Thursday 26 March 2015

CryptoTown Day 65 - Institutional Isolation


Let's say you had an idea, or two or three which you believed could have a great positive impact on the world. What would you do? Do you think its as easy as telling people and sitting back as it spreads like wildfire throughout the world?

If the idea would carry any real positive change with it, this would automatically disqualify it from the above scenario. I would like to explore the two major obstacles that I encountered in the last few months while I explored my ideas through creative expression. One is the industrial mind, the other is meticulous domination of communication tools.

In my last post, I covered some relevant history which will help to understand who we are. The vast majority of our modern human form has lived in societies based on cooperation and clever use of our environment. More industrious activities such as agriculture and domestication of livestock set the stage for our own domestication. It was not long before we made obedient tools out of ourselves, as competition replaced cooperation. A simple strategy of divide and conquer.

We are solely dependent on government and corporation to meet all of our needs, and we call this independence. Indigenous wisdom traditions show us how to relate through cooperation and interdependence, while competition isolates us for the purpose of appropriation. When you lose your job, you quickly find out just how this illusion of independence is actually extreme dependence, without the traditional community support as backup.

In the exact same way as the gold standard was used to bankrupt nations who had plenty of other resources, dependence on income straps us to a single method of survival. Bills may only be paid in dollars, they do not accept trade or skill. Our minds are warped so hard around this idea that we do not believe it is acceptable to earn a living in any other way than to be told exactly what to do in a situation of directed labor aka employment.

"Oh," but you say, "we can own our own business and this is freedom!" Not so fast you are still playing the game of divide and conquer known as competition. You will inevitably deceive and exploit others, or quickly find yourself overrun by those who do. How many ways have we been subconsciously shaped into these perfectly manageable tools is beyond comprehension for most. Our most core beliefs make us cold and pessimistic, and even encourage deceit on a subconscious level.

The point that I am getting at is that we have been so far divorced from the idea of individual initiative that it is nearly impossible to achieve cooperation, even in the interests of the community. We are waiting for instructions, to be processed. We do not listen to understand, we listen to reply. The leap from production to creation is a great chasm for most. It can be as simple as sharing or liking a post, but it will not happen, the message crashes upon the rocks of dead patterns which make up the whole of each of us.

If this is not sinking in perhaps we should give this clip some thought. It is about the manufacture of consent. It is no longer seen as acceptable to rule by physical force, and with democracy came a need to instead control what we think.


So if we are born and raised in this society to take orders and thoughts, how does an idea spread which relies on individual initiative? If we are to be honest, it has to involve some level of manipulation, because tools do not act on their own, they are designed to be manipulated. However, in an open knowledge society, access and participation to the reasoning behind initiatives is available to all who are willing to look.

When we look at society and politics, we see the surface which tells us that everything works as we think it does. When we look at what kinds of things must go on to create this illusion, we are looking at what has been termed realpolitik.
Realpolitik (from German: real "realistic", "practical", or "actual"; and Politik "politics", German pronunciation: [ʁeˈaːlpoliˌtɪk]) is politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than explicit ideological notions or moral or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. The term Realpolitik is sometimes used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian.
 Let's experience. Here are three TED talks which were banned:



Is it shocking to hear that trickle down economics involves piss and not money? It seems obvious that if we want to develop our yacht and bunker economies that we should give money to those who buy that, and if we want to develop our human needs sectors we would find ways to help people who buy for that. At any rate, we can see how easy it was to pull this off. We actually support our own poverty willingly. How could it be possible in a thinking population?




Our default worldview. Scientific Dogma. An interesting look at some of our closely held beliefs. Scientism is a wildly successful method of thought control which plays very well into the meaningless exploitation of each other. Science is our only hope! We can escape this doomed planet and find a new home (like the aliens in Independence Day)

Manifesto of the Committee to Abolish Outer Space
[...] This society depends for its existence on the presence of a frontier, a blank homogeneous space to be settled and transformed by the desires and fantasies of an entrepreneurial libidinality, one whose open freedom can’t help but transform in turn those settled societies back East. The old frontier has been closed for a long time, and the results are clear to see: “the spread of irrationalism; the banalization of popular culture; the loss of willingness by individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves or think for themselves.” Our manly vigor has been sapped, but we can regain it if we take a new lover. We must inseminate Mars.

Already in this argument you can smell the blood and slaughter, feel the slow tugging dispersal that leads to an utterly empty world. Our uniquely enlightened society in which human life is valued beyond measure could only achieve this feat through the free labor of tens of millions of slaves. That blank gaping frontier was, inconveniently, also someone’s home; tens of millions more had to be brutally exterminated. Still, Mars is different, Mars is lifeless. 
Naah, fuck Mars, and fuck the Moon if we think that we will ever have a meaningful existence in space on the basis of competition and exploitation.



We are unconscious. Our behaviours are made up of dead patterns of society. We are not alive. In an instant this life will be over without having ever broken out of the course prescribed and set by our collective slumber. Seriously, hallucinogenic substances are illegal because of the damage they might cause to this perfectly functioning tool. Alcohol is legal because it destroys and divides us, marijuana is illegal because it can show us how we are connected.

Even those who become aware of their surroundings, who have "woken up," seeing the dead patterns which drive us, have only attained power over the highest levels of control. Even if they wanted to change with their community, they may find there is no community to be had. Even if there was, they would find that they cannot escape their dependence on private hierarchy. There are bills to be paid, they must be paid in dollars. Debt payments suck up all potential to invest in local sustainable abundance (permaculture).

I devised a way to reach people while at the same time bringing awareness and participation to the local community. I shouldn't have been so surprised when hardly a single flinch or response could be detected in any of my peers. I do not have the network reach to even play the numbers game in hopes of a few bites. Check out this crowdfunding campaign for an idea of what it might look like to bring massive participation to meaningful community projects.

I believe it failed because of my small network, because people respond to instructions not participation, and because it's inconceivable that capital should be spent on vague meeting of human needs with no specific capitalistic exploit or employment. Or maybe I just suck at organization (randomly came across this just now, might be useful). At any rate, it may help to serve as a template, for someone who has the funds to do something like this in their own town.

Hopefully this has begun to convey the brick wall of dead patterns that is our modern society. Let's look at another layer of stagnation, the tools we use to communicate with.

The Internet is part of a massive shift towards network and peer based behavior. At its heart, it is incomparable with old broadcast techniques such as book, radio, and television used to blast propaganda. Should we be surprised then to realize that it has been subverted? Again, we are going to centralized websites such as Facebook and Reddit and we just sort of trust that they aren't screwing with us.


So Facebook manipulates our newsfeed. They maintain a ban list, which I have encountered, prevent the sharing of disruptive material. Youtube can remove your videos from suggested area (or sitewide), never to be encountered. Reddit is notorious for moderator abuse and divides communities. Our tools are corrupted. Movements can simply be turned off through central ban lists. Let's take a quick look at reddit

A while back I made a post to the /r/Buddhism sub, hoping to find some people willing and conscious enough to look at themselves. The post was a total failure simply because it did not conform to known patterns and expectations. One would think this should not be a problem for those claiming to value self-awareness.

Case Study: Samsara the current event. - To encourage inward thought and expansion of possibility through encountering our environment. - A Reddit experience.
[...] Where does one post a political joke on Reddit? You can not post it to /r/Politics because it is a joke: “No satire or humor pieces.” Humor is a form of creative expression, it bypasses the ego (bored, offended, distracted, etc) in a snap. You can not post a political joke to /r/Funny : “No Politics – Anything involving politics or a political figure. Try /r/PoliticalHumor instead.” Politics and Funny combine for a readership of 10 Million redditors, while Politlcal Humor is relegated to a mere 50'000.
Destroying all potential synergy. Dividing communities. The entire post is a really great compliment to this post as it explores very deeply the mind structures which lead to our collective complacency, our dead unconscious patterns. If you found the above video about the War on Consciousness interesting I would recommend checking the entire post.

