Open value networks and global economic fairness

davidsluka

Disclaimer: This blog entry reflects the thoughts of the author and does not speak on behalf of the Sensorica OVN.

In February 2011, economic fairness became a real possibility with the launch of SENSORICA. The new economic model proposed by this network promised open access to economic activities for everyone in the world, with a system for fair redistribution of benefits, based on merits. 

SENSORICA is an open value network. People propose projects and develop them in collaboration with others. The affiliates use open project development methodologies and generate tasks that are made available for anyone in the world. The time, the cash and any material resource that are used during the execution of a task are logged. A contribution accounting system compiles all the input to projects and displays a profile of the economic activity. If the project becomes a commercial venture the revenues are redistributed to all the participants, without exception, in proportion to everyone's contribution. The venture belongs entirely to the participants, anyone can join, any time. We call these ventures open enterprises. SENSORICA is an incubator of many open enterprises. 

Since the inception of SENSORICA we spent a lot of time developing the open value network model, building infrastructure, designing new methodologies, refining the open governance, implementing a proper legal structure, and developing open new technologies. In 2015, SENSORICA is closer than ever to become an economic success, with a few projects to be crowdfunded during the summer and a few service offerings that have already generated revenue.

This post is not about revenue generation and sustainability. The main goal is to illustrate economic fairness, to show the world how we are fulfilling our promise. 

In January 2015 Atelier Barda, a group of architects and designers from Montreal, trusted SENSORICA with a contract to design an interactive imaging system, to be installed in Forillon National Park, in Gaspesie QC, Canada, which is administered by Parks Canada, a branch of the federal government. The project was executed in an open way. Three SENSORICA affiliates answered the call and delivered successfully, exceeding the client's expectations, who was a bit skeptical in the beginning, knowing that he was dealing with a new type of organization. One of these affiliates, Abran, lives in Pakistan. The project was coordinated using SENSORICA's new open service providing methodology, mediated by our virtual infrastructure.

In the end, the revenue was distributed according to everyone's contribution, and Abran was paid as if he was working and living in Canada. 

credit to Massimo Sestini—Polaris

Europe is now dealing with a major social problem caused by waves of immigrants coming from Africa. This crisis is exacerbated by the drama surrounding the death of a few hundreds of these unfortunate people, who are desperate enough to put their lives in danger by crossing the Mediterranean sea, using inadequate means, lead by human traffickers who are mostly interested in profiteering. A social problem coupled with a humanitarian crisis that keeps politicians on their toes and pushes them to use extreme means, to militarize the Mediterranean sea using UN forces. Are these desperate human beings invaders? Are they the new enemies of Europe? Or are they the result of colonialism and victims years of political interference and economic exploitation? Are guns the solution to this problem? Or more economic fairness?

While our western governments, who created the problem in the first place, make it even worse, we are developing infra-national economic structures, a peer to peer economy, to address the problem at its core.

 By AllOfUs

The stateless economy, local economies, and the state

NOTE: This is the second draft. This post was motivated and informed by THIS discussion on Facebook. 

The Multitude movement enters a new era, where its processes can be supported by truly p2p infrastructures. Bitcoin is now a well-known symbol of a new breed of exchange systems, called cryptocurrencies, money without the bank, stateless money, a new currency that looks and feels like your ATM card, but it is entirely decentralized, under the control of those who use it.

Peer-to-peer is a new pattern that emerges in almost all the spheres of human activity, from culture, to governance, to the creation and the distribution of goods and services. It is the underlying pattern of the current leap in the emancipation of the multitude (see the multitude manifesto). Bitcoin is the poster child of p2p exchange systems, but the same technology is now expanding and promising much more:

