Parecon Atlanta
February 4th, 2007I’m working on a new project to document cooperatives (of all kinds) in Atlanta. Sadly, as far as I know there are very few coops in Atlanta.
The major ones that I am aware of:
Sevenanda Grocery
MadRatz Infoshop
SoPo Bike Cooperative
In addition to those there are a number of credit unions and preschool cooperatives. I know of no workers’ cooperatives in Atlanta where the workers are not also volunteers (like the last two on above list).
In next next couple of years I hope to be a part of such a workers’ cooperative in Atlanta. Researching existing cooperatives is perhaps a good first step.
Undermining Democracy
January 7th, 2007Bush wants to send $83 million to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. These funds are intended to build up “responsible security forces” to support Abbas.
Violence has broken out between Hamas and the PA after Abbas announced plans for early elections. The confrontation is quickly threatening to escalate into a civil war. The U.S. has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization and cutoff funding to Palestine last year after Hamas won the parliamentary elections.
That move alone showed America’s complete contempt for democracy in the Middle East.
These financial sanctions, however, became a problem when the U.S. wanted to fund a violent confrontation to the democratically elected government of Palestine. Funding terrorism against democracy is important, but the administration must ensure that “none of these funds in any way are able to be used by Hamas or benefit a Hamas-led government”
By funding security forces aligned against the elected government, Bush hopes to get Israel and Palestine back on “Road Map plan,” aimed at establishing peace and eventually an independent Palestinian state.
Our policy here has made America’s vision for democracy and peace in the Middle East crystal clear. We support democracy if it leads to decisions that we support. If the majority make the wrong decision, they will be punished. Likewise, peace is only useful when it is in our favor. Peace for us means crushing our enemies and creating security for our interests and allies.
This past year, neither democracy or peace was convenient for America in Palestine. As a result, economic and military actions were taken to undermine the two processes.
Working for democracy and peace in the Middle East is an important task. The first and most important step in this cause is for America to stop funding and supporting attacks on democracy.
Citizen Journalism
January 4th, 2007Although framed here as a popularity contest, some of the articles in the collaborative newspaper, BrooWaha (hate the name), are actually fairly decent:
BrooWaha is a collaborative online newspaper that gives ordinary readers a chance to participate and share their knowledge! We publish your articles and give you feedback to let you know how popular you are. The more popular you’ll get, the more importance you’ll have in the organization of the newspaper.
Here are some the highlights:
If perceived intentions can be justification to invade another country, overthrow its political system, and install a new government, will the US be subject to a similar response if it’s own intentions are called into question?
…In essence, our government of war profiteers launched a war to make bigger profits, at the cost of countless lives.Many people today feel that the concept of a “minimum wage” should be replaced with a “living wage.” The Ventura City Council, for example, passed a statute in May of 2006, requiring city service contractors to pay a minimum of $12.50 hour. You can get more information about the living wage concept at the Living Wage Resource Center http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/index.php?id=1958
I lead a pretty frugal life but I couldn’t live on $7.50 an hour, could you?
P2P Foundation: Social Innovation
January 1st, 2007P2P Foundation posted some thoughts similar to my earlier post.
Michel Bauwens lays out three scenarios for social innovation:
- Allow some user innovation to externalize costs (Dell, Ikea)
- Profit off a platform for cooperation and user-created content (Amazon, Ebay)
- “Autonomous Product” minus the corporation (Wikipedia)
The third group, the only one that means a significant change from status quo, will sometimes use a corporation but it will likely be non-profit and serve a different purpose than the other two:
The role of the corporation in this environment is significantly different. Peer production groups often used the legal format of non-profit foundations, so-called ‘for-benefit’ organizations, to manage those parts of their production process which needs capital (usually a core team and some technical infrasctructure consisting of servers etc…).
He identifies three crucial processes for the third type of production:
- The raw material for its production must be freely available…
He does not list it explicitly, but I would assume this includes free and open access to networks and communication infrastructure. - Paradigm of participation
His example: the “principles of equipotentiality and anti-credentialism” - Avoiding the private appropriation of the common effort.
He indicates that this involves using legal means to secure the “Commons” for the public domain.