How Reddit Was Destroyed (ver3.0)
1) The first thing they did was take away r/reddit.com.
This took away the only tool for communicating with reddit about reddit. If you had any concerns about the website as a whole, you could address them through r/reddit. Taking that away was the first step.
2) The power now resided in individual subreddits, obviously the most popular ones. There was a power grab to become moderators of these subreddits.
3) Once the default subreddits were controlled, drastic changes began to occur.
I remember when r/IAma was open to anyone and the popularity was decided by voting. Now it is nothing more than a cheap place for celebrities to whore out their products and you need to be "approved". Someone named Victoria[2] is involved and how does that makes any sense whatsoever? Celebrities have entire teams of branding/PR/social media teams that work for them. Why do they need to be at reddit HQ and/or required to have a reddit rep? Because these AMA's are extremely organized and sponsored with money.
There are plenty of subreddits that are now covertly controlled. Check out this post which was pushed into r/undelete for identifying a list of keywords banned from r/technology.[3]
4) The appearance of shills soon became VERY apparent.
All of a sudden new accounts started popping up out of nowhere. Cue the birth of r/HailCorporate. "Feel good" military posts started appearing, like a soldier coming home to his dog. New users entered AMA's to lob softball questions "Mr Burns, your campaign has the momentum of a runaway freight train, how does it feel to be so popular?" [4] From brand new accounts that never posted again.
Anyone who tries to convince you that shills don't exist is either grossly uninformed or a liar.[6] Protip: the big political subreddits can’t seem to keep the seal on the circlejerk during weekends, almost as if an entire team of manipulators is suddenly on weekend hours.
5) Now we have blatant censorship on r/news, r/worldnews etc... saying that X site is not allowed.
What ever happened to letting people vote on the content of this website? Trash tabloids constantly go viral on political subreddits due to sensationalized headlines and the fact that most Americans are unaware of different overseas publications.
Major politically-charged subreddits now insist on exact titles or quotes because that stops users from being able to post the important point summary of the article as the title . Using only official titles from only approved media has turned reddit into mainstream media.
6) Speaking of voting, they changed that too.
We now have an entirely new way to view upvote/downvote scores. A user used to be able to see their score. But now, everything is fuzzed. For example, if you made a semi-controversial comment before, but many people agreed, you may have a score like (47/45), leaving you with a -2 next to the comment. Now you just get a -2 and nobody knows if anyone agreed with you.
9) Reddit is not a meritocracy[9] .
tl;dr: Your votes do not matter. The front page is not decided on merit. Different subs are given different algorithms. There is a behind the scene ranking system that gives certain content a "head-start". As we have learned at r/conspiracy, if they don't like our sub, then we are banished from the front page, forever. Just like we were banished from r/bestof, after this amazing comment[10] that was gilden 8X and received over 3000 upvotes. They actually gave that user the boot.[11] How dare you bring your unique, first-hand perspective to a web-forum!!!
10) The arrival and subsequent take over of r/undelete.
Due to the now rampant censorship on the site, users took it into their own hands to bring the truth into the light. They created a part of reddit where users could see what was being deleted. Nope.[12]
11) Now we are seeing a new site-wide trend that is designed to make it even harder to call out shills.[13] Which is interesting considering that nobody seems to care when the accusations are sponsored by the mob: “This guy is a Putin-bot! Everyone must think the exact same way about complex geopolitical events.”
12) All of the proper "checks and balances" are now in place.
R/worldnews has become the ultimate modern-day version of the Two-Minutes Hate[14] from George Orwell's 1984:
a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies and express their hatred for them.
But when we really want to drive a point home, the entire front-page gets in on the action!!!
Look what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Bombing, while users were pooling resources, the website was DDos attacked to stop the momentum[15] . Good thing to, since moments later, our honest government said “Hey everybody, these two guys did it!” For arguments sake, despite anything that followed, it should be extremely alarming that millions of people suddenly decided they were guilty based on nothing more than a picture, the government’s word, and the manufactured consensus of their peers. I was on reddit in the exact moment the shift happened and NOBODY could tell me why they suddenly believed, without any other evidence, that two people attending the marathon with a circle around them was evidence of guilt. And I was gang-downvoted every time I asked.
And speaking of the BB, reddit will apparently never live down the fact that someone was wrongly accused. Why should a community be demonized for aggregating information and doing something that has proven to be successful in 90% of cases, particularly disasters? Why? Because the government can’t have people doing their own detective work, that would make their cover-ups way more difficult.
13) Online guerrilla tactics.
When reddit changed the voting system and people were on their last nerve with this site, a place called Whoaverse (now https://voat.co/[16] ) became popular overnight. It is basically a reddit clone and at the time was run by one guy. He was happy about the surge but mentioned it was going to be hard to keep up with, but was committed to making it happen. Guess what happened next?
Did you guess: “Thousands of targeted spam attacks to overload and destroy the website”? Then congrats, you now understand how far these fucks are willing to go to keep the herd in their pen. Hijacking a cool brand and using it’s facade to conduct propaganda games is extremely profitable, just ask VICE.[17] And once you have the customer, it costs much less to keep them than to acquire new ones[18] . So we are seeing online guerrilla tactics designed to destroy the competition by any means.
I believe this can essentially be boiled down to not just greed, but controlling and manipulating the information that the millions of people see on a daily basis. Reddit gets billions of views. Manufactured consensus[21] is very real and doing it through social media is the gold standard because people are hard-wired to value the opinions of their peers.
We should be supporting decentralized p2p projects which aim to replace centralized social networks because its an obvious weak link. How do I know if my site is on a slowball list or if I am shadowbanned in certain places where only I can see my comments? How do I know if people have actually started ignoring me or if my messages never made it (seriously wondering...)?

Communication Security Establishment's cyberwarfare toolbox revealed
Canadian cyber-spy capabilities that go beyond hacking for intelligence, including:
  • destroying infrastructure, which could include electricity, transportation or banking systems;
  • creating unrest by using false-flags — ie. making a target think another country conducted the operation;
  • disrupting online traffic by such techniques as deleting emails, freezing internet connections, blocking websites and redirecting wire money transfers.



It's not just social media. The internet is compromised on so many levels. This is why its so important to support blockchain technology such as Ethereum which is capable of removing the intrusions and corruption of third party trust in many aspects of daily life.



Who will build this cooperative society? The capital is not coming, it's not interested in subverting its own domination. We don't even hear the words that are spoken: "it's up to you."

Wednesday 25 March 2015

CryptoTown Day 64 - The Obsolete Wage Slave



What else is there to do but joke about it? Those who are lucky (or maybe unlucky) enough to see the world around them find that there is no easy connection to be made with those still heavily invested in the system. I am going to try to express some of the experience that lead me to this path, and what are the challenges. It will not be useful to form a picture of who you think I am based on this, but instead, this can be simply used as a meditative or contemplative piece.

Have I destroyed all chances I may ever have had at normal employment and climbing the corporate ladder with my honest expression over the last few months? I am not sure, possibly. Nothing about my capabilities or my interpersonal skills has changed, but I have expressed grievances which our current society may not be capable of redressing. I couldn't sit in a position of privilege while the opportunity to speak out struck me. Perhaps my actions were in part a subconscious expression of solidarity.

I am going to directly copy the Bio I completed for the first crowdfunding campaign that I initiated:
Former IT professional specializing in computer networking. Taking a break from wage labor for skill building and creative expression.

I would like to quickly tell you a bit about myself and how I have built up to this. I am a fairly quiet person and was subjected to constant stress throughout my life. I did poorly in school because I learn by experimentation instead of memorization and repetition. My only challenge was to pass classes through high test scores. People thought that I was smart, but I seemed to do very poorly in this environment. To this day, a few fluff English and elective type courses remain between myself and my HS/College diplomas. It wasn't until my late 20's that I realized my entire education was nothing but make-work credentialing.

Experience is the real teacher, and this was actually a blessing in disguise. Through my late teen and early adulthood, my Father worked abroad and so I was able to visit over 20 countries in my life. We always stayed clear of resort areas, and really endeavored to see what life was like for the locals. This gave me a great appreciation for what I had, even though I didn't really know the truth of this privilege. By 25, I had been finally finding relief from the symptoms of chronic stress (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) through a very physical warehouse job and supplements like l-glutamine. I was in great shape, the brain fog was lifting, I was getting my energy back, and I met my future wife!

