Michel Bauwens — Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms
Part 5 of Kevin Carson's Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real
One of the most useful non-Marxist schools is the post-capitalist model of commons-based peer production, which inclues that of Michel Bauwens of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives.
Late capitalism, Bauwens writes (with Franco Iacomella), is beset by two main structural irrationalities: artificial abundance and artificial scarcity.
Read full essay — one of the most important of our time.
Tip of the Hat to Jean Lievens.
ROBERT STEELE: It is an honor to be a colleague of Michel Bauwens (founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation and wiki) and Marcin Jakubowski (Open Source Ecology / Global Village Construction Set). Along with Jean Lievens, Pierre Levy, George Por, Tom Atlee, and so many others, they are at the bleeding edge of a cosmic re-boot of civilization.
Open Source Everything Engineering (OSEE), which is what I focus on, is the anti-thesis of capitalism, fascism, and communism, all top-down control systems that favor the 1% at the expense of the 99%. OSEE has three parts: holistic analytics, true cost economics, and the practical applications of OSEE across the nine major categories of human endeavor shown and itemized with three sub-sets for each, here.
OSEE buries the false idea of material abundance by demonstrating, with holistic analytics (all threats, all policies, all demographics, across all time and all space) and true cost economics, that Buckminster Fuller has it right — most jobs and most products are not worth the petrol (and water and human trafficking and corruption and other waste) it takes to produce them.
OSEE also buries the false idea of immaterial scarcity, which is nothing more than a fencing of the moral and intellectual commons, a massive theatrical fraud perpetuated on a deliberately dumbed-down public.
Perhaps most importantly — and a core point of the essay above exploring the brilliant innovative philosophical and practical views of Michel Bauwens — the concept of value is being restored to abandon the absolute and obscene delimitation of value to that associated with a money — a rigged game controlled by the 1%) — and back toward the natural and social — protecting the Earth and its diversity, advancing humanity, honoring community, healing oneself.
See Especially:
See Also:
Michel Bauwens @ Phi Beta Iota
