P2P Foundation: Peer-to-Peer Solutions for a Better World
Bitcoin Center Korea had the chance to organize a meetup with Michel Bauwen — the founder of the P2P Foundation. He is a Belgian peer production and peer governance theorist who currently lives in Thailand but travels around the world giving lectures and workshops on P2P. Bauwen is also finalizing a Commons Transition Plan for the city of Ghent, Belgium.
The P2P Foundation meetup took place on Monday 18th September 2017 and Michel Bauwen talked about the concept of sharing economies and urban facilities. Also, there was a discussion about how Blockchain technology may facilitate and impact these concepts. These subjects aroused questions during the meetup and we decided to write them down here.
Q: Can you tell more about your experiment with Ghent?
A: There have been signs, especially in Italy and France that something is happening in European cities. According to the few studies, we have noticed Ghent is growing. For this reason the city administration has asked what could we do, how can we attract more active citizens. First we mapped the area, calculated shelters, mobility, and food supplies. We also did a very detailed questionnaire: we organized nine automatic workshops and many meetings. I also wrote a 70-page analysis and proposal based on the input I’ve got from the people. It was easy to notice that collective housing and government based housing have different regulations that are made for different aspects. Rules are complex and not necessarily made for yo; they are made for other people. The other half of the proposal is positive, for example, many companies create great costs, for instance, in the UK they have calculated they have only 50% harvest left. Fertilization just doesn’t work there anymore. The question is about genetic agriculture. The less you have to spend on water and other things, the smaller the circular finance is. You can calculate the negative aspect and have savings.
Q: What about the costs that we can’t estimate? What can we do in those cases?
A: Some people claim they can calculate an ecosystem for the whole world. The other way is not looking at the money. Instead of that, look at the resources and concentrate on bio-capacity and how to carry the capacity. For instance, Detroit is an interesting case because their collapse has already happened. Nowadays people are farming in Detroit, creating urban farms and all kind of things.
Q: What are your views on resource-based economies?
A: It’s very much related to the fact where you use money even if you can’t see what’s going on behind the money. Basically it means you have the market signals, planning and mutual coordination. The technology might not be there yet but technologies such as Blockchain can help it. At the moment, we are not able to do it like that. I believe it will happen someday. For example, Russia still uses money value calculation system. In Europe there is a mutual credit system for businesses and that’s how they create their own money. What I mean is that if I go bankrupt, you go bankrupt too. Switzerland was actually the first one using this system and by the year of 2018 the other regions will also use it too.
Q: What happens when the education level is not high enough for people to be involved and how does it stress the system?
A: There was a social and culture revolution in 1968. People were thinking that the young middle class can have their rock and roll without any consequences. Now we have a decentralized West; movement goes from high to low and people can’t stand it. You can create thousands of jobs and that’s why we need to make an economy that works for everyone. For instance, when you look at the food, Ghent has 5 million public school meals per year. However, it’s not healthy at all: it includes a lot of preservatives. Imagine if the system decided to go for ecological and healthy food. What we can do is follow the model. First, stimulating all the farming and second, follow the Ghent’s flat system. Third, by using bikes you create zero carbon, by cooking you can create kitchen jobs. What we need to think of is the leakage analysis, which means that the local village invests in a bank but the bank invests in something else. That’s how the money may leak out.
Q: Currently with regards to point of sales systems and decentralization, do you have any opinions or ideas how to do combine these two areas?
A: The way I would do it is creating an open source software foundation. This way companies could access services in the foundation and that would create development, which a different from a classic way. These kind of new systems fund themselves though ICOs. It’s a bit theoretical but it has been seen that investments create more capital. You transfer the value from one sector to another. ICOs are making so much funding and there is a lot of money flowing to this new system. For example, Blockchain is an open source, even the mentality is not a common centric. All the blockchain companies own the same core and then they just add more layers. I’m not a typical businessman but you could also think about your clients as a corporation, co-owners and founders of the whole system. I actually met people working in a coffee industry in Brazil. I was interested to know how the coffee economy is working because they didn’t use fair trade, they were just going for full transparency. The people knew where the coffee exactly come from. They decentralized the production in grinding, creating recipes, and expanding the crowdfunding. They were selling the coffee to other people, coffee cost 2.5 euros. But why? All the steps were carefully recorded and checked. System ware and interest were harmonized. There were no people exploiting other people. You could see where the money goes to. I don’t know if this works for Point of Sales but this my own personal idea. I think Ethereum is something you are looking for in this case. It’s about building application layer on top of the common base. However, I need to remind youI’m not a technical expert.