I went back to college (didn't finish again) and got an amazing job (anyhow) at the I.T. helpdesk of a major financial institution. While I quickly became one of the most valued workers on my team, much time was available for me to continue earlier research on disaster preparedness. This began a maddening quest to find the ever bigger picture and the meaning of all of this. By 2012 I was heavily researching manipulation of the precious metals markets, by 2013 I was heavily researching the manipulation of all markets and the broader institutions of our society.

At age 30, the year 2014 was the most profound of my life. It was the culmination of everything that I had experienced, and completely transformed my life. I had realized the sheer complexity of the worlds problems and decided to stop reading and start doing. By this time I was convinced that Bitcoin was part of the logical response to everything I had discovered. If blockchain technology could replace the need for a third party, such a a central bank, what else can it do? Three of my articles were published in the Cryptobiz magazine, each with a successively broader and more profound scope.

I had been very active in the strategy and marketing of an “alt-coin” called Crypto Bullion, with a furious amount of time and effort spent well into the summer of 2014. The stress was getting to me again, and I found myself again at the peak of unhealthy patterns of behavior. I had really started picking up Buddhism since February, and was reading a book by OSHO while on summer vacation. All of my experience converged in those days, and something had deeply changed inside me, but I didn't yet know what.

I can not really explain the next few months but it was both exciting and frightening. I came to realize that I had broken free of the fear-based patterns of ego which, for me, manifested as a quest for truth in a mad world. I was finally free of the expectations, the aversions and desires, the worrying, the over-thinking, and the general self-importance of life.

With this experience, many wonderful gifts began to materialize for me. I realized unconditional love, the meaning of compassion, and, a serene sense of equanimity. I also came to realize that we are all equal; that there is no such thing as good or evil, but rather that we are all shaped to be who we are by our experience, and it is not our fault. This insight is absolutely critical for my work because it gives me the ability to see the difference between the old regime of division, and the gems of unity which are the product of an emerging planetary consciousness.
At the time I quit my last job, I could vividly see my workplace as a microcosm of the greater disease which afflicted the world. I have so far found no better explanation of what I am talking about than the following documentary:



This quickly explains why Native Americans referred to competition and exploitation as a disease. We are so far along the path that alternatives are almost inconceivable and we believe our societal structures to be optimal. Management is not interested in critical analysis and proposals for efficiency gains through information sharing and responsibility, if its not your job. My years of experience allowed me to see clearly the bottlenecks of operation, but suggestions may simply be taken as threats to authority. Why don't I just increase my *own* efficiency? huh?

And why should I be working towards foreign profits? Why can't my efforts directly benefit my community and build strength of local networks? We are all heavily invested into the way things are, and these questions may sounds really stupid. They strike at the heart of exploitation. It is actually possible to work together to encourage local sustainable abundance while making communities more independent. Why does it seem like there is no motivation for this to happen at all in society? We like to have the bounty of our labor swept away to far off pockets? Is this a stupid point?
“Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious,” Arthur Young 1771.
Three Aspects of Poverty
However, the lack of money is more a symptom of poverty rather than its cause. In most cases the poor are not without an income, what they lack is the ability to accumulate assets, which is a key ingredient to the creation of wealth and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Besides their low earnings, the prime reason for their inability to accumulate assets and thus increase their security of income is that their profits or potential savings are often appropriated by moneylenders who charge usurious interest rates, by formal and informal regulatory and enforcement agents/organizations who demand bribes or extort protection money, and by middlemen or other stronger business partners who exploit the poor because the poor lack market information or the ability to use that market information to increase their own incomes. 
Looking at this exploration of poverty, its easy to conclude that most of us are in it. Who is able to save money? When I left my job, one reason was that I was going further and further into debt. I either try to make something happen now, or some time down the road it all collapses anyhow. With society in such desperate need of critical analysis, I felt that privilege can wait, and that I might actually find support for my work.

What was once the carrot of all kinds of crap I can consume if only I work hard for it, has now become the stick of debt and bills which subtly threaten to remove my access to life. What little I had saved is long gone, and there is nothing left but to submit myself again to directed labor. The system works! But this is stupid right? Why even bother talking about it, don't we all have to do this?

A Five Hundred Year Moment?
To be dependent on working for wages, or to have to keep up regular payments in order to have somewhere to call home—at the close of the Middle Ages, either of these things was a sign of destitution, misery and impotence.
[...] For a long time, the primary form of resistance to wage-labour was simply a persistent unwillingness to give up the varied activities and irregular rhythms of the day, the week and the year. In England, where full-on industrialisation came earliest, the historian E.P. Thompson catalogues the complaints of the authorities and (would-be) employers against the ordinary people:

“If you offer them work, they will tell you that they must go to look up their sheep, cut furzes, get their cow out of the pound, or, perhaps, say they must take their horse to be shod, that he may carry them to a horse-race or a cricket match.”
(Arbuthnot, 1773)

“When a labourer becomes possessed of more land than he and his family can cultivate in the evenings… the farmer can no longer depend on him for constant work…”
(Commercial & Agricultural Magazine, 1800)

These difficulties were resolved by the process of enclosure, a series of laws by which the ‘commons’—land held in traditional forms of collective ownership, to which local people had a web of overlapping rights of access, grazing and foraging—were privatised. Carried out in the name of ‘agricultural improvement’, enclosure was essential to the creation of a large class with no alternative to renting out their bodies at a daily or a weekly rate.

While rural life in England had been shaped by the customary rights of the commons, the skilled trades were also governed by longstanding customary agreements. These formed the basis of a way of living in which artisans worked largely on their own terms, combining the practice of their trade with other activities and shaping the rhythms of their work as they wished. By the early 19th century, this arrangement was under attack from new legislation and new industrial practices. When their petitions to parliament went unheard, the weavers of Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire were ready to fight rather than be reduced to the status of wage labourers in other men’s factories. This was the origin of the Luddite movement: attacking mills by night, smashing the machinery and sometimes burning the owners’ houses, it ran through the manufacturing districts of the three counties between 1811 and 1813.

The tendency of grown men to smash up the machines contributed to the preference of manufacturers for employing women and young children. To create a modern workforce, fully accustomed to the submission of their time and energy to their employer’s command, it was necessary to start young—and so the story of how wage-labour went from a stigma to a human right forms the shadow side of the history of education. The process is described quite openly by William Temple, writing in 1770, as he makes the case for sending the children of the poor to workhouses from the age of four:
“There is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours a day, whether they earn their living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.”
The origins of mass education are double-edged: on the one hand, the extension of schooling was often pushed forward by those sincerely dedicated to rescuing children from the horrors of the industrial workplace in its earlier forms; on the other, it served as the means to produce an obedient industrial workforce, accustomed to the discipline of completing tasks, often meaningless to them, under the direction of an authority figure and with strict rules concerning time-keeping.
Some of you may be aware of a concept called technological unemployment. It basically means that automation driven by profit motivated efficiency seeking, is drastically reducing the cost of labor (and wages) leading to underemployment and unemployment. We have reached a point where we can clearly see that if current trends continue, there will be very few jobs left, and no one will be able to afford the products and services being automatically provided. Here is a quick video which seems to hit on a few good points:



So if we are going to accept profit at the best motive for society that we can come up with, we will watch as the false pretext of caring for human needs is swept aside in the name of competition. We are going to have to realize that most of our history saw a stewardship of our common heritage and cooperation as the dominant force for meeting human needs. Competition will need to be identified as the disease which continually appropriates all excess wealth towards the few and denies us the ability to build strong interdependence within our communities. Sounding like a load of crap again? Don't worry, it's the conditioning. We have so much psychologically invested in this way of life. We have all worked so hard to feed it. What if the illusion collapses? We can do this the easy way (red pill), or the hard way (blue pill).

Post-Capitalism: Rise of the Collaborative Commons | The Revolution will not be Centralized
As capitalist markets and wage labor becomes less relevant, an economy built upon new principles and social values will progressively emerge: decentralized networks will take the place of markets; access to an abundance of shareable goods and services will reduce the significance of ownership and private property; open-source innovation, transparency and collaborative co-creation will replace the pursuit of competitive self-interest and autonomy; a commitment to sustainable development and a reintegration with the Earth’s biosphere will redress rampant materialism and overconsumption; and the re-discovery of our empathic nature will drive our pursuit for community engagement and social belonging in a rising Collaborative Commons.
[...] If there is an underlying theme to the emerging paradigm, it is the decentralization of everything.
Cooperatives whose profit has been constitutionally redirected towards expansion and co-creation of commons is one example of a new type of organization which directly encourages abundance and the meeting of human needs. What exactly are commons? Its a great subject for another post, but essentially it is neither public, nor private, but common. This is maintained by collective stewardship in the common interest. Working together we would quickly see the bounty of cooperation massively outstrips anything that competition could ever produce, especially with the coordination possible with emerging technologies.

There are many new ideas being thrown around such as the guaranteed basic income, but it must all be looked at with a critical approach. If we are unaware of the possibility to invest in local sustainable abundance (permaculture), the money will be wasted just as so much capital is squandered in the purchase of items designed for obsolescence, not independence. Corporations have the money to spend thinking about how they can remove their dependence on human labor. If we are not thinking of ways to remove our dependence on corporations, we will become obsolete, and discarded just as we discard our coffee cups.

Bonus Documentaries (very excellent):




 

Friday 6 March 2015

CryptoTown Day 45 - CryptoTown guiding principles foundation for Civilization 2.0


What is CryptoTown? Its a model for viral abundance. Anyone can participate. Anyone can try on their own. I am going to quote and comment from a number of different places to better give an idea of the guiding principles behind CryptoTown.

I will try to keep the commentary to an absolute minimum as this post is massive. Some major themes in this post are redefining work beyond hierarchical employment, radical abundance, post-growth economy, and commons transition.


New Work New Culture | Why we need a new culture
[...] We need a culture that provides support for meaningful work, and we want the kind of culture that will come out of people working passionately at what they love. We need to de-couple the idea of work from the idea of a job: work can be caring for people in your community, enhancing your environment, creating things that you and others want and need. If such a “passion” generates income as well, great, but we need a culture that provides alternate ways of providing for one’s basic needs, so that we can all pursue work that will give our lives purpose rather than just doing whatever will pay the most.
We have to also consider that profit does not directly motivate us to meet human needs, and often fails to manage.

MotherBoard | The End of Endless Growth: Part 2 Nafeez Ahmed
[...] It is this freedom of information, both in accessibility and cost, that is also eating into the traditional business models of the broadcast and print media. Those models are walking dead. The members of the next ge​neration do not read newspapers, and they don’t watch TV news. They get their info from YouTube shows, curate their news from across multiple mainstream and alternative digital sources, while sharing and communicating news across social networ​ks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Vine, Tumblr, and so on. And this is a big reason why the conventional business models of the mainstream media are experiencing rapid​ decline.

[...] As the fossil fuel empire crumbles, in contrast, the cost of renewable energy technologies (especially solar and wind) is dramatically falling even as efficiency gains are rapidly increasing. According to Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Stanford business studies lecturer Tony Seba, who forecasts the dominance of solar within just 15 years, the Energy Return On Energy Investment or EROIE of solar is far superior over the long-term than fossil fuels.

[...] Transition initiatives across the western world are pioneering community efforts to grow their own food, organically and outside of the industrial food system. Preliminary studies show that the reloc​alization of food economies is a viable option that could have huge benefits to local economies and create a wide range of jobs—although this would involve less meat consumption, with greater numbers of people living on and working the land.

[...] The information, food and energy revolutions are being facilitated by a burgeoning revolution in finance. Once again, the emerging trend is for new models that give greater power to the crowd, and undermine the authority and legitimacy—and even necessity—of the traditional, centralized banking infrastructure.

[...] As the Aust​ralian Business Review recently noted, “banks have now been brought to the edge of the disruption abyss” where “the media, mail and music businesses” are already on the verge of toppling over. These new social lending and finance mechanisms will “break the business of banking into its parts, each with its own set of disrupters.”

[...] One of the most significant potential developments in finance is in the concept and practice of the “circular economy,” which focuses on the need to recycle resources in an economic system, rather than simply generate escalating quantities of waste in the name of endless growth. A major report to the Club of Rome this year by Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence’s Earth Sciences Department showed that recycling, conservation and efficiency in the management of the planet’s mineral resources could enable a prosperous​ and high technology society, though not one indulging in the sort of mass consumerism we take for granted today.

[...] The old paradigm, which is facing increasing disruption by the emerging revolutions described above, is premised on a model of centralized, hierarchical control focused on unlimited material accumulation, and premised on the values of individualism, self-interest, competition, and conflict.

The model that is fast developing and disrupting this paradigm from within, is one premised on open access to information; distributed and effectively free, clean energy; local, community and democratic ownership over planetary resources; and a form of prosperity and well-being that is ultimately decoupled from the imperative for endless material accumulation.

The old and new paradigms can be clearly related to two quite different value systems. The first paradigm, which is currently in decline, is that of egoism, crude materialism, and selfish consumerism. It is a value system that, we now know from our best scientific minds, is on course to potentially lead to an uninhabitable planet, and thus, perhaps even species extinction (with many scientists arguing we appear to be at the dawn of the planet’s six​th mass extinction event). This suggests that this value system is actually dislocated from human nature, our biophysical environment, and the relationship between them.

New Work New Culture | The shortest possible summary
[...] These technologies have in common that they are all “small-scale and small-space.” They no longer require gigantic factories with long lines of enormous machines that necessitate boatloads of capital. Instead, they can be grouped together in a neighborhood, or village or a community center. In short, one half of New Work is the transformation from Industrial to “Community Production.” The result will be the creation of new enterprises, but also progressively the increasing local production of food, housing, and energy, and equally of furniture, appliances and clothing, and beyond that of still more of what is needed for a pleasurable, modern and fulfilling life.

[...] New Work puts an end to the ever more calamitous shortage of jobs by adding two new forms of work to the job-work of the past: the work of Community Production and the deeply desired truly chosen work. Thereby New Work obviates the compulsive galloping race for Economic Growth. For once we have an abundance of work, and with these two additions that is what we would have, making the economy grow would no longer be a mortally driven race.
We think that the only acceptable work is having a job, or employment, by a private hierarchy which instructs us what to do as part of its profit extraction scheme in competition with others. The extreme limits to which we are taking this system are now coming into view. How can there be unemployment when there is so much work to be done to satisfy human needs? Cooperate towards abundance, rather than compete over scarcity.


Michael Tellinger - UBUNTU A World Without Money (Youtube)

From Description: [...] Let us move from a money driven society to self governing global communities driven by people and their passion for life and their god-given talents to create a world of abundance for all -- free from any restriction or hurdles to achieve what we want to achieve. We live on a planet of abundance. Let us discard the philosophy of scarcity which only benefits the few. Let us reclaim our planet, a world of abundance on all levels of our human endeavour. It is much easier than most will ever imagine.
This is a wonderful video addressing lots of practical issues. The example of the Ubuntu community given should simply help to get a better idea of the abundance possible. Transition does not happen all at once, its happening now, in all places, in all ways. We do not have to get away and become isolated, or live basic lives, but we will have to learn to build a cooperative culture.


Enthea.org Paul Hughes | About
[...] There are not only better alternatives, but WAY better alternatives. We have the means now for bootstrapping humanity beyond anything we have yet imagined, even our greatest visionaries. All it takes is enough of us to believe it is possible, and then making it happen. It’s that simple.

Two of the most promising trends facilitating this shift are decentralization and the emerging technologies of radical abundance. These two trends are intimately tied to each other. The nature of decentralization enabled by things like peer to peer technologies (p2p) is that it shifts the power to the edges, the ends, the “bottom”. This emerging bottoms-up, grass-roots world is inherently more democratic, participatory, decentralized, leaderless and I dare say utopian. A world where everyone is empowered, both individually and collectively, to pursue their highest life path.  We already have the means to collaboratively build all the necessary life support systems at the local level. This means far less dependence on centralized systems for thrivability. Considering the general reproductive fitness of open-source models, these decentralized systems can create more prosperous, secure, inclusive, coherent, responsive, dynamic, participatory, representative, and cooperative systems than anything we have ever had before.

