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> pretend the positives don't exist Critiquing something is not denying positives. Please point out where I said that? That is not my intention. I would say th
by bergstromm466 6y ago
> pretend the positives don't exist
Critiquing something is not denying positives. Please point out where I said that? That is not my intention. I would say that critiquing without providing an alternative is about sharing grief [1], than it is about discussing, planning and creating alternatives. I think you've given me the opportunity to reflect on my approach and message.
I am for systemic evolution and integration: technology shapes us, and we shape technology, it's a spiral.
Promoting intellectual property rights while at the same time talking about 'free markets' is one of the most harmful and backward Doublespeak going on in today's system I think.
The systemic components and dynamics that are part of the intellectual property systems are ripe for evolution. I believe we are living with a pre-21st century systemic reality that doesn't account for the new opportunities available to us due to digital technology.
The reality is that there is a world out there with people who are suffering at the bottom of the corporate pyramids (the Precariat, e.g. gig workers - who have no job security, no benefits, and not many prospects of a peaceful retirement). Then there are also the hundreds of millions suffering in so called 'developing' countries whose resources are plundered and whose governments compete for industrial-production contracts with our corporatocracy [2][3], creating continuous race-to-the-bottom dynamics that squash workers' rights and create environmental catastrophes.
Commons-based peer production integrates our new digital technology abilities, and it has to be our future. Firm/corporate production is wasteful and destructive. Imagine if all phones and gadgets were modular, including the software inside. Instead our gadgets today become slow non-backwards compatible bricks because of perceived obsolescence. I can do without Siri, or the gaming capabilities of the latest flagship phone... or multitasking, or whatever other corporate feature I do not have a choice whether to run or not.
Because of the monopoly created by the idea of exclusive intellectual property (and the systems constructed to support it), many of these useful ideas and technologies lie locked up inside corporate databases, unexplored and unused. What a waste. What a cosmic joke and tyranny.
My belief is that by using technologies like Ceptr and MetaCurrency's Holochain, we can be in a large scale transition to Commons-based peer production, where we might be able to reverse climate change in just a few years.
The technologies that can save us are here today, yet the intellectual property regime keeps them artificially scarce.
The big constraint underneath all of this, though, is our dogmatic ideas around wealth and money:
1. The current political economy is based on a false idea of material abundance. We call it pseudo-abundance. It is based on a commitment to permanent growth, the infinite accumulation of capital and debt-driven dynamics through compound interest. This is unsustainable, of course, because infinite growth is logically and physically impossible in any physically constrained, finite system.
2. The current political economy is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.” It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies—for copyrights, trademarks and patents—should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits.
So my hope is that I can continue dreaming and imagining a world where humans have a non-violent and harmonious relationship with the Great Mother, where we’ve moved to a closed loop resource economy, where all outputs can become new inputs, where nothing is wasted. A world where everything is modular and where the scarcity of our intellectual property systems have become inverted and lead to a rich Copyleft world instead, where intelligence is pushed to the edges.
[1] https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the-geography-of-sorrow https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the-geography-of-s...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btF6nKHo2i0
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaGp5_Sfbss