[Home]SocialEconomy

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories
FridemarPache sketched SocialEconomy as having these new qualities:

HelmutLeitner thinks that there the new qualities should be defined more clearly. Otherwise there is no difference to normal economy (buyers and sellers have obviously mututal benefits, the seller is open to sell to everyone, the producer integrates loyal custumers ...). What does "mutual benefit", "openness" and "integration" mean?

Discussion

Are Economies Necessarily Social

I think that the two aspects are not enough to define a social economy, because any economic project (e. g. producing and selling cars or computers) will assume mutual benefit and openness to newcomers (customers) and their integration. Perhaps it's too unclear what "openness", "integration" and "mutual benefits" really means, and it would be necessary to specify them more clearly. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, the author of SocialCommonWealth is concentrating himself on Digital Goods and Digital Services within OnlineCommunities and not on "producing and selling cars or computers", which currently appears not to be compatible with the MeatballWiki Mission, which concentrates on the fostering of OnlineCommunities. So we can only sketch SocialEconomy, a page, you initiated, with the formulation "FridemarPache defined", in which I replaced "defined" by "sketched". Are you aware, how many wo/man-years are necessary, alone to define Health (it's defined by committees in the WHO). The same effort for "defining" is needed for Happiness, Wealth, Wisdom. Although there are a lot of researchers, who try to find indicators , for measuring degrees of the involved values, I doubt, that we two can solve this problem ;-). Worst of all, these values depend on different believe-systems,

So in the meantime, we heavily depend on our intuition, goodwill and on building consensus in concrete cases.

-- [fridemar]

Economies are necessarily social, since trade activity occurs between at least two parties. And your criteria are maximized by the FreeMarket?, particularly FreeMarket? capitalism. -- SunirShah

Sunir, your definition "social is anything involving interaction" seems unsatisfying to me (in this sense even murder is social). This is weaker (in a logical sense) even than what Hans suggests "social is anything involving a society context". I would at least expect something like "social means increasing a certain quality of a community". -- HelmutLeitner

Online Community Supported Free Market

Sunir, if we restrict ourselves on the subset of the trade-oriented sector of the Economy, the attribute "social" is absorbed by the term "trade" and has no descriptive power. But normally, you can't trade as a consumer in a supermarket. In a SocialCommonWealth (as an innovative concept, not yet covered by empirical sociology) each participant is, what the WikiPedia calls a ProSumer [1], i.e. s/he is acting as a producer and as a consumer of digital goods and services. However there is even more quality, by the additional conceptual component, that the Pro Sumers are collaborating openly in teams as OpenBusiness (like described in the HoofSmith metapher). They act for the mutual benefit of each other, explicitely including the economic wealth aspect. What I suggest is: an OnlineCommunity Supported Free Market for a SocialEconomy, but better for a Social Common Wealth. This appears to be an idea, that is hampered by preconditioned terminologies and ideologies, strangely enough, even by those people, who could otherwise prosper by it. So we have to invent new terminology, that we can fill with new content. Of course the utility function is maximized by the FreeMarket? mechanisms, but empowered by the additional synergies of openly collaborating peers of OnlineCommunities. For this, the author of SocialCommonWealth uses the descriptive attribute "social".

-- [fridemar]

Openness for at least Integrating Newcomers

Hello all.

This discussion interests me because I think the second quality of Fridemar's sketch: openness for at least integrating newcomers is the only thing that will need to be enforced by current Owners, while collaboration for the mutual benefit (making happy, healthy, wealthy, wise) of all Interaction Partners will flow naturally as a result.

To clarify, #2 might read Current Owners integrate Users by treating profit as User investment - so all eventually become controlling Owners. In this way, governance remains immediate (as opposed to representative), and the economic relationships remain social (as opposed to hierarchical). Is this realistic? Why or why not? -- PatrickAnderson

Owner Profits as User Investment

Hi Patrick, the idea Owner Profits As User Investments is excellent and I would love to see it elaborated. Two observations:
It would be helpful to have established the following property: 
 User A Of The Resource B Owned By C is balanced :<=> There is a Resource D with: User B Of The Resource D Owned By A.

