Why do we need a contribution accounting system?

First published on 3 January 2014 and last modified on 8 January 2018

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NOTE: Before 2017 SENSORICA used the expression ''value accounting system''. The current expression in use is ''contribution accounting system''. See more on the OVN wiki. The origin of this modification is a redefinition of value, inspired by Tibi's essay ''Scale of social structures''.

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With the advent of the Internet and the development of new digital technologies, the economy is following a trend of decentralization. The most innovative environments are open source communities and peer production is on the rise. The crowd innovates and produces. But the crowd is organized in loose networks, it is geographically dispersed, and contributions to projects follow a long tail distribution. What are the possible reward mechanisms in this new economy?

Our thesis is that in order to reward all the participants in p2p economic activity, and thus to incentivise contributions and make participation sustainable for everyone, we need to do contribution accounting: record everyone's contribution, evaluate these contributions, and calculate every participant's fair share. This method for redistribution of benefits must be established at the beginning of the economic process, in a transparent way. It constitutes a contract among participants, and it allows them to estimate their rewards in relation with their efforts. We call this the contribution accounting system.

For the rest of this article we will try to explain why a contribution accounting system is needed in a more decentralized economy, and unavoidable in a p2p economy.

How value networks can articulate with the present economy - an example in food preparation and distribution

Yesterday I had a conversation with my friend Paul about the advantages of open value networks (OVN) over classical structures, including co-ops.

picture comes from this website

Context

Paul is involved in #occupy Montreal and they are now organizing a center for preparation and distribution of vegan food in Montreal. They also want it to be very local. This operation would require gathering products from different local farmers, cooking/preparing, packaging and distributing raw or prepared food. 

Question

Should they create a co-op or an OVN? 

My answer 

They can have a co-op embedded within a value network. 

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...