The processes he says are “cyclical,” and it is easy for me to see that the first two points are crucial to building the popular force to secure these democratic institutions (the third process).
P2P for People Not Profit
January 1st, 2007Howard Rheingold of Smart Mobs expresses his optimism over many-to-many communication:
My optimism about the potential of the generation of digital natives is neither technological determinism nor naive utopianism. Many-to-many communication enables but does not compel or guarantee widespread civic engagement by populations who never before had a chance to express their public voices
…
Big corporations are taking notice of p2p applications and hardware and positioning themselves to cash in on these latest technologies. It is up to us to defend our space online and secure a voice for everyone.
The majority of youths may have in fact “created as well as consumed online content,” but we cannot forget about those who are denied access. There are still significant portions of the population being left out (in this country, not to mention the rest of the world). In America, while most people have access to the Internet in some manner, only 42% have broadband at home.
Access to this communications revolution must still be purchased, and those left out are those traditionally oppressed and disenfranchised.
I think the two main questions are 1) Who has access? and 2) Is the access creating meaningful communication?
The first one seems straightforward although not easy. We must bring access to those left out.
The second one is much harder to ensure. There are some positive signs among the user-created content of MySpace and YouTube, but not enough to support the level of social organization required to enact meaningful change. As long as these hierarchical giants rule the Internet, profiting off of user-generated content that is confined to a rather narrow scope, while promoting all but the weakest connections based primarily on consumer preferences, the trajectory for change will remain low.
I believe that in order for p2p communications to enable this “widespread civic engagement,” we must prioritize those efforts that emphasize meaningful and organic peer-to-peer connections as opposed to those organizations most interested in profit (e.g. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.).
It is likely that Web 2.0 companies concerned with spurring positive social change will be unable to fund themselves with ads. Remember, the profit model of Web 2.0 media companies resemble that of traditional media companies. They are selling a product to a customer; namely they are selling audiences to corporations.
Not all audiences are the equal though. Corporations like MySpace are looking to attract an impressionable, consumer-driven audience. On the other hand, audiences that think for themselves and create organic content and connections are less vulnerable to such corporate propaganda and thus less valuable for advertisers.
Again, a certain scope of content creation is permissable. So you can write about teenage romance or post a video of a funny prank. But take something like Indymedia or Narco News, who both support viewpoints that would never be allowed in traditional, mainstream media. They don’t have advertisements, but even if they allowed them, what kind of company would want to advertise their? Certainly not the high-paying ones covering the pages of MySpace.
Nevertheless, a p2p website that could create such an audience would assuredly have to remain free and open to all users. I believe these spaces either have to be organized as a non-profit (e.g. Wikipedia), or owned and funded by the users in some other volunteer manner.
In 2007, we must shift our fanatic like attention from the latest Web 2.0 darlings to organizations seeking actual progress instead of profit.
Why Access Matters
December 31st, 2006Having access to the Internet is important. The war for the Internet is not over. It is not yet completely in the hands of corporations but there is no law of technology that says access and communication through this medium will always remain even as free and open as it is now.
Although television, the radio, and the press have the potential for democratic control, they are currently tools of a handful of corporations. It is true that technologies are morally neutral, but some technologies are certainly more useful than others in pursuing positive social change.
The Internet has a lot of potential in this regard. Every user has the capability for two-way communication, to both contribute and receive information. Those who get to participate are approximating a semi-democratic communications model. Again, a handful of corporations dominate a large portion of the system–but there is still space for users, so it is semi-democratic. A big improvement over the current state of television and radio. You simply cannot have a voice through the other information mediums unless you are a giant corporation (with a small number of exceptions, e.g. community controlled tv/radio).
The Internet brings in a more diverse set of voices. In America, we can increase the range of those voices by giving access to the rest of the population that has been left out. Those who don’t have access yet are typically the ones that have consistently been silenced in every other part of life.
In the struggle to establish some meaningful form of democracy, it is a requirement for disenfranchised individuals to have a voice and to communicate with each other.
Thus, at the top of my list are the following objectives:
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Strive for universal access to the Internet, giving priority to those who continue to be denied a voice in traditional media.
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Encourage participation in the forming of meaningful connections between individuals and groups, especially those who are currently isolated in their oppression.