In sloppy words : each peer is employer and employee of each other.

-- [fridemar]

I'm glad you like the idea, but I'm not understanding your concerns. Could you please read FreedomHosting and then respond (probably there) if you still see problems? Thanks, -- PatrickAnderson

Sharing The Resource Pool

Thank you Patrick, if I understand you right, you opt at last for sharing each resource. This appears to me a natural trend to reduce tensions in the society. Perhaps as an intermediate step we could think about the sharing of the resource pool on a more abstract level, like stock shares for all people, involved in the creation of the goodies. -- [fridemar]

Consumers In Control

Yes, sharing ownership will need to be as a 'pool' for indivisible resources such as an automotive factory, but to clarify, when I say 'User' I am speaking of the End User - in other words the Consumer, NOT the Worker which is what for all people, involved in the creation of the goodies appears to indicate.

This is in stark contrast to Marxism which would have the Workers own the factory. A Mode of Production patterned after the concepts of the GPL requires Consumers be in control, not those that might to be hired to help in production. -- PatrickAnderson

Buy The Book Bundled With a Share Of The Publisher`s Company

Patrick, if I understand you right, your idea of user investment could be refrained in catchy words as:

A Share Of The Publisher `s Company would be at the same time a vote and an investment into the production system of the publisher. As in a digital SocialCommonWealth, each user is a [Wikipedia:ProSumer], I add both, the buyer and the seller point of view. -- [fridemar]

Testing Theory Through Action

Patrick, the problem with Fridemars project is that there is no role model, as far as I (don't) understand it, so the quality of integration is undefined. To talk about SocialEconomy is a handy way to shift the focus from these unclear concepts to something, that can be discussed without getting into conflicts immediately. -- HelmutLeitner

Helmut, I agree with you about the lack of an existing working model for Fridemar's project. One of the core concepts that I've been workign on with the [Open Business Models Wiki Hive] project is [TestingTheoryThroughAction].

If your idea can not be clearly demonstrated with existing real world patterns, then you have a "socia" responsibility to test the idea in a transparent and verifiable way, before asking others to invest resources. Ideas can usually be tested reasonably well on a small scale, then scaled up appropriately, dependign upon unique circumstances of the idea or theory.

In the case of Fridemar's project it would be easier to understand, and easier to possibly engage, if he could create a working example/prototype somewhere. This could be as easy as setting up an OddMuse wiki, and trying to mock-up a working version of what you are talkign about. In my opinion, this is more desrieable than asking a community like MeatBall to radically change their patterns from known working patterns to untested theories. Create a space outside of the community where the theory can be tested. I suggest this, not because I want you to go away, but because I think you will have more chance of success in actually attracting participation from this and other established online communities.

Another suggestion that I offer is that you allow your project to be open to the feedback of the people that you expect or hope to participate in the project. Too often, over the past 5+ years, I've come across people who have really great and exciting ideas related to social enterprise, peer production, SocialCommonWealth, etc, but are highly inflexible in their execution. The most successful existing examples of online collaboration and cooperation, SharingEconomies?, etc have been when the administrators of the project or enterprise act as enablers of the community. Taking in and applying feedback from the community, and allowing the community to drive the direction of the project. Indeed, successful charity-oriented project, like OmidyarNet? have used system that create a user-governed commons, usign voting system like BeyondYes to create an intelligent consensus. So, in short:

-- SamRose

Sam, I fully agree with you, to create (or find) a new space to test out the idea. In order to test it, it needs at least two Co-Entrepreneurs A,B with shared resources C,D to actually produce digital goods or services, based on C,D. I think [AboutUs] appears to be a promising platform, because AboutUs:

-- [fridemar]

Discussion

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories
Edit text of this page | View other revisions
Search: