Hi Andreas,<br><br>I completely agree with your commentary, and that everything we do, even through non-capitalist practices, will be an integral part of the dominant meta-system.<br><br>The key question though, is whether a system based on infinite growth, and it cannot be otherwise because of its monetary protocol, can exist in the long term in a context of a finite ecology of which it is a part. So variations in the long run, will not do, it will either be dislocation to a system with less complexity, or hopefully, escaping through the high road.
<br><br>So we need a strategy that eventually allows a less destructive logic to become the meta-system itself.<br><br>I think that the main goals of social change at this stage are actually really fairly simple, through their solution may not be, but essentially, we live in a world that believes the material system is infinite (pseudo-abundance), and the immaterial world's flow need to be artificially restricted, thereby hampering the necessary social innovation. So if we can reverse this logic, then we perhaps not have a perfect world, but at the very least a sustainable one.
<br><br>I think it is important that we can also divorce the idea of the market, from the idea of capitalism (or infinite growth based monopolistic anti-markets), considering the market a perfectly sensible way to deal with the allocation of scarce material goods.
<br><br>What I see is a cooperative world of open designs in the immaterial sphere, a built-only capitalism in the material sphere, but in between there is a lot of space for a pluralist physical economy such as revived gift economies in the neotraditional world, etc...
<br><br>At some point, the emergent new logic will of course strengthen the old system, then parity may be achieved, and perhaps, at some point, the subsystem becomes the new meta-system.<br><br>With post-capitalist practices I was not referring to the footprint issue, but rather that commons-based peer production is based neither on hierarchical allocation of resources (corporate form), nor on market allocation through prices, but on mostly unpaid volunteer communities producing directly for use value; look as you may, it may be embedded and co-dependent with the capitalist market, but it is not itself a capitalist mode of production; and neither is the logic of sharing of the web
2.0 platforms (though the selling of attention by those platforms is).<br><br>Is there a strategy which can strengthen this new sharing/commons sphere? that is the key question,<br><br>Michel<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">
On 5/13/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Andreas Schiffler</b> <<a href="mailto:aschiffler@ferzkopp.net">aschiffler@ferzkopp.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>>> Now the key question is how you change the meta-system, giving the<br>>> record of<br>>> failure in this regard, and the obsoleteness of industrial era<br>>> leftism? My<br>>> suggestion would be to tone down the useless anti-capitalist
<br>>> rhetoric, and<br>>> to tune up the post-capitalist practices.<br>><br>> Indeed. But what are these post-capitalist practices? Surely you are<br>> not suggesting that by minimising our ecological footprints we will
<br>> somehow "change the system"?<br>><br>One can presume that any action will have some effect on the system ...<br>maybe not the desired outcome, but some effect will be present. (As a<br>colorful example: a bunch of flies hitting the windshield of my car
<br>while driving will not change my path, but at some point I'll stop at a<br>gas station to clean the windshield.) In theory, once the amount of<br>"push" reaches some critical mass, the system must change because it is
<br>bound by some external dynamics to do so. (The colorful example again:<br>the cars air intake is plugged by the masses of flies decending on the<br>vehicle.)<br><br>Fun aside, I don't have the answer either. In todays world it seems to
<br>revolve around variations of capitalism though ... unless one wants to<br>disconnect from the world completely.<br><br>For example, I am in the position to install a geothermal heat pump to<br>climatize my home. This is a capital intensive - since technical -
<br>improvement that will reduce my "dwelling's" carbon-footprint for<br>decades. So it is "a good thing" (TM). But it is also an expensive<br>enterprise requiring me to tap into "capitalism": my employer ultimately
<br>pays for it (me flying around trade shows to earn money), the bank (as<br>lender) get a ton of interest for doing nothing, vendors, installers,<br>shippers (all driving Ford T pickups) earn a living, and the actual<br>
production of the unit (lot's of PVC pipe!) surely employs whole<br>villages in China. Currently I put the project on hold for a year for<br>purely economic reasons (too little government incentives, too much<br>capital-risk).
<br><br>So for post-capitalist practices to become initially sustainable, they<br>might need to have quite a bit of traditional sound "economics" with a<br>sprinkle of "irrationality" (see the latest Scientific American article
<br>on the "Traveller's Dilemma"). Governments and corporations seem to<br>seldom provide any of that in the right ratio.<br><br>Oh, and if anyone want to reduce their carbon footprint - I have a lot<br>of land to plant trees on. Seriously, how about integrating a "click
<br>here for a donation to plant a tree" into the FF plugin. Aren't some<br>airlines already offering that as part of the ticket purchase???<br><br>-- Andreas<br><br><br>_______________________________________________
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