This is a reply to Matthew Slater with regards to his article on protocol cooperatives vs platform cooperatives:
Hello ,
I agree with you that we need open protocols, or open value networks. But we also need accumulation of capital , something that cooperatives are trying to solve.
Both open protocols and a decentralized accumulation of capital would be better than either alone.
I can't see how creating an interoperable network of alternative currencies will solve this problem. Ryaki tries to fix this problem.
Keep in mind that if you look at the capital/labor ratio of world's GDP (capital depreciation / labor) , it continues to increase every passing year, as automation takes over the production.
It is important to look at the statistics , because some would argue that in a knowledge economy, capital has no important role to play.
On another topic, blockchain is not designed to create a multitude of protocols that are composable. The cost of creating new protocols will be high. A new language is needed, a new type system. Session types is one such solution.
http://simonjf.com/2016/05/28/session-type-implementations.html
More importantly, you have low expectation of success for cooperatives, but your argument (from the point of capital accumulation) also applies to open value networks. If the network is not able to accumulate capital , it eventually dies, in the same way that an organism does when it does not eat.
And I agree with you. There is little chance of success for both open protocols and cooperatives. The internet is one example where networks have transformed into centralized hubs.
This is why our work should not be done so as to succeed but to inspire a new generation of people that another world is possible. Our work should be to inspire them to demand that such a world becomes our world.
You say that CIA can create dictatorships in countries that are out of line. That is why protocols should enable the coordination and cooperation of the people that are part of the resistance. The protocols should enable the political movement to succeed.
Thanks for replying. You are right that my work doesn't deal with the problem of capital at all - a hard problem for me, but a lot of brainpower is already being applied.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to judge probabilities in the future, and to make strategies on the basis of them; so between us we need to try to embrace a wide range of strategies for a wide range of futures!