From Ethereum project: Satoshi Nakamoto's development of Bitcoin in 2009 has often been hailed as a radical development in money and currency, being the first example of a digital asset which simultaneously has no backing or "intrinsic value" and no centralized issuer or controller. However, another, arguably more important, part of the Bitcoin experiment is the underlying blockchain technology as a tool of distributed consensus, and attention is rapidly starting to shift to this other aspect of Bitcoin. Commonly cited alternative applications of blockchain technology include using on-blockchain digital assets to represent custom currencies and financial instruments ("colored coins"), the ownership of an underlying physical device ("smart property"), non-fungible assets such as domain names ("Namecoin"), as well as more complex applications involving having digital assets being directly controlled by a piece of code implementing arbitrary rules ("smart contracts") or even blockchain-based "decentralized autonomous organizations" (DAOs). What Ethereum intends to provide is a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged Turing-complete programming language that can be used to create "contracts" that can be used to encode arbitrary state transition functions, allowing users to create any of the systems described above, as well as many others that we have not yet imagined, simply by writing up the logic in a few lines of code. (See the source). 

For those who think that all this technology is nothing if it doesn't live on its own support, on a p2p Internet, take a look at the MaidSafe project, FNF and many others like them. MaidSafe is special because it comes with its own economy, it's own ways to incentivize the development and maintenance of its physical infrastructure, and has a cleaver launch and growth model which takes advantage of the existing infrastructure.  

We are creating new economic processes with their own exchange systems that know no borders, no political boundaries, and no central authority (which doesn't mean no rules or chaos). We are creating a stateless economy. How states respond to it? How does it relate to local economies?

One of the most interesting observations in relation with this new pattern that deploys globally on p2p infrastructures is the emergence of a global multitude. It is a very diverse multitude. This diversity is rooted in values and principles rather than in local customs. We speak about it as different cultures of online communities. These new social structures transcend the state, which has no effective means to control them. We are witnessing the emergence of new social structures, that come with their own support mechanisms.  

Will states turn against these trends as a reaction of self-preservation? Yes, see for example a list of states that ban bitcoins. I predict that this opposition will grow stronger in the near future, but no state can bury an idea whose time has come. No state can oppose something that benefits a large percentage of its  citizens, especially when the current economic model is evidently unsustainable, morally bankrupt, openly criticized, in decline. What should governments tell their youth looking for a job? The answers can be read in the daily news in Greece, Spain, Italy, France, USA, ... and the list is growing longer every year. 

There is antagonism between the state and this new Multitude outburst, with its p2p practices. Do we see a solution out of this standoff? Institutions are not eternal. They have a life cycle as any other thing. Nation-states were created in the 19th century. The state is an instrument for local communities. People are above the state. The proof is that we, the people, have outlived all the social structures that have existed throughout our history. In the future we will form new social structures and will find new ways to sustain our local communities. How are local communities adapting today?  

The stateless economy is not in contradiction with the local economy

I am drawing my conclusions from my work on the Open Value Network (OVN) model within the SENSORICA community, a pilot project for long tail peer production. 

Forces and mechanisms behind the emergence of local economies

The impact of human activity on our planet is now visible, measurable, which makes us realize that our way of living is outgrowing the Earth's capacity. Pollution and degradation of natural ecosystems, the energy crisis, and an unstable geopolitical situation are aligning to favor the development of diversified local economies. New technologies for renewable energy, for new materials, automation, robotics, and 3D printing, make local production for local consumption economically viable.  

The relevance of proximity and its role in the self-organization of local economies 

The Internet allows coordination and collaboration at the global scale. Design and simulation activities have been virtualized. Engineers can now collaborate online on designs that can be virtually tested and simulated. Innovation has gone virtual, it has been delocalized. This allows the existence of new modes of innovation supported by a new socio-economic structure, the open source community. But making stuff (manufacturing hardware for example) requires local physical resources (materials, tools and equipment, space,...), uses local processes (digital fabrication, assembling, ...), relying on local know how (which cannot be formalized, externalized, and easily passed to others through a medium like the Internet). The Internet doesn't obliterate the need for locality and proximity when it comes to production and distribution of material goods. Locality anchors processes to a specific location, the need for proximity ties different processes into a local economy.  

