Re: I considered presenting

In reponse to:

"Hi Mr Shambaugh,

I am also working on a new approach to production.

Reading your articles I see your focus is very different from mine, so I
hope we can learn from each other...


I have some delicate (sometimes considered offensive) questions:


0.) How will investors be compensated? I say investors should be consumers
who are compensated with Product instead of Profit.


1.) Who should be owners of the means of production? I say the consumers
should be the owners - so they do not need to buy the product because, as
co-owners, they own their % already.


2.) What should be done with Profit when we sell surplus Product to
outsiders? I say Profit should be treated as an investment from the
consumer who paid it - so that all consumers slowly gain the co-ownership
needed to secure their future needs.


3.) How should workers be compensated? I say by accepting their promises of
future work as yet another form of investment - so they each become
co-owners in the means of production for which they need the products (not
necessarily the means of production for which they know and want to
operate) within the production network.


4.) How do we vote within such a system? I say by treating the payment of
costs as a vote, and the absence of such payment as a vote against - so
each person votes to build and maintain the "public works" they want by
simply paying for those things.


5.) How do we solve the Tyranny of the Majority when decisions are not
unanimous and cannot be resolved through payment-based-votes? I say by
allowing any "realistically divisible" subgroup to secede from the rest for
any reason while retaining their portion of co-ownership. When the means of
production cannot be divided realistically, the minority can probably sell
their shares to the outsiders who are paying more than cost for surplus as
explained in #2.

Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com"

Okay, I'll give it my best shot based on what I know.

0.) How will investors be compensated? I say investors should be consumers
who are compensated with Product instead of Profit.

See the big paragraph below. I believe it is largely up to the concerned
party.

1.) Who should be owners of the means of production? I say the consumers
should be the owners - so they do not need to buy the product because, as
co-owners, they own their % already.

Investors could come together like a co-op, or someone could own it. I
believe it is largely up to them. Computers might be able to help keep
track of things depending on computer power, network speed, the ability to
model and query data, and perhaps other things. I imagine people working
with a firm in a collaborative fashion, or drawing a loose boundry around a
project which represents a firm.

2.) What should be done with Profit when we sell surplus Product to
outsiders? I say Profit should be treated as an investment from the
consumer who paid it - so that all consumers slowly gain the co-ownership
needed to secure their future needs.

Largely, I believe this should be up to whoever is producing.

3.) How should workers be compensated? I say by accepting their promises of
future work as yet another form of investment - so they each become
co-owners in the means of production for which they need the products (not
necessarily the means of production for which they know and want to
operate) within the production network.

Sure, I think this could be possible. Again, I believe that it largely up
to the firm and the workers.

4.) How do we vote within such a system? I say by treating the payment of
costs as a vote, and the absence of such payment as a vote against - so
each person votes to build and maintain the "public works" they want by
simply paying for those things.

Unfortunately, this ties the ability to pay with the ability to vote. This
bothers me. I should study U.S. History. There were many who thought about
voting and they ended up with a republic, not a democracy.

Type "America is not a democracy" into Youtube. I'm sure you'll quickly
find that it is a Republic and not a democracy.

Aaron Russo explains America is NOT a Democracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RewUP-Fdhqk

Glenn Beck "America Is Not A Democracy, It's A Republic"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmseYh44vA

Why America is a Republic, not a Democracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=ygEEL57AcZs
(Argues that it is good that we are a Republic and not a Democracy, because
if
we were a democracy "majority rule" our rights would not be protected, and
eventually we would end up with an oligarchy.")

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

On Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life%2C_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness

John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property - Jim Powell
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/john-locke-natural-rights-to-life-liberty-and-property/#axzz2OmeNfngB


5.) How do we solve the Tyranny of the Majority when decisions are not
unanimous and cannot be resolved through payment-based-votes? I say by
allowing any "realistically divisible" subgroup to secede from the rest for
any reason while retaining their portion of co-ownership. When the means of
production cannot be divided realistically, the minority can probably sell
their shares to the outsiders who are paying more than cost for surplus as
explained in #2.

I'm not sure, maybe U.S. history has something to say.


At first I thought distributed funding (
http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com/2012/03/distributed-funding.html)
was the way to do it. It's just nodes and edges, with the nodes
representing people, projects, or whatever and the edges the "paths" where
the obligation flows. The edges could be a record of debts or intentions in
the case of pay later or donate later. The edges could also be conduits
that direct payment in the case of pay now and donate now. The flow could
be from any node to another node, or any node and any number of other
nodes. The amount from one node to another node could be some percentage of
the total amount to all neighboring nodes. That is, the unit whole that
someone gives is divided amongst all of the other nodes.

I could place various conditions. For example, I might want to not pay out
until I make a profit. Also say that I wish to have a convention such that
50% of what I make represents the unit whole that is divided amongst all of
the other nodes. I'd say this would represent donate later, or pay later if
there was some sort of obligation like investors. Another model for pay
later could be a convention such that whatever I owe people is what I owe,
and whatever this adds up to would be the unit whole for all of the
neighboring nodes. Pay now would be a little different. Say I want to buy
something, but I want to give to each of the contributors. Than the
contribution would be calculated somehow, maybe in labor content as Paul
Cockshott and Allin Cottrell suggest in A New Socialism, or maybe by the
crowd by voting like in Better Means [2]. The main difference would be that
labor content could be predetermined by some entity (I'm going to have to
go back to the book) in Towards a New Socialism, and democratically by the
group involved in Better Means. (Thanks Pavlik Elf!) Donate now doesn't
have to be based on anything, but I may want to follow the payment scheme
put out by pay now. I could also independently decide what I wish to donate
to each neighboring node.

Goods and services could also be used in place of money. Food for thought.
I ran accross a startup called Producia that uses a time based currency
called fini for college students (http://checkthis.com/producism).

In practice this could be a bit different. Ripple [3] is worth checking
out. They found an ingenious way of routing around money in a distributed
way.
Also, I'm not sure at this point why linked data could be helpful for
payments. I'd like to find this out. Payswarm is one such example. It is
supposed to keep track of things,
so that things can be paid for. It's been bothering me that Ripple and
Payswarm use JSON [5], [6]. On the other hand this could be a good thing.

Thanks Patrick for your insightful questions! You motivated me to answer
them.

[1] Towards a New Socialism:
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/
[2] Bettermeans Introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g
[3] Ripple: https://ripple.com/
[4] Payswarm: https://payswarm.com/
[5] (Ripple) JSON API: https://ripple.com/wiki/JSON_API
[6] JSON-LD: http://json-ld.org/


On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius@gmail.com> wrote:

> > As far as interest
>
> Sorry to be dumb, but what do you mean by 'interest'?
>
> There is no monetary interest in the system I described.
>
> Where would the interest be coming from that you refer to?
>



-- 
Brent Shambaugh

I've worked with polymers, I teach chemistry, I'm currently researching how
to build better economies.
Website: http://adistributedeconomy.blogspot.com