Re: [GNU/consensus] ZCash (lupa)

[hellekin]

On 09/01/2016 11:21 AM, carlo von lynX wrote:
>

I'm very glad to read political contents on this list.  Some hackers
come out as 'apolitical', which mostly means they missed the point of
both hacking and technologies production (& politics as well.)

So far I refrained from intervening, I'd have so many things to say
against the approach taken that it would take too long.  So instead,
I'll pack my remarks into a single question and a 'positive' reading
grid to highlight where I think it fails.

>>> for example. The normal tendency in an unregulated market for such
>>> a person is to get richer and richer.
>>
>> I think we should be careful not to equate an unregulated market where
>> individuals buy and sell their personal possessions with the sort of
>> "unregulated" market where an inventor becomes a billionaire. Free
>> market ideology equates the two but they're actually polar opposites.
>
> [snip]
> 
> Or let's think of rural island markets where government is
> mostly absent. Someone figures out how to grow more food and
> gets richer. In theory others could try to steal his method,
> but let's assume they don't understand how it works and so
> this subject gets richer and richer and can afford to pay a
> little army of thugs. They can now protect the space where
> the food is grown, take over more space and start bullying
> their neighbours. Ultimately they become the ruler of the
> island. That's roughly how things go, if you let them go
> unregulated. It has happened millions of times in human
> history, I would assume.
>

**Why would someone 'get bigger', hire thugs, and bully others in the
first place?**

You know very well that competition in that context would most probably
be overcome by fruitful cooperation, as it "has happened millions of
times in human history."

Part of the "corrupt process" is to assume competition prevails over
cooperation, whereas Elinor Ostrom, since she was cited earlier,
demonstrates with her account of, e.g., Balinese water temples, that
communal management of the commons lead to better outcomes, to speak in
capitalist terms. (See Financial Times' author Tim Harford on this
topic: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/83df61cc-caf2-11e1-8872-00144feabdc0.html)

Applying Elinor Ostrom's 8 principles for managing a commons, as a
reading grid for lynX's hypothetical story, we can draw a number of
conclusions:

## 1. Define clear group boundaries.

We're considering a "rural island", so the boundary is 'naturally' given.

## 2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and
conditions.

The drive for the defector is to grow. We can imagine he wants to export
goods (so as to get richer, otherwise the assumption makes no sense, as
he cannot but sell to his fellow islanders who won't allow him to grow
beyond the existing market.) So, we can imagine social pressure from a
foreigner (a colonist) to feed the already capitalistic 'external'
market (accumulation engine).

## 3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in
modifying the rules.

By hiring thugs, the growing party prevents this rule from working,
assuming the others, who already can't reproduce the growing system by
lack of understanding (ahem), also can't fight back thugs.

## 4. Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are
respected by outside authorities.

The 'colonist' had no direct interest in keeping production at
pre-contact level since they want the surplus to feed their own system.
Destructive consequences on the local community may or may not show up
immediately, and when they do, repression seems to be the norm, rather
than understanding. A rational 'economic agent' would nurture the colony
rather than destroy it, contrary to what human history shows. But now
that we know how it fails, we have an opportunity to work towards
respecting the 8 principles to avoid a Tragedy of the Commons (Garrett
Hardin).

## 5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring
members’ behavior.

AKA. don't let him hire thugs, acquire land, and generally break
sensible local community rules: use direct democracy.

Or, if you omit Ostrom's ontology for the Drama of the Commons: use
global surveillance (but then limit how many "community members" can use
the results, or the scope of the 'global' coverage. Such
_restrictionist_ view would erect the fifth principle into a dogmatic
rule to justify an otherwise broken model: implementing a rule that
makes sense in theory, but ignores the real context where it makes no
sense, or worse: reverse the meaning of the rule.

## 6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.

There's no sanction in lynX's story: the bully wins. I think it's
missing, since it evacuates politics altogether, and only considers
'economic' conditions, in the precarious classical pseudo-rationalist
capitalist framework.

## 7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.

Ditto.

## 8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested
tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

As lynX's story evacuates politics, and considers a winning top-down
approach, the context doesn't apply to this rule. Somehow I have the
impression that the analysis is correct, but the burden of our
militarized-repressive global society chokes imagination away from
singing the beauties of what's coming next--given there's a 'next' and
we don't obliterate ourselves out of the picture. Contrast with the
succeeding municipal federalism being implemented by the Kurds in the
Rojava region of northern Syria.

==
hk