Q: Idealistically I think P2P is a really good system if it can change the world. My concern is how realistic it actually is? For example, many countries prefer hiring cheaper labor from other countries to do the hard work.
A: I don’t think we should see people good or evil. We should see them mixed. We like to use an enormous amount of energy and resources but it’s just not going to work anymore in a long run. For example, Lithium, has already been used and there are many other resources that will be used to extinction. The whole construction of capitalism will change. I would change the way how civilization overshoots and how people overshoot. This is not an exception, it’s a rule. It’s common to take everything until there is nothing left and then we can see things collapsing. The only exception I remember that has happened with Western capitalism is oil production. We are supposed to change the whole world and not just only one civilization. When you watch American apocalypse movies, you can always see how people get rivals and only some of them survive. In reality in such cases, everyone would help each other. For this this reason I’m waiting for P2P to grow because it will be necessary for the future.
Q: I’m a beginner in IT and blockchain area. I would like to build an autosystem, based on technology like Blockchain or P2P. Do you think there is a way to evaluate humans ability to participate in projects?
A: With counting you can have a peer system. By validating the system and your inputs, you can also decide what kind of contribution there will be. Another way maybe is open badges, open accreditation system. In our kind of environments people don’t only learn from school, they also learn online and other ways. It might a problematic to know the reality and for that reason the open accreditation is efficient. For maintaining the system everyone can contribute and second layer experts can decide, evaluate, and approve the outcome.
Q: My concern is that people can’t do anything together if there’s not enough money. What do you think of that?
A: Well, first you need to solve out if you actually need money for something. In Europe many people are already going back to the roots and they believe a shelter and food are enough for survival. There is actually an eco-village that works like this. The rule is the following; you contribute half of your time and for the exchange you get food and shelter. But the reality is that you can’t do it with no money at all, you will always need something from the outside.
Q: I’m interested in learning more about P2P. Where can I find more information?
A: I have written down everything on my Wiki page. You can also find more information on the P2P Foundation webpage.
Q: What can we learn from the villages and communities that has always followed this kind of P2P-model in their lives?
A: Yong people want to learn and experience more and more nowadays. They have a desire for non-material priority things. For example, if we look at the African people, they need more technology to protect and prevent themselves from different kinds of harmful things. In developed countries we need other things and a more traditional approach by learning from the past. This may surprise you, but I got a letter from Taiwan last week. They have had studies about P2P work and I find it very encouraging. Also, in Ecuador there has been a similar kind of case. The organic farmers couldn’t get the right machines for harvesting, so they decided to make their own machines. They started to work together for the same goal and now they have developed maybe over 2000 machines.
Q: What do you think about cryptocurrency?
A: It doesn’t take the recognition from the state. You can see, for example, Bitcoin going around but it’s using too much energy and artificial stuff. I’m not saying it’s too risky, it just distracts people who want to compete being first. I think we need to redesign other kinds of things, for example Faircoin, but we don’t know how to do that. Bitcoin works for because of its greed and faith. I believe every technology was already thought through approximately 50 years ago. Those people were visionaries and somehow these ideas found their way to the engineer minded people and then business people saw the value in it. This is how everything started.
Q: How do you define a city?
A: I think we should talk about bio-diversities, for example Ghent. At the moment, you have to talk about cities because that’s how you get the attention. There is a difference in density of population from rural areas (4000 per square mile). We should pay more focus on rural areas. There is also a word called rurbal, which is not a city and neither a rural area. It’s something in between.