As the old political and economic systems fail us, the rise of decentralized collective intelligence and systems are rising in its place. The pace may seem slow now, but it’s gaining speed, and will soon become the way of life going forward. Powered by the the network that is “us” we are all benefiting from and creating positive and transformative feedback loops, culminating in a loosely knit, but increasingly coherent global brain. A phase shift that represents a peer-to-peer enabled civilization-wide singularity. The result will be something entirely new – a radically distributed, continually forking and evolving, open-source, radically abundant life-supporting operating system – ushering in unlimited modes of consciousness, artistic expression, innovation, peace and prosperity. A fully regenerative, ecologically harmonious economy on a hyperbolic course for the stars. We will no longer have to work for a living, but play forever. As we enter this radically abundant post-scarcity era, the universe will become home to our highest consciousness, intelligence and synaesthetic explorations – a true Golden Age… and onwards to Apotheosis.
Some great points. Fate is unconsciously following the patterns of society laid out before you. To believe that things are inevitably unchangeable, is to directly fuel the only thing that makes it true. In an open knowledge society, innovation spreads rapidly. We may be drinking from the fire hose, and need to be careful that we align our institutions with human needs and flourishing.


Commons Transition Points the Way to a Commons-based World
[...] Of the FLOK Society, Bauwens and Restakis write: The first characteristic of the FLOK process is of course its very existence. This is the first time that a transition plan to a commons-based society and economy has been crafted. There are ‘new economy’, green, social economy, and other transition plans, but none of them have focused on re-organizing society and the economy around the central concept of the Commons as the core value creation and distribution system.
[...] The plan for Commons Transition is not to impose or prescribe solutions but to stimulate discussion and the crafting of commons-oriented policy proposals specific to different contexts and locales. “Basing a civil society on the commons (including the collaborative stewardship of our shared resources),” says Troncoso, “would enable a more egalitarian, just, and environmentally stable society. The proposals presented in our web platform go beyond rhetoric and are inspired by successful, self-organized working communities that maintain themselves and their environments through commons-based peer production, property and governance.”
If we are going to start thinking from a perspective of open cooperation and awareness, it does not make sense for our efforts to benefit private interests. This is why I emphasize expanding of the commons as a foundation for coming together for the benefit of the community.


Share the World's Resources | How to share the world's resources
Addressing the interlocking crises facing humanity will require a transformation in economic relationships to embrace our collective values and global interdependence. It is imperative that world public opinion embraces the understanding that we are in the midst of a civilizational crisis, and there is little time left for governments to implement a ‘programme for survival’. - See more at: http://www.sharing.org/how-to-share-the-worlds-resources#sthash.R6SyP35w.dpuf
Addressing the interlocking crises facing humanity will require a transformation in economic relationships to embrace our collective values and global interdependence. It is imperative that world public opinion embraces the understanding that we are in the midst of a civilizational crisis, and there is little time left for governments to implement a ‘programme for survival’. - See more at: http://www.sharing.org/how-to-share-the-worlds-resources#sthash.R6SyP35w.dpuf
Addressing the interlocking crises facing humanity will require a transformation in economic relationships to embrace our collective values and global interdependence. It is imperative that world public opinion embraces the understanding that we are in the midst of a civilizational crisis, and there is little time left for governments to implement a ‘programme for survival’. - See more at: http://www.sharing.org/how-to-share-the-worlds-resources#sthash.R6SyP35w.dpuf
[...] Addressing the interlocking crises facing humanity will require a transformation in economic relationships to embrace our collective values and global interdependence. It is imperative that world public opinion embraces the understanding that we are in the midst of a civilizational crisis, and there is little time left for governments to implement a ‘programme for survival’.

[...] An emergency relief program can only form an initial stage in a broader agenda to overhaul the global economy. Particular attention must also be placed on guaranteeing access to social protection and essential public services for all; establishing a just and sustainable global food system; and instituting an international framework for sharing natural resources equitably and within planetary limits.

[...] The practice of sharing has a pivotal role to play in a new paradigm for food and agriculture, but it has to be a true form of economic sharing that addresses the power structures and politics underlying an unjust global economy. It is imperative that governments finally accept their responsibility for ensuring adequate diets for all the world's people, and enact policies to democratise and localise food systems.

[...] Guaranteeing everyone access to essential goods and services will not be enough to create a just and sustainable world. Governments also need to rethink the management of an economic system built upon endless consumption and competition over scarce resources, which will be impossible to achieve without new governance regimes for sharing the ‘global commons’.

[...] As humanity moves ever closer to social, economic and environmental tipping points, it is clear that we can no longer rely on politicians to lead the way towards a better world. It is imperative that millions more people recognise what is at stake and take the lead as proponents for change - the wellbeing of planet earth and future generations largely depends on this shift in global consciousness.
This is an interesting set of directions. There is a lot that government could do to encourage decentralization and local sustainable abundance (permaculture). The initiative and implementation for such things by nature have to come from the grass roots because this meets human needs in a way that taps abundance and reduces dependence.


Resilient Family | The coming decentralization of food production
[...] Today our agribusiness food production is highly centralized and controlled.  It’s a hugely inefficient, massively government-subsidized, monoculture system that is destructive to the environment, requires ever-more intensive inputs (pesticides, fertilizers) to generate yield, and produces cheap Franken-slop such as high fructose corn syrup rather than the healthy foods humans actually want to consume. Organic farming on the other hand, is demonstrating conclusively that embracing complexity, decentralization and local production can pay huge dividends.
I think that open food cultivation designs and methods will go viral, literally multiplying through 3d printing technology and local material sourcing. Here is a great example: Food is the how of freedom: Mike Adams & the Foodrising (Youtube). Automation is also replacing much of the traditional labor involved. Even with this in mind all possible avenues of reducing food dependence should be explored by the individual. As individuals we also should try to be aware that some things help more than others.


The New Inquiry | Authentic Sharing
[...] “Sharing economy,” of course, is a gratingly inappropriate terms to describe a business approach that entails precisely the opposite, that renders the social field an arena for microentrepreneurship and nothing else. Yet the vestiges of “sharing” rhetoric clings to such companies as Airbnb and a host of smaller startups that purport to build “trust” and “community” among strangers by getting them to be more efficient and render effective customer service to one another. What more could you ask of a friend?

By bringing a commercial ethos to bear on exchanges that were once outside the market, the civilizing process that is often attributed to the “bourgeois virtues” of capitalism — with successful economic exchange building the only form of social trust necessary — gets to spread itself over all possible human relationships. The only real community is a marketplace in which everyone has a fair shot to compete.

The freedom of anonymous commercial exchange amid a “community” of well-connected but essentially atomized strangers well-disciplined by the market to behave conventionally and sycophantically is not the sort of community the sharing companies tend to crow about in their advertising.
We should be aware that we may be further commoditizing ourselves without addressing dependence at all. This is the whole point of blockchain technology, that we can now cryptographically express our interactions directly to each other without a need for a profit model or a third party at all. Capital will always try to adapt. The forces of competition are very powerful and underestimated, but the mechanics are simple.


Of Two Minds | Solutions Start with Innovation and Transparency Charles Hugh Smith
[...] Just as everyone supports "solutions" until the solutions crush their share of the swag, everybody supports innovation and transparency (IT) until IT disrupts their share of the swag. Then they scramble to hide the ugly truths and suppress the spread of threatening innovation.

This parallel rejection of swag-crushing solutions and innovation/transparency by vested interests is not coincidental: innovation and transparency are the heart of real solutions.

It's not surprising that the Status Quo craves pseudo-solutions, for real solutions necessarily disrupt the corrupt, sclerotic, wasteful, inefficient, fraud-ridden and cronyist-paradise of vested interests. "Faster, better, cheaper" does not result in larger bureaucracies of do-nothing paper-pushers or multiplying crony-parasites. Rather, "faster, better, cheaper" destroys the friction of vested interests.

