am interested in the political economy of the digital, in the intersection of capitalism and the internet, and in the search for alternatives to capital. How can we rebuild the commons?

Slawomir Sierakowski: I think the distinction between party politics and ‘the political’ is an important one to make. Party systems are typical of contemporary liberal democracy, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be around forever. They’re a social construct, quite a new one, and that’s increasingly apparent. It may be that parties are disappearing. For sure, the political differences among them are disappearing and reappearing as strange anti-political conflicts. The reason is the weakness of the nation state as opposed to the globalized market. This situation allows for only very limited maneuverability in economic policy. The consequence is that when they rule, they realize the same economic policy, so are forced to differ in other policies. So you can choose politicians, but you cannot choose economic policies. A further consequence is that parties have become schools of opportunists. And if the majority is cynical and opportunistic then you face a tragic choice: be the same or lose.

Complex human societies, including our own, are fragile. They are held together by an invisible web of mutual trust and social cooperation.

UC Berkeley professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics George Lakoff explores how successful political debates are framed by using language targeted to p...

The ideal capitalist product would derive its value from the ceaseless unpaid labor of the entire human race. We would be dispensable; it would be indispensable. It would integrate all human activity into a single unified terrain, accessible only via additional corporate products, in which sweatshop and marketplace merged. It would accomplish all this under the banner of autonomy and decentralization, perhaps even of “direct democracy.”

“As Falvinge explains, decentralized does not mean leaderless. The leader of or a swarm leads by inspiration and example, setting the vision and goals for the organization while building a culture that empowers members of the swarm to act. Falvinge contrasts this approach with the leaderless structure of the Occupy movement, which he says sacrificed direction and cohesion in favor of the resilience gained by lacking a leader who can be targeted by opposition.

The PPE propose is to Empower people from diferent communities to understand the political and economical fundaments of the economic crysis, democratising the discussion. By doing so, they allow people to better engage the problems Europe faces today, and look for new solutions.

What do these people have in common? They are trained professionals who cannot find full-time jobs. Since 2008, they have been tenuously employed - working one-year contracts, consulting on the side, hustling to survive. They spent thousands on undergraduate and graduate training to avoid that hustle. They eschewed dreams - journalism, art, entertainment - for safer bets, only to discover that the safest bet is that your job will be contingent and disposable.

This essay narrates, from a creator-observation perspective, the production of two works of fiction, a book of short stories and a play, based on the principles and technologies of Commons-based peer production (CBPP). This is potentially interesting from both the CBPP and the literary perspective. Even though both seem well-matched by their prima facie lack of profit orientation, CBPP case studies rarely deal with fiction, and regarding plays, artistic creativity is still mostly associated with one, maybe two. After tracing and analysing the CBPP phenomenon, the case studies show concretely the fate of the specific projects as well as how, nowadays, people can involve in collaborative artistic projects inspired and catalysed by Commons-oriented principles and technologies.

Jim Fleming: But first a look at the peer progressive movement. Haven’t heard of it? It’s a start up social movement and the subject of Steven Johnson’s new book, "Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age."  Johnson tells Steve Paulson there’s a lot of political and social change happening today, under the radar.

“During the coming decade we are likely to face a cascade of massively disruptive crises that will feed on each other both economically and ecologically. Many of these will disable institutional power players, potentially opening up space for new socioeconomic, governance and technological innovations to embed. As that happens, collaboration on an unprecedented scale will be needed to transition the human community into one that is at once more viable, resilient and benign to life.

The decentralized movement toward freedom is raging across the world. It cannot be stopped. The tipping point is near. Despite the lack of coverage in the mainstream media, actions are springing up on an increasing basis. A wave of transformation is rising. The zeitgeist is shifting in our direction.

UC Berkeley professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics George Lakoff explores how successful political debates are framed by using language targeted to p...

Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled “free-market thinktanks” promoting a radical rightwing agenda in states across the nation, according to a new report by a lobbying watchdog.

This week Concurring Opinions is hosting a symposium on Professor Orly Lobel’s book, Talent Wants to be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding. In simplest terms, Professor Lobel takes on some thorny problems in innovation policy debates including whether to lock down talent and ideas or to embrace the movement of people and knowledge. Though these tensions seem easy to understand, the natural desire to keep what one has means arguments to tie up whatever seems to be giving one an advantage creates larger debates about optimal control and outcomes. Professor Lobel’s work tangles with these core ideas and more.

“There are really two independent parts to the standard concept of public good. This concept plays a prominent role in the recent phenomenon of extending the discussion of public goods to the global level. The first part has to do with the accessibility of public goods, whereas the second deals with the motivation for forming them.

The British people are not stupid.  They know that neoliberal, neoclassical ‘free market’ economics does not work, even if they don’t use those terms.  In a survey by YouGov, the leading public opinion pollsters in the UK, more than two-thirds of those asked wanted the railways, the energy companies (gas, electricity) and the postal service (Royal Mail was recently privatised for a peppercorn price and is now controlled by American offshore hedge funds) renationalised.