From global commons to local economies.

This is how the new economy is shaping. It builds on another new reality: 

Knowledge is abundant, know how and capacity of production are scarce and require proximity.

Knowledge is abundant because one idea becomes available to the entire planet as soon as it is shared on the Internet. That single idea can be shared with everyone on the planet at once. There is no limited quantity or debit, it can be accessed anytime and people don't need to take turns to access it. Everyone can have it, together with other ideas produced by other people. That's abundance. Thus, the Internet is a growing repository of ideas that people use to generate new knowledge, which is itself shared, and so on. Sharing is part of the process because it makes the whole system more efficient. Sharing is also imposed by a minority of individuals who have a natural propensity for it. Since ideas usually pop up in different locations at small intervals of time, someone will eventually share something, which obliterates someone else's wish to keep it a secret. This global swarm of ideas and knowledge building is actually a new mode of innovation, open source innovation, supported by a new social-economic structure, the open source community. 

Open source communities, which are virtual and stateless, are now the most innovative organizations. 3D printing has been democratized by open hardware communities, which continue to lead in 3D printing innovation, despite a few corporate successes. The same can be said for automation and control systems, with Arduino being the most popular example. DIY Drones is where the innovation in UAV technology happens. The dominant mode of innovation is now global, decentralized, stateless, increasingly using it's own physical infrastructure (a network of fablabs, makerspaces, co-working spaces), increasingly using its own funding mechanisms (crowdfunding and peer lending). 

The abundance of knowledge goes hand in hand with the creation of a global knowledge commons. This global knowledge commons gets materialized into local economies, using local know how and local capacity of production. This materialization requires a special type of infrastructure and new economic models. Let's illustrate this potential with two examples: 

Transportation: 
Your local community needs adapted means of transportation? You can open a Local motors shop and grow a community around it to produce and distribute cars, locally. You continue to be plugged into the global Local motors community in order to benefit from the stream of open innovation that comes out of it. You can also join other similar communities like Wikispeed and the OScar in order to incorporate even more potential. There is no intellectual property around these car designs, they are open source and everything you build on top of these designs becomes open source by default, goes back into this global commons. Manufacturing a car, its distribution, and services around it forms a local economic activity. In order to make that happen, a tight and synergistic relation must be established between the global open innovation process for designs and the local production processes. This relation insures that the feedback (for product improvement, diversification) that comes from the consumer, in direct relation with the local manufacturer and service provider, is translated into technical problems and passed on to the global open source community of designers. The relation is established and maintained by channels of value between the local and the global/virtual layers. An example is a system of revenue sharing from the local to the global/virtual layer of innovation. This is what the Open Value Network (OVN) model is trying to achieve, with its contribution accounting system.  

Agriculture: 
You need to improve food production in your region? Join Farmhack, which provides open source solutions. Open source ecology offers tools not only for agriculture, but also for the construction of your farm and even for the construction of an entire village (see also Appropedia). There are similar online communities for indoor growing, automated greenhouses, hydroponics and aquaponics (see HAPI)... Name it, you'll find it. These sources for knowledge and designs are complemented by other tools and services for resource sharing and management, like landshare and shareearth (for land), neighborgoods (for tools and equipment), plantcatching (for plants and seeds), as well as more complex tools for mapping and economic modeling (localfoodsystems), etc. This new ecosystem needs to come tightly together into an open value network which allows resource flows between different nodes. Local food systems are reorganizing along a different logic. 


New types of organizations are needed in order to orchestrate and incentivize the development of the global commons and to funnel it into sustainable local economies. I bet on the Open Value Network (OVN) model and on organizations like SENSORICA, because in my opinion they take into consideration how innovation, production, and distribution are restructuring. 