[...] Innovation is selectively restrained in systems controlled by vested interests. Anyone who examines the absurdly overpriced delivery of higher education and the dismal market-value of the resulting "education" knows that the system of higher education is ripe for a 90% reduction in costs.
Its something we become more aware of, like addressing symptoms, but never root causes. I think that the following, though clearly divisive and provocative, highlights the isolation from direct connection to nature and community which has resulted in complete hierarchical dependence.


The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry was Whipped Into Industrial Wage Slaves
[...] Yep, despite what you might have learned, the transition to a capitalistic society did not happen naturally or smoothly. See, English peasants didn’t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too. Using Adam Smith’s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It’s really not much of a choice, is it?

[...] “The brutal acts associated with the process of stripping the majority of the people of the means of producing for themselves might seem far removed from the laissez-faire reputation of classical political economy,” writes Perelman. “In reality, the dispossession of the majority of small-scale producers and the construction of laissez-faire are closely connected..."

[...] but by far the most interesting parts of the book are where you get to read Adam Smith’s proto-capitalist colleagues complaining and whining about how peasants are too independent and comfortable to be properly exploited, and trying to figure out how to force them to accept a life of wage slavery. 

[...] Arthur Young, a popular writer and economic thinker respected by John Stuart Mill, wrote in 1771: “everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.” Sir William Temple, a politician and Jonathan Swift’s boss, agreed, and suggested that food be taxed as much as possible to prevent the working class from a life of “sloth and debauchery.”
  
[...] Patrick Colquhoun, a merchant who set up England’s first private “preventative police“ force to prevent dock workers from supplementing their meager wages with stolen goods, provided what may be the most lucid explanation of how hunger and poverty correlate to productivity and wealth creation:
"Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth."
We have surpassed the usefulness of the industrial mind, rooted in its strong sense of self and other, designed to compete and take instructions. It is not needed when we have the means to unleash radical abundance and directly meet human needs as peers.

Enoughness: Restoring Balance to the Economy (Youtube)


How we see the world determines how we act. Western thought sees us at war with each other over resources. Indigenous philosophy, we are all related as individuals in balance with nature.
We can look to adapt indigenous wisdom traditions to our modern times.


Reorganizing For The Era Of Social Capitalism (Youtube talk)
As a society, we only need to reorganize ourselves if we want to escape the 3 problems that cause most of the other problems that we face. This video describes a simple, fast, and inexpensive way to turn the lights out on Big Data and take ownership and possession of our social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital so we may articulate ourselves in an economy of abundance rather than one of scarcity and division.
(1) Competition + (2) Asymmetric information = (3) Hierarchy

Post Growth Institute | Charter
[...] We commit to the emergence of ‘post-growth’ world futures, guided by the following principles:
Prosperity Without Growth:
  • Recognition that there are natural limits to economic, population and consumption growth and points at which further growth produces, overall, negative outcomes.
  • Acceptance that, globally, we have long surpassed the natural limits of the planet to allow us to sustain further increases to material consumption.
  • Commitment to restoring, protecting, and prioritizing a healthy ecosystem in order to sustain wellbeing for humans and other species, without requiring further economic growth to do so.
Social and Global Justice:
  • Acknowledgement that current models of economic growth have systemically benefited certain populations and species over others and that greater social and environmental justice is required for sustainable futures.
  • Awareness that, because of current inequitable conditions, extra efforts may be required to ensure equal access to participation by all, particularly in relation to the most politically charged global issues in which power dynamics have routinely excluded consideration of certain perspectives.
  • Advocacy for non-hierarchical organizational systems that invite everyone to contribute in whatever ways they can, valuing the potential of such contributions.
  • Support for equitable social and economic systems by which people do not feel forced to leave their homes for the sake of safety, health or opportunity.
Political and Structural Reorganization:
  • Acknowledgement that the planet comprises our collective heritage (commons) and that all notions of private possession are human constructions, not laws of nature.
  • Belief that post-growth thinking must go beyond polarized debates about existing systems and allow for entirely new ideas and frameworks to form, often drawing inspiration from models other than those that have led to our current challenges while also recognizing that there are some things currently do work for both people and the planet.
  • Support for positive forms of growth, such as the (re)generation of local economies, the natural environment, spirituality, well-being, community and respect.
  • Acknowledgement that positive outcomes are not always measurable through currently established means.
Diversity, Multiplicity, and Cooperation:
  • Respect for diversity in all its forms.
  • Recognition that for post-growth outcomes to be most effective, they will most often need to be grounded in relevant contexts and driven by local communities, and that communities do not exist in isolation of larger contexts, meaning there is value in global dynamics informing local action.
  • Appreciation that creating positive futures requires embracing multiple approaches, rather than seeking ‘one right answer’.
  • Recognition that these issues can have deep emotional impacts in people, and that moralising, blaming, or engendering guilt is counter-productive.
Creativity in Action:
  • Commitment to placing intentional emphasis on creativity and collaboration as opposed to constant critique, while still valuing the important role of critical engagement – promoting an attitude of ‘critical hope’.
  • Valuing multiple voices means we seek consent rather than consensus in our collective work; finding ways of working together amidst differences is important.
  • Recognition of the need to be transparent about assumptions, values, perspectives, and goals in order to continuously revisit them based on new learning.
  • Recognition of the creative potential of fun and humor!
Some great points. Simply by looking at this list it will help people to see the other end of the spectrum. eg. unity connection, abundance, etc. Seeking to know the extremes of a dichotomy, we may then drop it, and approach the middle path.


Towards an Open Co-operativism | Commons Transition
[...] New forms of peer production are creating common pools of knowledge, code and design and entirely new socio-economic-technical sectors of production and governance. This sprawling, eclectic realm based on free software, open knowledge, open design and open hardware relies upon social collaboration and sharing, and aspires to become a sector of self-sustaining and autonomous commons. 
[...] How can social cooperation in contemporary life be structured to better serve the interests of the co-operators/commoners and society in general, in a techno/political economy that currently insists upon appropriating surplus value for private capital? 
Commoners tend to approach this question from a different perspective, history and focus than many in the co-operative movement. That’s because commoners tend to occupy a space outside of markets, for example, while co-operatives are generally market entities themselves. Commoners tend to have few institutional resources or revenue streams, but instead rely upon powerful networks of collaboration based on open platforms. 
By contrast, co-operatives today constitute a substantial segment of modern economies. There are more than 1 billion co-op members in 2.6 million co-operatives around the world, and they generate an estimated US$2.98 trillion in annual revenue.
[...] The primary goal is to build a larger movement based on the principles of open co-operativism, which, stated simply, is a movement that can embrace the history, institutional innovations and finance models of co-operatives and blend them with the power of open networks, open source ethic, co-operative principles and commitment to the common good. 
[...] MOVEMENT-BUILDING STRATEGIES
Building a new movement based on open co-operativism requires finding ways to build bridges between the co-operative movement and commons sectors. Participants suggested a number of conceptual approaches that would be helpful:
  • Build awareness and a shared discourse
  • Develop a statement of guiding principles
  • Initiate new dialogues and develop a shared roadmap for collaboration
  • Start new commons as co-ops
  • Identify cooperative solutions for the precariat including unions and mutuals for the self-employed that secure “economies of co-operation”
  • Expand stewardship of the commons through “co-ops for the commons”
  • Identify common-denominator solutions through “commons for co-ops,” and
  • Treat land as a common platform for co-operative cities and “adventure capital” as a tool to develop convivial finance solutions.
Participants also identified a number of organizational strategies that could be pursued:
  • Convene movement-building events such as conferences, symposia and workshops
  • Host festivals to reach out to new partners and the general public
  • Start a standing forum to host creative dialogue on Open Co-operativism
  • Develop an action research programme on key questions
  • Collaborate on a co-operative toolkit for developers
  • Start working task forces issue of joint concern
  • Adopt “resist and build” strategies (e.g., La Via Campesina)
  • Cultivate the cooperative ethos because culture matters as much as legal forms

Cyber.fund | Cybernetic economy vision early draft paper
[...] Cybereconomy is changing the main criterion for economic decision-making from the desire to increase individual capital(capitalism) and public property(socialism) to new motivation criterion equilibrium. Capitalism, nowadays system motivates people to accumulate equity. Successful people in that system of values ​​is a person who has accumulated more capital. Exclusively personal gain makes people egoists and often motivates them to do acts only for themselves but damaging society (corruption, environmental pollution, etc.). 

Cybereconomy - is a system based on the principle of equilibrium between private and public [...] Cybereconomy already exists in the world of Open Source software. This logic of production seems absurd from the point of view of capitalism. Involvement and social control in the economic and technological development processes by decentralizing decision-making in economic development planning between participants in the economic process. Cybernetic business framework change the system labor organization from centralized system to decentralized.
I am interested in this project for some of the innovative use of technology, but I would again look with caution at the underlying motive engine.


Barrie Cybernetics Club
Helping to connect and support local efforts towards decentralization and sustainable local abundance (permaculture). Cooperating as individuals to address local concerns such as the environment, poverty, homelessness, healthcare, drug abuse, and food/energy dependence.

Civil cybernetics is cooperation and self-improvement towards a culture of awareness and abundance. In the context of an open knowledge society, it would involve the aggrigation of information and sharing of resources to encourage the transition towards decentralization and permaculture.
The CryptoTown model uses the idea of a cybernetics club as a sort of local connection point and open think tank.


The Omni Commons
is comprised of several Bay Area collectives with a shared political vision—one that privileges a more equitable commoning of resources and meeting of human needs over private interests or corporate profit.

We invite you to join us in establishing a safe, productive place to pool resources for the collective use and stewardship of the greater community. A space that fosters an ethic of radical collaboration across disciplines and between individual collectives, creating a living model for future radical spaces.
Serves as a great example for the kinds of things that are possible, and things are advancing so rapidly. Here is an awesome walkthrough video.


Peer Production | The Constituent Building Blocks
  1. Voluntary cooperation among peers: Peer production is goal-driven people cooperate in order to reach a shared goal. Participants decide for themselves whether and how to get involved; nobody can order others around. Cooperation is stigmergic: people leave hints about what there is to do and others decide voluntarily which hints (if any) to follow.
  2. Common knowledge: Digital peer production is based on treating knowledge as a commons that can be used, shared, and improved by all. Projects developing and sharing free design information on how to produce, use, repair and recycle physical goods (often called open-source hardware) provide a basis for physical peer production.
  3. Common resources: Free design information is not enough for physical production, access to land and other natural resources is essential as well. In the logic of peer production, these too become commons to be used, shared (in a fair manner) and maintained by all.
  4. Distributed, openly accessible means of production: In peer production, the means of production tend to be distributed among many people there is no single person or entity controlling their usage. Hackerspaces, Fab Labs, and mesh networks provide the basis for a distributed physical production infrastructure. If the machines and other equipment used in such open making facilities become themselves the result of peer production, the circle is closed: Peer producers can jointly produce, use and manage their own productive facilities, allowing to overcome the dependency on proprietary, market-driven production." (http://fscons.org/extensions/self-organized-plenty-emergence-physical-peer-production)
Together we can create abundance while expanding our commons rather than sending profits elsewhere and competing for scarcity.


Sustainable Economies Law Centre | Mission
Our Mission

Legal education, research, advice, and advocacy for just and resilient economies.

SELC cultivates a new legal landscape that supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. We provide essential legal tools - education, research, advice, and advocacy - so communities everywhere can develop their own sustainable sources of food, housing, energy, jobs, and other vital aspects of a thriving community.

Or as Lady Justice says it:

How We Create Change

Neither our communities nor our ecosystems are well served by an economic system that incentivizes perpetual growth, wealth concentration, and the exploitation of land and people. Communities everywhere are responding to these converging economic and ecological crises with a grassroots transformation of our economy that is rapidly re-localizing production, reducing resource consumption, and rebuilding the relationships that make our communities thrive.

However, as new solutions for resilience emerge, many are running into entrenched legal barriers: laws originally designed to protect people from the ills of industrialism are now preventing many communities from growing and selling their own food, investing in local businesses, creating sustainable housing options, and cooperatively owning land and businesses.
This is a great example of the types of organization models that are popping up. This legal cafe is essentially able to augment any local community as soon as an able member of that community becomes involved in the commons. They may offer expertise when needed while interfacing with the global network.

It is important to realize that there is a lot of work to be done which is beyond the profit motive and tricky to fund. This work often involves individual intuition and experimentation. The returns are not immediately obvious but stand to outstrip any product of competition.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

CryptoTown Day 42 - Sup Doge? This past year..


Reddit can be a very isolating place, even on such a fun sub as /r/Dogecoin. There was a lot of excitement this time last year and a lot of confusion. I tried my best to get through to the Doge community with some advice and organizational support, but was lost in the noise. So much has happened, we need to catch up!

I have been super busy. I forgot about all politics and started at work to find out how can crypto make it into every day life. If blockchain tech can remove the need for a third party, such as a central bank, what else can it do for society? CryptoTown was born. I havn't even had time since last Summer to check in on my usual coin communities, or even currencies at all.

The cryptosphere may have taken a beating, this last year, but we still have our networks. The ratio of people who really care about the future of blockchain tech to those in it to make a quick bark should be more favorable. I was always most impressed with Doge community, coming straight outta the cracks of the internet with a positive and inclusive attitude to stick it all together.

dogecoin.com ~ The fun and friendly internet currency. Dogecoin sets itself apart from other digital currencies with an amazing, vibrant community made up of friendly folks just like you.


image ibtimes.co.uk

I want to clarify that I am looking for participation and cooperation from the Dogecoin community towards the actual adoption of crypto in society. I have grabbed a number of old posts that I made, and mixed them in with some posts about the foundation and moolah scandal for context. What have we been up to for the last year? Please discuss at the Reddit post.

Our bright future - Please help! - Understanding Crypto-Currency Market Dynamics and the Role of BTC, DOGE, and CGB (xpost /r/CryptoMarkets) (Feb 17, 2014)

Dogecoin TL;DR: The value of your currency is derived from the size of the community that trades and accepts Dogecoin. You must work tirelessly to spread the word and get people excited to be using Dogecoin and to accept it at their businesses. When businesses and individuals can operate by spending their earned Dogecoin instead of converting it to government issued fiat, you will have established lunar orbit. To say this another way, your ultimate goal is to create a diverse Dogecoin ecosystem that no longer relies on government issued fiat.

I think this is one of the most important objectives that I tried to convey. If a business can spend doge they earn on operational costs, there is less downward pressure on the price because it is not sold on exchange and accumulates.

Entrenched Interests, Lost Direction, and Stagnation in the Crypto-Currency Markets (xpost from /r/CryptoMarkets) - Doge mentioned. Very intrigue, much scandal. (Feb 27, 2014)

When I step back and look at what we are doing as a whole, I think that we could hardly be more directionless. Every day new coins are coming out which offer nothing new. Technologies have advanced but they are not even implemented in this constant stream of supposed excitement. [...] I am going to put this entire article into perspective and hopefully you will all begin to understand what kind of challenge we face. There is a great general force which causes the stagnation we see in crypto-markets today and it is people and organizations with time and money invested into their own currencies. This includes everyone from small time investor to enterprise grade coin mining datacenters to governments and banks. This includes unregulated digital currencies and includes government issued fiat currencies like the USD and the deep state that goes along with it. If citizens had the freedom to choose their own currency and it caused a flight out of government issued fiat to the new distributed economy, it would be a disaster to the status quo.
Looking back, if this insanity was not partially induced, its a testament to the power of greed. If we look at the long term chart, and consider that we used to see 1000 active shibes on the sub at a time, it really feels like the get-rich-quick schemers have simply left. What did they leave behind? Are we making real progress towards Dogecoin adoption? Where? ..no seriously, I have been out of the loop so let me know if good stuff has been happening like what I am talking about.

Re: Why Dogecoin Will Never Go Global (Mar 02, 2014)
I don't care who wrote this or for what reason. I only wish to point out the damage so that as a community we can learn to identify this kind of irrational division and pay extra care to support the logical and honest discussion.
Standing up for Doge.

