PmWiki | EAO / Chapter7

(:nl:)Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 8

'+'''Chapter 7: Economics'''+'

-> “''Light beats heavy. Open beats closed. Free beats paid. Good beats evil''”. Umair Haque

''Peer to Peer'' Peer Production The Salesian Family re-interpreted as an ethical economy Doing things differently

In the last chapter I introduced you to the thinking of GianMarco Schiesaro, coming from the Development Cooperation world. This chapter introduces an individual who has the capacity to convince the reader that the 'economic' argument behind Free and Open Source Software today goes far, far beyond flashing the simple word 'free' whenever one gets the chance. Enter Michel Bauwens, Belgian born, Thai based, but citizen of the world, founder of the P2P Foundation, where 'Peer to Peer' is not being used to describe file-sharing but a relational dynamic that arises from distributed networks. Michel Bauwens says that this

-> is based on the assumed equipotency of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network. (http://p2pfoundation.net/Defining_P2P_as_the_relational_dynamic_of_distributed_networks)

I will be drawing on Michel's thinking for this chapter, again very much with his permission and encouragement. He is an original thinker and likes to encourage others to do some original thinking! I believe that when we begin to interpret the kind of thinking he offers about relational dynamics in networks, he is offering us fresh ways of doing precisely what Don Bosco did 150 years ago. If you consider that a man from a tiny hamlet some 30 kms out of Turin during the Industrial Revolution in Piedmont started a vast movement of people that is now responsible for educating 15 million young people in 130 nations around the world, and that this movement is still growing, then you have to seek explanations for the phenomenon. Some people may be happy with regarding it as some kind of miracle wrought by the Almighty, and nor should that be excluded, but it is also an observable human phenomenon, at the heart of which is the Preventive System and its relational dynamics. It works because of a simple formula which Don Bosco summed up in three words, Reason, Religion, Loving-kindness, combined with immense energy and creativity and the belief that a certain kind of physical presence (defined by the three words just cited) was one key to his effectiveness though not the only key because he actually believed in miracles wrought by the Almighty! Be it the citation from Umair Haque that opens this chapter, or Michel Bauwen's description of Peer to Peer that followed, there seems to be sufficient commonality of thinking and practice between these ideas and Bosco's to hope that between them all we can discover fresh things.

For one thing, Bosco then as Bauwens now, believe(d) that connecting all forces for good is crucial to the enterprise. Of course Bosco was interested almost solely in saving poor and abandoned young people, wherever they could be found in the world, and did so through not-for-profit institutions (or better, for-benefit institutions). Bauwens is partly interested in promoting networks and business models for the for-profit institutions that can save a world's economy from the almost lemming-like path of destruction it is currently on, but that fundamental difference does not vitiate the possibility of interesting commonality. I find it interesting that Bauwens has turned to Roger Hart's 'Ladder of Young People's Participation' model as one idea for informing his new economic approach.

Anyone who knows the 'home, school, church, playground' model of Bosco's and how young people were seen as protagonists in their own future, but in close partnership with adults, will immediately empathise with the 'ladder':

Peer Production(:nl:)