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@Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist @ntnsndr @Stacco @alannairving @mattcropp

Strongly agree with Alanna Irving's take (unsurprisingly - she's consistently one of the most thoughtful people about online collaboration). Sharing here for emphasis:

"They are excited by the parts of the problem that are quantifiable or cryptofiable and forget that the important or hard parts of the problem (building trust, connecting your vision with the outside world) aren't quantifiable at all."

@shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist @Stacco @alannairving @mattcropp I agree, absolutely, and have long tried to make that point as well (and have tried to learn as much from Alanna as I can along the way!):

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/an-economy-for-anything

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/03/30/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-gamestop-dystopia-240346

But to me the biggest challenge the co-op movement faces is not our ability to build relationships and trust. We're good at that. Our biggest challenge is quantifiable: we are up against systems with way more money and power.

@ntnsndr @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist Hmmm, that's an interesting point. How is power quantifiable, though? And I'm not sure the elements of money that are quantifiable are the elements that are important.

@shauna @ntnsndr @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist Yeah, what kind of power? And is it power you could wield without it corrupting you? Police and military power, to jail and kill opponents? Amassing private luxury to distribute to cronies? Such power is effective in blocking popular change, but it can't help us.

What is money good for? Helping people cooperate across time and space without directly interacting. Doing that without money is hard, but saving the planet with money may be impossible.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist I like your framing of the problem as "Helping people cooperate across time and space" (not sure about the directly interacting). But two things:

Yes, money is quantifiable, and as long as that drives access to building institutions it matters. When money became available to co-ops through US law in rural electricity, credit unions, and agriculture, co-ops became significant shapers of those sectors. Elsewhere, co-ops remain marginal.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist money is not everything. Some of those co-ops are great, some are terrible. But access to quantifiable resources can at least open the door to the possibility of democracy. This is why a major focus of my work now is policy strategies. To give us that chance to really test our ability to do economic democracy.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist networks are also a way to enable coordination at scale. And I am interested in different kinds of network designs to enable this. I don't think blockchains are in any way perfect, but they do open doors, using some aspects of quantification, to enable collaborations across borders and in novel institutional designs that are not feasible with territorial law and server-centric networks.

@skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes @GuerillaOntologist I long for the day when we don't see these questions as black/white, good/bad, but are able to explore the possibilities of any infrastructure both creatively and critically. I really dislike having to be a defender of blockchains, which I have actively criticized since before most people knew about them. But I don't understand the urge to write them off entirely.

Thanks, friends. I am grateful for y'all.

@ntnsndr @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes
Maybe someday we'll all be able to see the good side of MLMs too. It's a real shame that people are so down on them, just because they aren't perfect.

Seriously though, critiques of blockchain technology get met with philosophical arguments about the nature of money and claims about the technology that don't stand up to scrutiny. What I don't seem to get is specific responses to specific critiques.

@GuerillaOntologist @ntnsndr @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes Josh, can we name three specific critiques that are missing a response in this thread?

I'm with you about scrutiny in empirical argumentation of the subject.

From the above discussion, I'd pick:

1. Distributed ledgers are not decentralised in terms of protocol design and P2P bootstrap.
2. Philosophical arguments about novel governance and renumeration schemes ignore the fundamental critique of immutable, ungovernable protocol design.

@GuerillaOntologist @ntnsndr @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes

3. The identification and naming of quantification as institutional governance model, which is used to enscribe and reproduce monetary power hierarchies within a private property narrative that encloses common resources, limits the discourse within groups and the public plus assumes and presents social stratigraphy as an ontological fact.

@yala @ntnsndr @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes
I'd start with just one question, to keep it simple:

Given that blockchains, in practice, are not distributed or trustless systems, and given that anything you can do with a DAO you can accomplish in other ways, what is the argument for using crypto blockchains?

@GuerillaOntologist @yala @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes Fair question! Though I do think there are aspects of decentralization and trust-reduction in these systems, but anyway... :)

- Enabling "virtual co-ops" (like Social.coop) with international memberships, which territorial law often makes very difficult

- Exploring forms of shared ownership through creative tokenization not available through common stock or LLC designs

- Online governance systems that are resistant to manipulation

@GuerillaOntologist @yala @skyfaller @shauna @Matt_Noyes More:

- Enabling inroads for cooperative culture and values into an emerging, young, and disenchanted set of subcultures

- Experimenting with mechanisms for financing cooperative projects not available in an investor-centric policy environment

- Exploring novel governance designs that assume online-first communities

- Exploring novel economic incentives designs in the tradition of cooperative dividends that support trust and solidarity