/u/mumzie Foundation discussion: Do you want one? (May 21, 2014)
From this comment by /u/mohland:

Many of us here in the community carry weight, but at the core, this is a decentralized system. I'm of the opinion there needs to be multiple "foundations" -- led by people who want to take charge and make things happen. :) Those that succeed will succeed. Those that fail, will fail.
If we pin our hopes on the efforts of any one group, we will be sitting around doing nothing. Decentralization involves individual efforts!!

/u/Doge-_- "much love. such silliness. day!” Every last Wednesday of May from now until the last Wednesday of May, ever! Starts TOMORROW!!! (May 27, 2014)
Second: this is about the culture and not about the currency. Although I believe there is an incredibly important bond between the two...This is PURELY about the culture.
This is a great example of trying to work on the culture and make fun things happen. It went virtually unnoticed (like many of my posts).

/u/Darthfuzzy [Long and Serious, Please Read] Can we talk about the elephant in the room? The Dogecoin foundation? (May 30, 2014)
Nevertheless, the point of this is to say, quit worrying about price. Quit worrying about PoS, PoSV, PoT, etc. This isn't the problem right now.The problem, simply put, is that there is a lack of leadership and direction. When the coin first started, we had very visible and fantastic leaders. +/u/ummjackson, +/u/ericnakagawa, +/u/42points, +/u/BillyM2k and +/u/NeutralityMentality we're all VERY visible members of the community. Look, I don't know what the hell happened, but after Dogecon SF, shit hit the fan and all of those people left. Well, I know what happened, it was the fact that there was a disagreement with +/u/NeutralityMentality and +/u/moolah_. From that, the moderators stepped in to prevent a witch hunt [...] I took the position from the start that the entire thing was a massive overreaction and was completely unwarranted -- from all parties.

Dogecon SF happened on April 25. Dogecar Talladega happened on May 5. Around those dates, we had a massive in fight between all parties that left the coin in a power vacuum. No foundation. No solid leadership. And look where we are right now. We don't have a direction or a major goal. The community is aimlessly wandering.

The average number of shibes 2 weeks ago was around 900-1000. Now, I see it at 500-600 daily. This makes me sad.
Its 100 right now. I am not sure we can say its a lack of leadership, but certainly a lack of participation! It seems difficult to understand that there is no one really in charge and that means that we are all in charge. Stuff only happens when we do it on an individual level.

/u/goodshibe Community Discussion: The Dogecoin Foundation Bylaws(Jun 24, 2014)
The Foundation provides guidance, essential infrastructure, services as well as a framework for self-governed and self-organizing community projects. It also encourages support for software and protocol development for Dogecoin and cryptocurrency related projects worldwide.
This sounds ideal, but the community should already be doing this stuff in every way possible. I mention this because its directly related to the post that I made below. I asked before for support, and I am here again to do the same.

Dogecoin Foundation? Help Doge Thrive - A plea for support of the CryptoTown On The Ground project - message from CGB Core Team (Jun 27, 2014)
I think the importance of merchant adoption is lost on no one here! Please consider supporting our coin-neutral project. We are working hard to build an understanding within the cryptosphere so that we can all push forward to actual adoption of cryptocurrencies! What problem does it solve? That businesses have no local support to turn to if they want to accept crypto. They have to go online and talk to "internet people." Your local CryptoMall will have resources and consultants on board to tailor your adoption of crypto to your needs. This is in the spirit of self sufficiency and decentralization. Relying on local support networks. 
Check this infographic! CryptoTown On The Ground open community project - The cryptosphere is losing cohesion. We need your support!
The actual adoption of cryptocurrencies should be a prime objective. There are so many unknowns, and the only way to do it is to support on the ground adoption and experimentation. I am working with some good people in Barrie to bring back commons/collective space which would be a great foundation for a cryptomall.

/u/langer_hans My view on the foundation, confusion and development(Jun 28, 2014)
it feels like the foundation got way more political [...] The foundation should concentrate on what it is about by definition. Not politics to say the least. Not personal attacks, not causing confusion with statements out of context, not pursuing anything not related to what they were set up for. I dearly hope that the foundation will be able to help the coin and its community and that it will never overstep any lines.
I only wanted to highlight here that this is typical of what happens when we pass off our responsibilities to pseudo-official groups. Decentralization could be called disintermediation. We are removing third parties and interacting as peers. This is why mtGox happened and why a scandal or anything can get in the way, because we are not responsible (able to respond).

Business Point of Sale software options for DogeCoin - Planning stages for Barrie CryptoMall (Jul 09, 2014)
The most important feature is automatic conversion to Doge of the service cost. In the simplest implementation, we can manually roll over keys as wallets fill up, and post the public key in the office. This is all still very new, and we are pioneering the methods. Any related software or ideas are appreciated.
I was really trying to help create a link between local experimentation, and global support. I still think that this is a critical piece towards mainstream adoption.

/u/dogebabycn I formally request the Foundation authorized me to negotiate with China's top exchanges (Nov 02, 2014)
1, Enhance trading volume more than 10 times;
2,10 times or more raise the prices;
4, DOGE have reliable, secure global trading center; China's top exchanges launched international editions [...] Each site get venture capital more than 10 million US dollars at 2013, will not appear Moopay collapse tragedy. .

[...] How to negotiate? I have my own plans. In the past 3weeks, my friend had told my plan to the Foundation, but still no reply. Anger, let me publish this post.

Perhaps, the Foundation has its own plan, but we have been waiting this for a long time, anyone's patience is limited. If the Foundation opposes China's top exchanges, or they think I am not qualified, please tell me. I hate the endless wait.
and from this reply by /u/Fulvio55:
First, you do not need permission or authorisation from anyone to promote Dogecoin. You are most welcome to do anything you can as an individual or group of individuals. We are all equal in this, and there is no central authority.

Secondly, the Foundation is at this time still being formed. There is a temporary board, and a very small core group of founding members who are trying to meet all the requirements to enable everyone who wishes to to join, and to elect a permanent board.
I stumbled across this post at one point and included it for two reasons: its a somewhat incredible appeal to greed though nice enough and totally plausible, and because it highlights the failure of this expectation. There was a competition to replace the Bitcoin Foundation with open and automated protocols but I cant find the link. We should think how we can decentrailze at any level.

/u/PieMan2201 I think there is a problem with this subreddit (yesterday)
A majority of the content is composed of the same pictures, GIFs, and memes. I know that the community is supposed to be kind and welcoming, and I support that, but a lot of this content isn't relevant to Dogecoin. The subreddit has become a weird mix between /r/SuperShibe[1] and /r/AdviceAnimals[2] with a hint of cryptocurrency thrown in.
This seems to be another difficulty of this sub, but I think that we can find ways around it without limiting people. For example, the weekly discussion thread should include an archive of past threads, and curate any community discussions. Participatory type posts could be prefixed with Community discussion, etc.

/u/SitDownCreepa What can we do to bring more attention to dogecoin? (yesterday)
Hey fellow shibes!
I have been following dogecoin for almost a year now!
I remember this subreddit used to explode with energy and fun. We always had a New project going on and there was always posts about people getting their first doge and stuff.
I feel now we are only just posting doge merch and things. I always seem to be seeing stuff that applies to people who already know about crypto/doge.
We need to do something more to make sure this coin succeeds.
What are your ideas?
I was really happy to see this post up. I know that a lot of people really feel like a part of something special in this community. I think that we have a lot to offer each other. Last year I offered a way to connect businesses, users, and developers to rapidly advance adoption. This year I am offering that, as well as a way to spread cooperative culture through positive experience outreach.

It turns out that adoption of crypto would take a major shift in culture. We can do it much sooner than one might think. I would like to clarify how this all works but it might be best to just throw this post up and answer questions. I will make another post tomorrow morning if we can come up with some solid conversation. I would love to collaborate with the Doge community on my work in Barrie. Let's help each other out and make 2015 a year of celebration! Please check over my work, try to get an idea of what I am doing, ask questions, let people know.