Workers Cooperatives: Limited in Size?
December 31st, 2006The Worker’s Paradise reports that in 2006 at least two workers cooperatives converted to capitalist businesses Good Vibrations and Burley Bicycles. He implies that this conversion was due in part to the growth of these two companies.
He quotes Melissa Hoover of the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives:
“For those of us who believe that worker-owned and democratic workplaces can be a cornerstone to an economically just society, the question of growth is the next big issue to struggle with. The worker cooperative movement, to the extent that it is even yet a movement and not just a collection of successful businesses, is sorely lacking in methods, strategies and experience for keeping a healthy co-op culture in the face of growth, of working with growth, of anticipating and planning to grow in ways that allow us to not only maintain our co-op values in the face of market pressures, but champion them as a real alternative.”
It would be interesting to see how the question of growth applies to the cooperatives in the Spanish Revolution.
Funding Sources
December 30th, 2006Most things in life are spoiled by the need for money.
Having graduated college, I have a few ideas of what I want to do with the next part of my life. None of them involve working under someone else, and hopefully none of them involve others working for me. My primary goal is to be a part of a workers cooperative that is able to provide its members with living wages. I am not sure how to get started on this without some working capital.
I have entertained a few different ideas. The primary one has often been starting a coffee shop. The question is can a cooperative coffee shop sustain reasonable wages for its worker-owners? Red and Black Cafe is doing it. Normally the average employee in such a shop would make below a living wage while the managers and owner might make reasonable salaries. In a cooperative, the salaries are divided equally–will it be enough? Of course it depends on how well the shop succeeds. Most fail.
I am inspired by Octane Coffee in this dream. Octane is a local shop with my favorite atmosphere in Atlanta, but it is is certainly not a cooperative.
Workers cooperatives exist all over the place, although I do not know of any in Atlanta. The model can be applied to any business. I would entertain any number of ideas. Another good one is a micro ISP that provides wireless network infrastructure for apartment complexes, hotels, and other buildings. This is a for-profit version of NetLeap.
That being said, I am currently working for a software startup. Working here is not that different than school. It is an arrangement that is not directly involved in any meaningful life goals, but at the same time it hopefully brings me closer to doing something worthwhile.
Life After Hierarchy
December 30th, 2006For both my personal life and society in general I oppose hierarchy when it is unjustified. It turns out that in almost all cases in the world where we find hierarchal authority of one entity over another it is unjustified. For example, the corporate control over the world’s resources or the state’s control over its citizens. This heirarchal control is traditionally enforced traditionally by violence, but in civilized societies more sophisticated measures are used such as propaganda or what Noam Chomsky refers to as manufacturing consent. When working to root this societal structure out, it is probably necessary to have an alternative in mind.
Here are a couple of visions of a non-hierarchal world:
Jeff Vail describes (almost) self-sufficient communal units he calls rhizomes. It is a very interesting and radical vision for the world. In one example of the rhizome implementation, Vail describes a hamlet system, where individual agriculture communities consist of around 20 people and are semi-dependent on their nearby and distant neighbors.
My belief is that self-sufficiency and localization, although often desirable for various reasons, are not requirements for removing hierarchy. For me it possible to imagine a society (even on a global scale) that is run cooperatively that distributes resources fairly and equally to those who need it, while communities contribute in the corresponding ways. Michael Albert among others have written in detail what this might look like with Parecon. A Parecon society would look radically different than our current capitalist one, although it wouldn’t necessarily resemble a Rhizome network.
I believe that communication plays a key role in either vision. Jeff Vail states a preference for elegant technology which would not include electricity. He admits, however, that electricity is pretty much a requirement for the communication technology necessary for a sustainable rhizome network.
A non-hierarchal communications model may be the best fit for a non-hierarchal society. This technology may fit under what MIT calls viral communications.
I am currently interested in wireless mesh networks, a prime example of viral communications.
These networks move control to the end nodes. They are also adaptable, self-repairing, and completely scalable.
Because of their cheap cost and ease of use they are an ideal candidate for bridging the digital divide which I believe could have a democratizing effect on society bringing us one step closer to either of these visions. I am currently working with NetLeap, a group attempting to bring affordable access to people Atlanta using this approach.