Topic: P2P Communism (Read 1400 times)

They may be rare, but the point is that you are supposed to be the owner.  In the current economic system technically you do not own anything, because you have a trillion dollar debt (enforced by the government, banks etc)

Yes, that's where I'm coming from.

I'm interested in the way that P2P money can subvert big capital and big state, and whether that liberating movement will take us to a situation where that which is naturally common to us all is held in common.

This looks interesting - thanks for the reference.

Nobody tried to implement this model yet, so there is no reason to make such statements. Though attempt isn't not necessary because humanity itself unable to do this, due to low development level. Somebody wouldn't agree, but I think that a state capitalism with elements of socialism is a limit of humanity's opportunities.

Don't confuse ideology with a tool. Democracy is a tool while liberalism, socialism and communism are ideologies. These ideologies could be used in both democratic or totalitarian society.

Although liberalism, socialism and communism are the democratic models by definition, approaches are different. Liberal republic is based on separation of powers principle, while socialist republic uses a conception of democratic centralism.

You have to start from P2P liberalism, then convert it into P2P Socialism. These steps are necessary to reach P2P Communism.

Communism is by definition an ideal, like Democracy or Capitalism. In practice, none of these things actually happen, no matter what people try to call their activities.

As particular firms compete to drive down their costs (espcially of labour) by roboticizing there will be fewer and fewer workers earning wages to buy the stuff that is made. Firms will be competing to push down wages and create less workers for the individual firms, but systematically they will be destroying demand for all the goods of all the firms. If there is one rich person for every poor person, that rich person will never buy the volumes of middle class goods that 99 workers would've bought, like couches, basic cars, food, etc. So as wages become more and more inequal between the few workers who are still needed (with low wages because of high competition and supply of workers), industry produces less of teh stuff we need, and those prices rise, while more and more investment competes in the production of luxury goods. This basic dynamic is why, despite the green revolution in agriculture of the 1970s, where we hugely increased food production globally, 1/7th of the world still starves today like it did before the green revolution.  In capitalism the ratio of monetary distribution remains stagnant. Stagnant to a certain ratio of workers needed to produce to sell to other workers, so it remains unprofitable to distribute even the surplus food, which rots or is dumped to destroy less efficient producers (also destroying less developed economies' agriculture).

Free market capitalism is a ridiculous concept, even Hayek agreed that markets tend towards monopoly and oligopoly... We know only 35 firms/share holders control the majority of industry the world over. Look at bitcoin, it's already %85 controlled by just a handful of parties, and it's a totally new, "free market". Traditionally, "libertarians" held that the state was needed to break up monopolies, which is circular because, of course, the oligopolies and monopolies become the state and vice versa. 

Any monopoly holder in the economy, without a state in existence would form a private army to enforce his claim to his monopoly despite people starving and children dying from poverty. The operation and management of that private army would quickly be the bureaucracy that could extract tribute, extortion, (taxes). Force isn't just weapons, it's the protocol and especially the communications of the protocol for tactical strategy and initiative in deploying units. Force is also the maintenance of your units in the long down time between deployments of force.

In capitalism where wealth accrues to wealth (when you have large reserves of money free to invest you can make more money), we have inheritance, and well over %90 of the wealthy are rich through inheritance. That is just a fact, it seems like we only hear about all the "self-made" wealthy because no one touts the fact that they're rich only because of the birth lottery. 

Everyone is sticking to communism as centrally coordinated by a state, when we're all here because of peer-to-peer technology! Economic planning within a community of relative equals isn't possible because of the internet?!! THINK for a second! MY GOSH! 

An MIT physicist and economist has devised the first complete METHODOLOGY/PROTOCOL for de-centralized economics. It's called Participatory Economics and his name is Michael Albert. Study it, it is really the only economic methodology probably ever created.

Participatory Economics solves the problem of not enough incentive to work and innovate (and 'eventually you run out of other people's money' (oh god save us from American jingoism) with the principle of Remuneration Based on Effort and Sacrifice. Check out Participatory Economics by Michael Albert. I myslef have a whole master plan to transition to creating that model.

Your arguments seems confused.

How can someone get along with the state other than empowering it?

How can you say that it is absurd that the system relies upon having the right person leading, when you admitted that one must get along with the states?

Don't states fear the people rising up and doing for themselves the very things that they expect the citizens to rely upon them for?
Isn't that the reason for centralizing power through documentation of activities and fees for permits, such as work permits, building permits, business licenses, fire code certification, zoning standards... etc etc.

If someone can take a cart and put some propane heaters on it, take a aluminum sheet pan and cook hotdogs on the street corner, how can the government lobby big businesses to put a McDonalds or similar building up and sell there?