Within OVNs a need (local or not) is translated into a problem, which comes with its own incentive system (monetary or others), to be solved by a global, stateless community of developers, into open source solutions. The solution is materialized into a product or a service at the point of origin of the problem, and distributed to those in need, in exchange of some form of benefit/revenue. The revenue gets redistributed to ALL the participants in proportion to their contributions, using a contribution accounting system (records contributions) and a benefit redistribution algorithm (turns contributions into benefits). Since the solution is open source, others can also distribute it as is, or as a modified/improved/remixed version, also giving back to the original contributors in order to buy their loyalty and to sustain the open innovation channel, in order to sustain the link between the local economy organized around production, distribution and servicing, and the global and virtual layer of open innovation.

New infrastructures are required to support these organizations and their processes. OVNs are supported by a network resource planning and contribution accounting system (NRP-CAS). These tools will move on truly p2p infrastructures like Ethereum. It is important to realize that these new economic systems would be dysfunctional if they were obliged to use classical means of exchange. Imagine a project with thousands of participants and a long tail contribution distribution. The redistribution of revenue to all the contributors for every market exchange (every sale), as prescribed by the OVN model, would require thousands of micro-payments across the globe. Also, imagine thousands of individuals crowdfunding a new equipment used in a project. This would also require thousands of cash transfers from all the contributors into a unique bank account, from which the purchase is made. Bitcoin and other currencies built on the blockchain technology improve the ability of OVNs to incentivize open innovation and to source its processes. 

Open source innovation has been proven to be the most effective mode of innovation. It is supported by open source communities, which are by nature open and decentralized, global and stateless. Innovation drives our modern economy, therefore open source innovation is here to stay, and the rest organizes around it. In order to close the cycle from idea to the market, new types of organizations have been created, based on the OVN model or others hybrid models (for more on these hybrid models see Open Source Hardware meets the p2p economy). New infrastructures have been created to tie everything together into self-sufficient value systems, into open value networks. These infrastructures are designed to support the p2p pattern, reducing the role of the state. Local communities have new alternatives for thriving, which require a radical redefinition of the state.  

Some states have banned cryptocurrencies, which reduces the ability of open value networks (tying global/virtual open source innovation systems to the local economy) to form and develop, which in turn takes away viable alternatives for local communities. 

Without embracing stateless p2p practices we don't actualize the full potential of the new digital technology in making our economy more effective, efficient, and sustainable. Without embracing stateless p2p practices we will see the collapse of our local communities, as the state gradually collapses. States that are fighting stateless p2p processes are essentially denying their local communities access to the p2p economy, an alternative that already shows clear signs to be effective.  

By Tiberius Brastaviceanu

AllOfUs

Governance and legal structure for commons-based peer production

Governance and legal structures for commons-based peer production (CBPP) are evolving very rapidly, but we are still far from having something that is fully compatible with CBPP practices, to make a coherent CBPP system.

CBPP communities that create exchange value (products and services to be distributed/exchanged on the market) are usually hybrid or mixed structures. The most obvious examples are ecosystems like Arduino, which are comprised of a classical structure (the Arduino company) in the middle of an open source hardware (OSHW) community. The Arduino company incorporates functions for production and distribution, but it also plays an important role of facilitation and coordination of the open OSWH network around it. The 3D robotics (the company) and DIY Drones (the community) form a similar ecosystem. See Open source hardware meets the p2p economy blog post.

Other CBPP communities are organized as cooperatives. This choice is justified by the more democratic nature of these types of organizations. I expressed my opinions on this structure in the Are Coops Outdated in a Network Age article.

The p2p era begins

By AllOfUs

Multitude, or p2p initiatives get funded in Europe

Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation
Fabrizio Sestini By

AllOfUs

The role of power relations in a p2p economy

The #occupy movement, which is a surface manifestation of a deeper Multitude movement, is in fact a refutation of power. Not only of the "power in place", i.e. big banks, governments, etc. but of what we call "instituted power", the kind of power your boss has over you. The consensus decision making process, a form of direct democracy that has been adopted by the #occupy movement, is the most obvious affirmation of this refutation of instituted power relations, which until now has been seen as a necessary structuring mechanisms of society. 

Where is this coming from? Was it there before? Is this pure Utopia? Or is there something fundamental happening, which makes instituted power relations lose their importance?  

We often hear that instituted power relations are tolerated by people because they are believed to be essential to organize us into efficient and effective groups, to achieve complex goals. Some say that without instituted power relations society would simply brake down, collapse. Go tell that to an anarchist... 

Value Networks, about commercializing their products

We take the example of a specific value network, SENSORICA.

The problem

One of SENSORICA’s main reason for existence is to provide for its members/affiliates the means of subsistence and well-being. This is to say that the surplus value that is created by the network must be exchanged on the market against other values, which are to be redistributed to participants based on their relative contribution. This redistribution is done according to the value accounting system, to which all members must adhere. The goal here is to establish a channel of distribution for SENSORICA’s products. The problem is that there are laws and regulations which makes it difficult for a non-legal entity like SENSORICA to sell certain products. Someone must take the blame if those products don't respect established standards, and our society doesn't know how to interface with things like SENSORICA.

Solution 

In the current situation, we need to create legally recognizable forms to channel products through them. This is actually the role Tactus Scientific Inc. plays for the Mosquito Scientific Instrument System, designed for the scientific instrument market segment.

How to play the open game in the present and future economy

This is the fifth draft; it will evolve based on your feedback.
First published on 6/19/12. Last modified on Oct 10, 2024.

Come back later for more...  

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More and more solutions to our problems today come in the form of open artifacts, i.e open source software and hardware, created by online communities and networks. Traditionally, most of these communities have relied on voluntary participation or some type of gift economy, i.e. the developers do not expect a direct or immediate tangible reward for their contributions. These open artifacts have been regarded as marginal, mostly intended for amateurs and hobbyists. How can one expect serious things to come out from loose organizations that don't use the prescribed governance and methodologies, and don't have access to large budgets? At least that was the unadvised belief, until we realized that critical infrastructure, like the Internet, runs mostly on open source software, created and maintained by these unorthodox organizations. The helicopter drone, Ingenuity, which is part of the Perseverance mission to the planet Mars, operates on Linux, which is an open source operating system. Bitcoin, runs on open source software and is maintained by an open group of people, who can be practically anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Since the launch in 2009, no one has succeeded in hacking Bitcoin, despite the astronomical reward, ranging in the tens of billions of dollars, if we only consider the abandoned accounts of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the network. So some open artifacts developed by unorthodox organizations are pretty serious. There are also lots of crappy ones, as there are crappy products offered by serious companies.

Developing open artifacts (based on open source technologies) relying on unorthodox organizations and being able to make a living is what I call playing the open game.

There are a few important components to the open game... 

 

First, there's the nature of the solution, or more precisely, its intellectual property regime. Open source means that no one can create a temporary economic monopoly on a particular solution, as it is the case with products based on patented technologies. The immediate reaction of some people is: how can one make money developing open source technologies. My first reaction to this question is to point to the obvious: 

• IBM has invested billions of US dollars in Linux and other open source technologies. ref
• Google has gained mobile dominance by opening Android, the mobile operating system. 
• Tesla has engaged in a hybrid IP strategy, open source patented.  

It is obviously possible to generate wealth while developing open source technologies, if the business model is not simple and linear. Then one can dive into some examples to understand the second order and even the third order positive effects on the overall business. In other words, in most cases, whatever is open source is not the product, but by open sourcing some technology in the IP portfolio, these companies produce some effects within their ecosystem, which they can harvest or leverage for their core business. In the case of Google, opening Android increased its adoption rate, while propagating some core Google functionalities, thus putting Google services in billions of mobile devices, which then could be monetized using Google's core business model. We also see a second order kickback pattern with online services like Google and Facebook for example, where free access is given to a digital service (search or connecting and interacting with people), while making money from selling users' generated data or attention. So we need to stop thinking about business as a simple and linear process, product-exchange. 

Now, the previous examples are easier to understand for most people, since they can relate the story to their own work experience. But what about people who develop Tiki for example, an open source wiki CMS groupware? The model here is most probably less known by commons people, but it is the best known by those who use open source technologies. The wealth generation model is similar to Red Hat, the poster child, based on support, training, and consulting services around the core open artifact, which is offered for free. 

 

At this point, I find that is it important to raise to your awareness the fact that the wealth generation model is not the same when the technology is software or hardware. It is beyond the scope of this post to dive deeper into this distinction, but if you're interested, we can discuss in the comments.

We can go even further into more esoteric wealth generation models, some of which are not even well understood by people who participate in the development of open source technologies. You have probably vaguely sensed by know that I deliberately use the term open artifact instead of product and the expression wealth generation instead of business model. The reason for that is to avoid, as much as possible, what I call cognitive interference. When we say product people think about commodity, something that you can buy/sell on the market. But you cannot sell the Linux operating system, because the open source license gives the right to anyone to make a copy, use and modify. In this IP regime, it becomes an abundant, non-rivalrous resource, like the air that we breath. One cannot sell it, its price is zero according to the law of supply and demand. Even though, unlike the air, we need to deploy efforts to produce functional software, once it is made, its costs of reproduction (copy/paste) and distribution (download) are negligible. This is not the same for open source hardware, which has higher costs for reproduction and distribution. But since everyone has access to the design, anyone can make it too. I also like to say that open artifacts disseminate, they are not distributed as products through the market. In other words, software can be found online and downloaded by people and in the case of hardware, anyone can download the model and make it themselves, which has become much easier nowadays, with the use of digital fabrication techniques (3D printing, CNC, etc.). So what about the expression wealth generation? When we say wealth most people think about money and I want to avoid this association. In more esoteric models, people are seeking other forms of wealth, for what they are, or for a later transmutation into money. For example, someone may want to contribute to an open source project to learn new skills, to develop new relations with people that have specific skills or share specific values, or to build reputation.

 

 

The second component of the open game story is the type of organization that produces the open artifact.

...

 

 

Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of new economic models that brake away from the gift economy, directly rewarding those who contribute (with time, financial capital, social capital, ...) to open projects. The open artifact is gradually becoming sustainable. The first step in this direction can be illustrated by Open Source Ecology, which designs open hardware for farming, construction and manufacturing. The designs are  entirely open and free, but the Open Source Ecology community is not interested in commodification, i.e. market exchanges, their designs made with DIY (Do It Yourself) in mind, destined to be produced by the user, or very close to the point of use. In the case of Open Source Ecology their model for subsistence is based on revenues in fiat currency, from donations or educational services.

Open crowdsourcing is another model in which designers, part of an (open) community, are rewarded to complete a project. This scheme doesn't only rely on donations or voluntary participation, since those who contribute are rewarded in exchange with some symbolic gifts (tokens of recognition), reputation tokens, job opportunities, etc. Arduino is an example of such model, a hybrid between the open (value) network OVN and a traditional business, which relies on a vast community of enthusiasts to propose new designs, find and eliminate bugs, engage in promotion, etc. 

There are also closed and non-transparent crowdsourcing initiatives, such as prizes, in which only the best contributors are rewarded. Contributors are often placed in competition against each other. The resultant designs or artifacts are closed and remain under the control of the initiator. We are definitely against this new form of human exploitation, as you can see in this post. 

Sensorica is based on a more radical model, referred to as an open value network (OVN), which implements commons-based peer design production. It is in fact a mix between a gift economy and a transaction-based, or market economy. Sensorica can produces open artifacts that can either be exchange on the market or disseminated as DIY open designs. Various forms of rewards (including revenue from market exchanges or donations) are redistributed to all contributors in proportion to their contributions, based on a Benefit Redistribution Algorithm, which is at the heart of the Network Resource Planning and Contribution Accounting system (NRP-CAS).