They must squash the small business so that they can have their own utopian vision of that area that they imagine.

Totalitarianism and coercive force is the prerequisite of communism, without it, there is anarchy or libertarianism or capitalism, as those systems are more compatible with allowing the lower classes to pull themselves out of poverty by themselves, which has a strong allure and will be sought by some even at great peril.

In theory, communism must be stateless. The "progressives" are already in place in most countries, most notably the United States.

 They seek to ostensibly provide money, housing, jobs, security, cell phones, internet, health care to the people who cannot or will not work for it. The progressives know that without growing this base of dependents, they will not have the ability to force these dependents to work in the jobs and capacities that they see fit, so benefits are expanded and work requirements lowered. They await the numbers to be able to say "Ok, if you want to keep your disability or unemployment, you must work XX hours per month at a designated center (answering phones, doing paperwork, etc) They already are getting many people used to the idea of being coerced to show up at work centers by having the requirement that they must provide proof that they are attempting to look for work, then the workforce commission has centers set up, and the unemployed "look for work" for several hours, thus satisfying the requirement to get free food, money housing vouchers, etc.

Of course, the easiest way to control someone is to hand them money over and over, till it is expected, then is relied upon.

Communism fails over and over, it will continue to do so for one simple reason:

People will not willingly work for the benefit of others naturally.

That is a strong force that is being combated in the progressive arenas, but we all saw what happened to Greece, and the same path always ends with the same results. After the collapse, you have hard line factions that set themselves up (post WW1 Germany shows up one example)

No, Communism is not a dream, it is a nightmare because it's goal can never be realized. Those that think that perhaps if it were just done differently, it must work are the most dangerous, because they will cognitively set aside the horrors that must be arrived at by telling themselves it is for the good of all people. 

Communism has been sought in many different ways, not just the Marxist-ish ways "sought" by states of the 1900's (what kind of state seeks to eliminate itself?); just as we shouldn't think of "destruction and chaos" when we think of anarchism, we shouldn't think of "fascism in a fancy hat" when we think of communism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XhRnJz8fU

If one of the points of communism is a stateless society, the last thing you'd want to do is increase the powers of the state to god status; if one of the points to better health is a balanced diet, the last thing you'd want to do is increase your McDonald's Double Quarter Pounder intake to every meal and snack.  It's something that only makes sense to a rational people, which is one of the, perhaps unlisted, requirements of communism: if a person doesn't know how to get along even with the state, they certainly won't function without it, and the idea that an ideal society can be achieved by having the "right guy in charge" is as absurd then as it is now in corporate crony "capitalist" America.

I guess what you mean by communism is the fantasy that has yet to exist, despite concerted efforts by many well-planed and influential individuals and states.
We should not ignore the fact that in communism, you must have central control, or you cannot enforce it, and it becomes another system altogether, and rather quickly at that.

Just think about it, what if you were given a computer today, along with everyone else and told you had to mine doge into a specified account, but that doge would be used for public works. Would you mine doge? Or would you then mine something you could keep and resell for something else?

 The system fails because you would have to have tighter and tighter restrictions with brute force to keep people mining the doge in the way demanded. Almost instantly you are at a choice of totalitarianism or some other system like capitalism, and the hope of communism fails immediately.

In Communism there is no state

To be specific, in communism everything belongs to the state, so I guess it remains in open question whether or not a communist state would take peoples money from them when it wanted too, but yeah that's actually a quote from Margaret Thatcher but I wonder if he even knew that .

But at least in a non-communist society, such occurrences are rare. And another thing is that we can protest against that move. If anyone protested against such a move in the former USSR, he was send to 20 years of hard labor in some Siberian gulag.

House ownership doesn't guarantee anything. Governments can force you to sell if some capitalist wants to build a train line through your property or develop new property.

I think that in any humane society, leaving you to live in peace where you live would be one of the priorities.

It is not as simple as you think. Imagine what will be the case if you are unable to own a house. You will have to shift to new residence every then and now. Things like these are enormously irritating.

Yes we're all different. Not sure how you would measure inequality.

If you're a really kind person supporting the people around you, perhaps the people around you will give you energy, and you will be part of the evolution.

In a sense, the Bitcoin network is common property that we're all contributing to in various ways. And I think that comes as much from a collective impulse as it does from the impulse for individual gain.

Venture Communism?

Resources are not equally distributed in Nature thus inequality in energy access is what fuels Evolution. Even if all humans had zero capital (tools, no mean of production, industry, bank, etc) we all have capabilities that are different from each other. This creates in itself inequalities.

Maybe if we all had a portable fusion reactor good for 10 000 years...

But this is cool to learn no matter what I believe.