Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation, is trying to raise funds to expand the Foundation's activities. The quality of writing on the P2P Foundation blog is incomparable, and I have relied heavily on material in the P2P Wiki on peer production, open source manufacturing, and desktop manufacturing, in writing Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen of my org theory manuscript.

I highly recommend Bauwens' extended essay "P2P and Human Evolution," and his shorter introductory essay "The Political Economy of Peer Production."

Bauwens' solicitation follows below. If you're interested in helping, you can click on the "Donate Now" button on the right-hand sidebar at the P2P Foundation Blog.

* * *

Dear friends,

Help us build a better more humane and sustainable society through the research and promotion of peer to peer alternatives. Help us build and strengthen the infrastructure of cooperation of the P2P Foundation!!

As you know, we believe that the current economic model is not sustainable, because it treats nature as infinite, while it attempts to render free cooperation more difficult through the creation of artificial scarcity in the field of culture of knowledge. While there is now a thriving sustainability movement, the achievement of an open environment for the global and local sharing of knowledge is just as important, as this is where the solutions for sustainability need to be generated.

The P2P Foundation focuses on creating a knowledge base and internetworking platform for peer production, governance, and property, and for open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented social practices, in every field of human activity: politics and the economy, the scientific and the spiritual.

We want go "get better at working together" by studying what works and what doesn't work in the emerging new social forms enabled by peer to peer technologies. We want to help people to have more fulfilling lives by supporting approaches and policies for meaningful constructive work so that social innovation can thrive.


Our Achievements so far

About two and a half years ago, we started building an ecology of online resources to serve that purpose:

- A Wiki (http://p2pfoundation.net) to build the knowledge base as well as well as a directory of initiatives. Franz Nahrada has called it the largest collection of free modes available on the planet. We have nearly 6,000 pages of documentation which have been viewed almost 3.5 million times. As an example, where else could we find an overview as well as details of the many emerging open design communities that aim to assist in the making of physical products? See http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design for these pages, one amongst many sections.

- A blog (http://blog.p2pfoundation.net) which keeps track of current initiatives and offers current thinking on p2p developments. Our blog has now about 700 readers daily and is growing at a constant rate.

- An interconnected network of social bookmarking sites, where our sympathizers exchange their finds on a continous basis

- A community center (http://p2pfoundation.ning.com) where people can discuss issues and get to know each other

- A series of mailing list, such as the Peer to Peer Research list

The people who work with us are often active in their own fields, and this leads to a cross-fertilization and co-learning of different initiatives.

In the last 18 months, as the founder of the P2P Foundation, I have also undertaken intensive lecture tours in academia, business and policy communities and institutions.

These achievements, the result of voluntary contributions by myself and a core group of active supporters, also come at a cost, and we could do much more with your active support, which would enable more consistent efforts.

We have created a non-profit structure in the Netherlands to achieve a next level of organization.



Contribute funding to our infrastructure of cooperation!!

We are at a stage where funding would be instrumental in growing our activities and reach.

We need funding of our physical infrastructure, which is now paid by individual volunteers.

We need funding to provide a less insecure financial environment for some of our full-time volunteers.

We need funding to formalize the knowledge base, to give it an extra level of presentation and synthesis so that it can appeal to new communities. Such synthetic reports are difficult to achieve on the basis of volunteering alone.

The funding would allow us to stimulate mini-projects that are proposed by some of our sympathizers, who would not have the opportunity to carry them out without some form of compensation.


Here is how we propose the money would be allocated:


- 3,333 EUR (one third) to fund a small annual stipend to assist one full-time worker with developing and growing the P2P Foundation

- 3,333 EUR to fund the physical infrastructure of cooperation: this includes servers/publications in print and in new media formats

- 3,333 EUR to fund proposed community projects that enhance the knowledge base of the P2P Foundation (new research as well as synthetic reports)

It was a great loss several years ago when the server went down and all the online issues of Jonathan Simcock's Total Liberty magazine were lost. But now the entire archive is available online. Issues 4-20 are available in pdf format. Issues 1-3 are no longer available in the original format, but are archived in html at Spunk Press (they're linked from the TL website). Check it out.

Voter: Really, I’m a Libertarian at heart.
David Bergland: Well, when it reaches your balls, give me a call.

That's from a post at Positive Liberty by Jim Babka of Downsize DC. Best. LP. Quote. Ever.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: Knapp's gonna give Babka what for over his treatment of the Boston Tea Party and Charles Jay's excoriation of Barr.

Nope. I want to talk about that, but not in precisely the way you might think.

It's true that I've sworn off my support for the Barr campaign, and that I've described Barr's candidacy as Dixiecrat 2008, and I stand by that characterization. Having already rhetorically positioned Barr alongside Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Lester Maddox, I didn't feel any great need to weigh in on his Jesse Helms eulogy. Coals to Newcastle and all that.

And I do want to respond briefly to Babka on two points, so let's get that out of the way:

I don't know if this party will have their candidate on a single ballot. They appear to exist entirely for unherdable cats, hell-bent on criticizing the LP.

As it happens, the Boston Tea Party's presidential ticket is on the ballot in Colorado, will be on the ballot in Florida and Guam, and will likely manage several other states (we're looking at possibles in Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and New Jersey). We've got nine state affiliates with more organizing right now. We got started too late this year to run down-ticket slates of our own, but we're endorsing and aiding a number of independents and candidates of other parties who in turn endorse our platform. One prospective endorsee, an LP candidate, just emailed me to mention that she had received a campaign contribution just from asking for our endorsement.

Ultimately, we're not anti-Libertarian Party ... we're pro-libertarian. Conditions are such that that may be less than perfectly clear to all right now, but we'll get there.

I'm not going to apologize for Charles Jay's critique. He said some things that needed to be said -- not just because they're true, but because at this point in its existence, the Boston Tea Party very much needs to explain itself to the rest of the freedom movement. We need our fellow libertarians to understand why we're doing what we're doing.

Nonetheless, I don't think that Jim's criticism is entirely unjustified. So far, the BTP's existence and career as a party has been closely tied to various critiques of the LP. That's just a fact. There's no disputing it and I'm not going to try.

Babka refers to the BTP as a "spin-off" -- but I think maybe he's giving us too much credit. We haven't really spun off yet. Rather, we've remained, to a large degree, in the LP's orbit. Our criticisms have so far largely been leveled at the LP and its presidential candidate rather than at the status quo parties and their candidates. On the positive side, we've been happy to endorse LP candidates who meet our standards.

This election cycle is the adolescence of the Boston Tea Party.

In our infancy (from 2006 to earlier this year) we were half-in, half-out of the LP. I offered a resolution at the BTP's organizational convention which would have constituted it as an internal caucus of the LP. That resolution was rejected by the members, but we didn't go in the opposite direction that year, either.

This year, we've decided to start doing the things a "real" political party does. We've nominated candidates for office and we're working to put those candidates on the ballot. We're chartering state affiliates so that we can hit the ground running in 2010 with congressional and state legislative slates. We're establishing recruitment efforts that stand on their own and don't rely on the internal LP "dissatisfaction grapevine."

Between now and 2012, I expect that the BTP will grow into young adulthood, establish itself as a proven, permanent third party ... and of course make its best attempt to do better than other third parties have done and break into "the big leagues."

The reality is that there are now two libertarian political parties on America's electoral landscape, and that (in certain respects at least) the newer one is coming up fast in the older one's rearview mirror.

Breaking up is hard to do ... but perhaps it needn't be as painful as we're making it. Can we just be friends? OK, well, maybe not, at least for the three months and change while the LP conducts its "great experiment" and the BTP embarks on its "maiden voyage." But ...

Odds are that there will always be cross-traffic between the LP and the BTP as angry or discontented libertarians of one seek expression in the other (or, as is now the case, participate in both). It's a safe bet that the two parties will bring different approaches to the longstanding and vexing problem of electing candidates to office. Hopefully as time goes on, the two parties will learn to, well, learn, from each others' mistakes and from each others' successes instead of just going at each other.

I'm not going to promise to go easy on Bob Barr. The LP made that bed, and now it (we -- I'm still an LP member and candidate) gets to lie in it. But I can, and do, promise you that I'll do my best as a member of the Boston Tea Party to make that party about more than internecine freedom movement conflicts. We have bigger game to hunt, and we're just now getting our boots on.

Everybody want to go up to heaven
but none of them, none of them want to die

Peter Tosh, "Equal Rights"

Which pretty much sums up the "conservative" position on bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: "We're gonna do it, but gosh darn, wouldn't it be nice if someday someone didn't?"

McCain's on board. Video here -- sorry, embed is disabled on it. Here's the back-and-fill Dixiecrat edition, though:



Apropos of which, a piece I wrote a few years back:

Deus ex (Goldberg) Machina
by Thomas L. Knapp
01/16/02@Rational Review

A visitor from another planet, dropped into the typical American living room, in front of the typical American television, would surely leave convinced that public policy is contrived, debated, adopted and implemented by a gaggle of talking heads who spend 24 hours a day in rotation between shopping for the most stylish double-breasted suits, commuting by limousine from one talk show studio to the next, and hobnobbing at White House receptions.

The truth, of course, is both more prosaic and more horrifying.

The typical American politician, at the federal level, is a harried hack, jetting back and forth between Washington and his fiefdom ... er, constituency ... to raise funds, whip recalcitrant allies into line, raise funds, shake hands, kiss babies and, of course, raise funds.

This typical politican, when in Washington, is too busy paying off favors to those donors and recalcitrant allies to accomplish much relating to the ideas that probably inspired his entry into politics in the first place.

Yes, he was a young idealist once. He had priorities. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make his country a better place, restore a sense of honor to its highest institutions, work with the statesmen he saw nightly on CNN to guide the great ship of state safely over the waves of the uncertain sea of policy.

Now, he scurries.

He scurries to the House chamber to cast a vote on a bill he's never read, because his party's leadership wants it. And those who don't "work with" the party leadership end up with the last office in the Rayburn building: the one behind the door marked "Custodian."

He scurries to the studio for a talk show appearance, prepared to mouth some lines whipped up by his staff, because the media demands it. And those who don't "work with" the media find themselves the targets of investigative reports, coverage custom made to benefit their next opponent for election or, worst of all, simply ignored.

He scurries to dinner with a major donor who happens to be in Washington, because money is the mother's milk of politics. He can't afford to lose that donation. Moreover, he can't afford to lose that donor's support.

At the end of the day, he scurries off to the White House in bow tie and cummerbund, works his way through the reception line, and stands around drinking weak cocktails and being ignored. If he's lucky. If he spills his martini on the envoy from Sierra Leone, there'll be hell to pay. If he doesn't show up at all, well, the president may not have time to campaign in his district this fall.

If he scurries adroitly enough -- zigging across the floor of House America to avoid the great boots of media oppobrium, political desertion and financial insolvency, zagging to catch the crumbs that fall from the randomly piled plates of power -- he can one day look forward to similarly corrupting his nemesis: the next young idealist to take a tentative step into the corridors of power.

This is the life of one cog -- the typical U.S. Representative -- in the machine called "hyperpluralism," that American governance has become.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism isn't that it creates a divide between legitimate public purpose and actual public policy. It isn't that it chews up, digests and assimilates even the most honest public servant, making him just another extension on a conveyor belt moving toward the incinerator of totalitarianism . It isn't even that it can produce only centralization of power and deliver that power only to those least likely to either eschew it or exercise it with extreme caution.

The surprising thing about hyperpluralism is that it works at all.

When I began to write this piece it was, surprisingly enough, intended as a rebuttal to Jonah Goldberg's critiques of libertarianism. That's still my intent, but I've found another Goldberg in the woodpile. His name is Rube, and his presence shines some light on my discomfiture with Brother Jonah's ponderings.

Jonah Goldberg is the current golden boy at National Review, journal of record for "conservatism" in the Day of Dubya.

Rube, of course, is the cartoonist whose wonderful images of complex machines designed to accomplish simple tasks engaged and delighted an audience of millions.

"Conservatism" in the Day of Dubya is Jonah's application of Rube's ideas to politics.

That, of course, is the nut of the matter. Goldberg's problem with libertarians isn't that we're thin-skinned. It isn't that we're simplistic or that our ideas aren't relevant to the debate at its root.

It's that a polity based on libertarian ideas would not need an army of "liberal" Rubes to design it or a horde of "conservative" Jonahs to crawl over its superstructure, continually tightening bolts, checking welds and adding kitchen sinks, mousetraps and bathtubs to its bewildering assortment of features.

Or to explain what the hell it is that they've built.

National Review prides itself for "standing athwart history yelling stop." That pride is misplaced. All too often, the "conservatism" of Goldberg and Company is more reminiscent of the prayer of Augustine: "Give me chastity and continence -- but not just yet."

History, thus far, is the record of continuing state encroachment on individual liberty -- with occasional interruption due to technical difficulties. The piercing "STOP!" of the modern American "conservative" movement is invariably followed by a throaty, whispered "but not just yet" as "conservatives" rush to assimilate the latest development, make it their own and defend it to the death.

Contra Goldberg (Jonah, not Rube), libertarians don't suffer from "accumulated resentment at being in the backseat of the right-wing coalition." No such coalition exists, nor can it exist except on libertarian terms. The backseat of American politics is already occupied by the "conservatives," busily engaged in making babies with the "liberals."

The libertarian malady is more physiological and less petty than resentment. It's called nausea.

Why do I make longshot predictions? They're less likely to be correct, of course. Then again, if they are correct, you're the guy who got something right that others were afraid to touch. So:

First Prediction: When Barack Obama visits Iraq next week, an attempt will be made on his life by them terrorists. [1]

Second Prediction: Regardless of the success or failure of the attempt, the main point of subsequent blogospheric debate on the incident will be who was guiding them terrorists' hands: The Busheviks or Hillary.

Next prediction: The date of the second coming of Jebus. [2]

Notes

1. To the guys wearing cheap suits, sunglasses and earpieces: No, I'm not advocating this. Let's be very clear on that point. I'm predicting it, and the last 45 years of history say that while it's a marginal prediction due to its specificity of time and locale, it's not one absent ample precedent per se. And hey, if it doesn't happen, how about we split credit for preventing it? I exposed them terrorists' intentions, and you guys were on top of your job. Yeah, that's the ticket.

2. Only 366 shopping days 'til Jebusmas!

I've already commented (in an addendum to a post at The Art of the Possible) on what I regard as an abysmally by-the-numbers review of Wall-E at Mises Blog. My comment dealt with it only insofar as it recycled the old--and historically illiterate--vulgar libertarian meme of people eagerly lining up to take factory jobs so as to get away from the backbreaking work of peasant subsistance farming. Stolyarov's review is bad on far more counts than that, though. Like most of the Misoids, he reacts viscerally, rallying to the defense of "business" whenever a movie treats what appears to be a corporation of some sort as the bad guy. Funny--I always thought the point of libertarianism was to defend free markets as such, and not to defend big business as a "persecuted minority."

And as several of the commenters at Mises Blog pointed out, Wall-E's "Buy 'n' Large Corporation" is very much of a common type in dystopian sci fi (of which Firefly's Blue Sun Corporation is probably the best-known). For example, commenter Bob Kaercher quoted a review by Patrick Ford at The American Conservative:

In the film, it becomes clear that mass consumerism is not just the product of big business, but of big business wedded with big government. In fact, the two are indistinguishable in WALL-E’s future. The government unilaterally provided it’s citizens with everything they needed, and this lack of variety led to Earth’s downfall.
Kaercher adds:

Does the film condemn technology per se, or just how certain organizations use some applications of certain kinds of technology? Does the film try to claim that FREE MARKET capitalism has laid the Earth to waste? If it doesn't, why assume that it does make that claim? Perhaps one could just as easily make the inference that state-socialism combined with government-protected big business is responsible for the ruin?
And another commenter, Jack Skylark, writes:

As far as WALL-E is concerned, I disagree that the central message is environmentalism. It is more, in my eyes, a warning against government and I believe can be called a very anarchist film. In the first fifteen minutes of the film we are greeted with the destruction caused directly by a purely command economy. I find it peculiar that other Austrians did not instantly see the blueprint Zwangswirtschaft (German for “compulsory economy”) system personified in the BNL Corporation. With the monopoly power over the use of force as well as a nationalized economic base, property rights (in the pure sense) were completely trampled. To the common layman a trashed earth may be synonymous with free enterprise and libertarian ideals but this film does not set out to provide explanation but to tell a story.
But the Misoids just see somebody talking mean about a poor old corporation, and see red.

Anyway, the focus of my comment at The Art of the Possible was on what ahistorical nonsense Stolyarov's remarks on the Industrial Revolution and subsistence farming were. Stolyarov wrote:

Virtually no one today who romanticizes the “good old days” of traditional agriculture recognizes how nasty, brutish, and short life under such conditions had been for millennia. Once the first industrial factories opened — with their long hours, dangerous equipment, and meager pay — people flocked to them in droves, because the factory conditions (including the sanitation provided and wages paid) were greatly preferable to those of toiling virtually all day on the traditional farm.
And as I pointed out, P.M. Lawrence was running logical and evidential rings around Stolyarov and his defenders in the comments thread. For example:

We actually have historical records to show this; they generally went into factories because they were deprived of rural opportunities, as in the English Enclosures, Irish evictions and (Scottish) Highland clearances. We know that when the opportunities remained they stayed away in droves, as in the natural experiment when Lord Lever started a fish processing factory at Leverburgh on the island (peninsula, actually) of Lewis….

Basically, people shouldn’t trot out this recycled prejudice as fact without doing their homework, let alone have the chutzpah to accuse others of romanticising.

Lawrence continued to run circles--quite entertainingly--around several of the commenters.

For some unexplicable reason, though, his attempts to post further comments in that thread all started to fail over the weekend. It surely can't be deliberate censorship; I mean, what kind of coward would ban a commenter, just because a blogger's cartoonishly broad assertions (and those of his groupthink followers) couldn't stand up to the immense weight of historical erudition Lawrence brings to bear? To do that, they'd have to be afraid of defending their ideas against their most able critics--which would be utterly contemptible.

And besides, it surely can't be censorship when the utterly brainless "Person" is still allowed to infest the comment threads over there. Person, for those unfamiliar with him, has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to grasp the point of an argument even when wearing velcro mittens, and has accomplished nothing beyond evoking laughter from his enemies and eye rolls from his allies.

So while the folks at Mises are dealing with their software glitch, I'll help them out by publishing Lawrence's comment for them.

* * *

Newson suggests that my

argument has flipped. first you introduce the hard work theme - "This is what made a zero sum for food, so peasants had to work harder." then, when i express skepticism about peasants withholding labour, it changes to hunger - "As Mao Tse Tung remarked, each new mouth brings a new pair of hands. For a given set of techniques, and a given amount of land, working harder won't grow more. So Malthusian constraints didn't show as more work per person but as less food per person (you don't see starving people in third world countries working harder, just starving more)."

No, that's not my argument flipping, it's my different response to your new objection, but one entirely consistent with my original point. When you remove people from the rural sector but keep the number of people needing and able to be fed nearly the same, as happened after the later Enclosures, the workload per peasant goes up. However, Malthusian constraints don't do that; if you hit those but keep people on the land, the workload per peasant actually goes down. The former scenario is what actually happened; I was pointing out that the latter had not happened, i.e. that you were mistaken in thinking that Malthusian constraints had caused the increasing workloads and difficulties among peasants. I'm not denying that they were getting close, just pointing out that they weren't the problem that had actually come up.

...to be perfectly candid, i don't believe in any golden age for peasants prior to the industrial revolution, for the reason already mentioned. extra mouths always followed "good times" in short order, and then the culling through pestilence, famine etc.

No, not in short order. It's still change over generations. Hey, I know you're open minded, that your belief isn't "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts" (I don't expect to be able to tell Rtr anything, but I do expect to be able to show open minded people that he just won't listen). Remember that I cited Buchan's biography of Cromwell? Now I'll quote him (chapter 1): "A foreign traveller with an eye in his head would have reported that the long peace had made the country prosperous and the people content. The new poor law preserved a semblance of order, and there was far less ostensible misery than in other lands." (He notes the continuing effects of the disruptions of Tudor times, though - that's why they needed a new poor law.) But wait, there's more - this time from Allotments and Small Holdings, which I'm mainly going to use for Rtr: "By that time [1775] the modern feeling in favour of allotments had begun to ripen, and it was contended that some compensation should be made to the labourers for depriving them of the advantages of the waste. Up to then the English labouring rustic had been very well off.. Food was abundant and cheap, so were clothes and boots; he could graze his cow or pig on the common, and also obtain fuel from it. Now he fell on evil days. Prices rose, wages fell,. privileges were lost, and in many cases he had to sell the patch of land whose possession made all the difference between hardship and comfort. All this was seen plainly enough both by statesmen and private philanthropists."

...with respect, there must have been productivity improvements you're overlooking. if there were fewer peasants working the land, and the food output remained static, and hard work under land-constrained conditions will not increase production, and yet the national population didn't drop, then necessarily productivity improved. there's no other way out of the rebus.

Actually, you haven't put this together properly. There were fewer rural workers, working harder than before so as to stay at the limits of what the land would yield. If you keep the land the same, and the work the same, and you get the same product - there has been no change in land productivity or labour productivity. However, if you keep the work the same and cut the number of workers, the work per worker goes up - even with no change in productivity. As it happens, there were increases in both sorts of productivity, but the labour productivity gains were later and the land productivity gains really only kept the Malthusian limit at bay.

Rtr thinks that '"I merely pointed out that the rural sector had to do more than it would have chosen on its own."... just doesn't make sense on economic grounds.' Of course it makes sense. Rents, tithes, and (mostly indirect) taxes, remember? That is why it is wrong to accuse me of "...again making non free market assumptions, which is fine from an analysis perspective, as long as you demonstrate such" (I already showed that I was not assuming things, that I was drawing on the historical record).

The rural market choice to produce surplus output *in spite of* its always existing preference of less work for more reward, or they were compelled by violence. Compelling by violence does not generally increase the productivity per acre, as can be seen by per acre farming productivity results from many socialist and communist countries.

Well, it didn't here, either, it just kept the output up to what the techniques allowed. But there is a bait and switch: rents, tithes, and (mostly indirect) taxes are what gave them the incentives. These are not overt violence, but concealed; those do work without materially harming productivity of either sort.

Violence doesn't magically increase productivity. It begs credulity that more people can be supported by less farmers (by definition of more people subsisting as factory laborers), without there necessarily being an increase in farming productivity.

Which is why you shouldn't misrepresent things. Two kinds of productivity, remember? Work per person increased on the land, but that is not an increase in the productivity of land (output per unit area) or of labour (output per unit work). What there was, was an increase in output per worker - but that's not a productivity increase, if obtained by more work rather than more result for work. That's where we came in - that farmers had to work hard. They don't, if they only have to support their households. The increase was in the work piled on them, which never reached the point of reducing production. It only showed as the harsh conditions.

However, you are abusing words that denote free market voluntary *choices* (which are always constrained). If they didn't choose to till the land, then they would have voluntarily left the profession of farming, which is exactly what happened with the industrial revolution.

Now who's abusing words? Many were directly evicted, which is not a free market operation unless the land had belonged to the evicters - but the evicters had seized the land, after changing the lawe to allow it. Those that were left had their own private resources removed in the same way. Many "voluntarily" left farms in those conditions, but it is an abuse of language to select the departure and omit the seizure. It's like saying someone voluntarily swims if he was on a ship that sank. It might look voluntary to someone who only starts looking after the sinking, but we know better. At least, I do - and you can, if you go and look. From Allotments and Small Holdings:

The enclosure of the common fields proved most hurtful to the small farmer; the enclosure of the waste injured the labourer by depriving him, without adequate compensation, of such useful privileges as the right to graze a cow, a pig, geese or other small animals. It also discouraged him by tending to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small holding... As Mr Cowper (afterwards Lord Mount Temple) said in the House of Commons on the 13th of March 1844, "the course adopted had been to compensate the owner of the cottage to whom the common right belonged, forgetting the claims of the occupier by whom they were enjoyed"; and in the same debate Sir Robert Peel pointed out that not only the rights of the tenant, but those of his successors ought to have been studied. The course adopted divorced the labourer from the soil.

Now let's see what else goes wrong in Rtr's criticism:-

- Well taxes aren't voluntary free market institutions, so we can ignore those.

Huh? Does he really propose to ignore anything that's not free market because it makes reality not fit the theory? I've never asserted that free market theory was wrong - it isn't - just that real peasants, in real life, had burdens thrown on them in other ways; that you can't look at harsh peasant conditions and say that peasant life must be hard, when the hardships were put there by others.

- Landlords could only charge more rent if productivity increases alone afforded that possibility.

Actually, when the market will bear it. That's when there is enough product to be sold, under prevailing market conditions. But in any case, Rtr made that up, about charging more rent being necessary for all this. All that is necessary is that real rents remain pretty much the same per farm, and conditions get worse per peasant when there are fewer peasants. Mind you, rents also increased, to match farms' net increase in product (since fewer people needed to be fed in the farm work force).

- And indeed increased marginal productivity makes the land more valuable, is a win-win for both landlord and farmer.

Leaving aside that productivity did not increase, this simply isn't so even when it does, if the effect is overwhelmed by wealth transfers - which is just precisely what the Enclosures did.

Rtr contradicts my statement "Considering that I said nothing at all about specialisation and the division of labour, or net poverty," by misunderstanding when I

said farmers had to work harder for the same output. Working more for less or the same output is worse off than working the same for the same output or working less for more output. By definition of productivity, people would be working less for more output or the same for more output or less for the same output. This is the opposite of "harder".

Sigh. Not the same output per peasant - the same total output. Split among fewer peasants, achieving the same output per unit work, there is no change in labour productivity but a lot more labour per peasant. See above.

Rtr really wasn't paying attention when he came up with 'How would you be "worse off" if you no longer had to grow your own food but could instead rely upon the marginally more competitive surplus of fewer farmers to produce enough food for all, and instead concentrate on other pursuits?' The fewer peasants had to work harder, and had been expropriated. See above Allotments and Small Holdings - explicitly records that the whole process

...injured the labourer by depriving him, without adequate compensation, of such useful privileges as the right to graze a cow, a pig, geese or other small animals. It also discouraged him by tending to the extinction of small tenancies and freeholds that were no longer workable at a profit when common rights ceased to go with them. The industrious labourer could previously nourish a hope of bettering his condition by obtaining a small holding.

That's why it's not win-win, even though "society is net wealthier" - more than 100% of the gains went to the expropriators; what "society" gets is irrelevant to what happened to the peasants. That is what is different from his comparisons - it's not the working of a free market, while the comparisons are.

Rtr continues his erlier error, thinking that '"we can see that there were fewer left to feed about the same number" ...could only occur if fewer people farming actually could feed everyone by increases in labor productivity. Otherwise excess food production would only be wastefully rotting, and adding to the supply of food which would be bringing the prices for food production down, thus causing all farmers to be poorer rather than everyone being richer by producing other stuff such as factory goods.' That meant increases in work, not productivity. But I do not need to repeat the rebuttal.

Society no longer produces just food, but now produces food *AND* factory goods. This is win-win for everybody.

No, because the expropriations and related burdens meant there were losers in all this.

Again, Rtr is jumpimg to conclusions with

"Mostly, they weren't given the option, they were evicted." That's a *good* thing. Land owners were behaving as good entrepreneurs, doing them a favor saving them wasting their efforts on unnecessary duplicating output.

No, they weren't doing them favours - they took the peasants' resources, then evicted many. That's not doing someone a favour.

Those less efficient farmers would be strictly economically *better off* working in the factories, just as those more efficient remain farmers would be strictly economically better off with unnecessary surplus production from those less marginally efficient farmers. It's win-win

is similarly nonsense; they weren't less efficient, they only had their own resources taken away. If I steal the petrol from your car, it stops working so well - but it's just as efficient as it always was, just not as effective. Efficiency is a ratio of outputs to inputs; take away the inputs and you get less output, but the efficiency isn't worse.

Rtr goes on

And win-win-win when you include the land owners who can now charge higher rents for more marginally productive land, or use the land saved on producing food for other uses, such as your sheep herding example.

I wonder, does he know what win-win means? Particularly since "win-win-win" is a nonsense. Win-win doesn't mean lots of gains, it means both ends of a transaction gain (since there aren't three ends of a transaction, "win-win-win" is a nonsense). The Highland Clearances, just like the Tudor Enclosures, reduced total food production, and the people who got evicted did not win, they lost what they had formerly had.

Finally, he almost gets there, linking

"it is Rtr who is assuming that there were no distortions. To take but one, Scottish clan lands were appropriated by clan chiefs, who then evicted clansmen. This is not a free market at work." ... So a more free market would have benefited everybody, would have made everybody better off, would have mode [sic] society net wealthier. It was only anti-free market, anti-capitalism distortions which were causing people to be poorer than they otherwise would have been.

That's the whole bloody point - the situation of overworked peasants was not the natural outworking, but a distorted one. So you can't look at actual historical peasants and conclude that their situation shows that peasant life is unpleasant of its nature; those actual historical peasants had a hard time because they got dumped on.

What the moment required was the wholesale repudiation of Banana Republicanism. (The moment was 2006 to this election cycle.) Because the GOP itself will regain power. If it regains power while the same lovely Unitary-Executive tools are lying around, things will be even worse next time. The only way to stop that would have been to destroy the structure of the Bush-era GWOT apparatus and its precepts root and branch -- to visit political, professional and legal consequences on its architects.

Which, as Henley points out, the Democrats are bending over backward (and bending us over forward) to not, not, NOT, under any circumstances, do, at least in the way that really matters (Henley: "political consequences only exist if the offending party loses on the offending issue").

The Democrats have effectively turned "national security" into a political Möbius strip. The Busheviks established the "we have always been at war with Eurasia (and Magna Carta)" starting point. It was Democratic compromise and complicity which cut the political surface, put a half-twist on it, and re-glued it such that both major partisan paths lead back to that point.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07/11/08
POC Thomas L. Knapp
admin@tomknappforcongress.com
314-750-6993


LIBERTARIAN TO RUN CARBON-NEUTRAL CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN

St. Louis - Voters normally expect a certain amount of hot air from politicians, but Libertarian congressional candidate Thomas L. Knapp announced this morning that he intends to cool things down by running a "carbon-neutral" campaign.

"It's just the right thing to do," says Knapp, 41, of Greendale. "Every politician I see out on the stump has big plans for addressing climate change ... but those plans never seem to include leading by example. I want to look back in November and know that I was part of the solution rather than part of the problem."

Knapp arrived at his campaign's estimated carbon footprint by running projected travel mileage and electricity use through several online footprint calculators. "Then," he says, "I added a fudge factor to account for things like printing and shipping of campaign materials." He purchased a six ton Verified Emissions Offset credit for about $40 from a firm which in turn invests in emissions-reducing projects such as generation of electricity from landfill gas in Illinois. He plans to revisit his calculations in October and purchase additional offsets if necessary to maintain carbon neutrality.

"Libertarians believe that the market provides the most efficient avenue for addressing problems like pollution and climate change," says Knapp. "We also believe that Americans are, in general, responsible individuals who will do the right thing when they can. I switched to energy-saving CFL lightbulbs and a gasless 'reel' lawnmower without anyone in government forcing me to." His campaign platform includes ending corporate welfare that subsidizes polluting industries, and leaving far more money in taxpayers' pockets, where he predicts that it will combat climate change more effectively than it would in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

Knapp is unopposed in his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's nomination in Missouri's 2nd US House district. He'll face off with incumbent Republican Todd Akin of Chesterfield and an as-yet unchosen Democratic nominee, in November. The Libertarian Party, founded in 1972, is America's third largest political party and has been an established party in Missouri since 1992. Their 2008 slate includes candidates for statewide office as well as congressional, state legislative and local seats.

-30-
about 355 words

CAMPAIGN WEB SITE:
http://www.tomknappforcongress.com

Org theory project

Here's what I've been promising a lot of people for a long time: a new version of
Chapter Fourteen: Decentralized Production Technology.
Introduction: Basic Goals and Values
A. Multiple Purpose Production Technology
B. The Transition to Decentralized Manufacturing
C. Desktop Manufacturing Technology
D. Polytechnic
E. Eotechnic, Paleotechnic, and Neotechnic
F. Decentralized Agriculture
G. A Soft Development Path

It's been something over a year since I put the last version of this chapter online, making it by far the most out of date of all my online chapter drafts. This version is about 50% longer than the old one, and the new material includes--among other things--a nice little section on desktop manufacturing technology.

... and some people still haven't made up their minds yet. What are they waiting for, double coupon day or something?




... but seriously, this is the portion of the electorate that's ripe for third party picking. People who haven't picked a candidate after two years of balls-out campaigning obviously aren't thrilled with what the big guys are offering them.

Last December, The Creator Susan Hogarth bestowed upon me a dandy gift: A ShuttleX PC with brushed aluminum casing, 1.4GHz Athlon processor, 256K (more or less) RAM, etc. For whatever reason, she didn't need it any more and it was (and is) more than robust enough for my needs. I remain intensely grateful.

Unfortunately, the old Linux distro on it was broken and I couldn't get any of the ones I tried to install to play nice with my ISP, even after some standup help detecting the modem, etc..

So, I've spent the last six-odd months in Windoze XP hell -- I do most of what I do on the 'net, so there was just no reason to muck around in a non-connected Linux installation. It's amazing how quickly one becomes inured to the horrors of Micro$haft's plug'n'pray "operating" systems. I had forgotten how easy, even fun, working on a desktop PC could be.

Anyway, the other day, I switched ISPs, and my first thought was "I wonder ..."

Yep! I'm posting this via Firefox (2.0.0.6 -- gotta upgrade ASAP), running in KDE under OpenSuse 10.3. I'll be moving all my work stuff over to this partition ASAP.

Quick review: As I'm becoming accustomed to with the newer Linux distros, OpenSuse installs easily and runs, so far as I can tell, flawlessly (goodbye, BSOD!). It's fast, it's friendly ... it's home.

I downloaded and installed a couple of games just so I could report to you on ease of use -- and I'm happy to report that OpenSuse's download and installation scheme is fantastic. It's easy to locate, access and get software from numerous repositories in a manner that I've previously associated with more overtly proprietary distros like Xandros.

Not to be overly evangelistic, but if you're still futzing with Windoze, do yourself a favor and make the move to Linux. The time is now. Any good Linux distribution is available on CD or DVD for a tiny fraction of the price of the latest Redmond Wreck. It will be easier to install than any version of Windoze since at least 98 and probably 95. It will come bundled with software for everyday computing -- word processing, web surfing, etc. -- that's as good or better than what you're used to using. You'll be amazed at how much easier life becomes with Linux.

Which parts of "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed," and "that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument," do they not get?

Anyone willingly involved in the Busheviks' illegal wiretapping program is a criminal. That means you, George W. Bush -- and it means you, telecom company officials who caved to illegitimate authority instead of standing up for your customers' rights. Try as you might to cover up your filth like a cat in a litter box, you're entitled to no reasonable expectation it will stay covered.

You can run, but you can't hide. Big Reckoning soon come. Write it down.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
07/09/08
POC Thomas L. Knapp
media@bostontea.us
314-750-6993


BOSTON TEA PARTY ADDS AFFILIATES, ENDORSES CANDIDATES


CYBERSPACE -- The Boston Tea Party, America's new libertarian political alternative, is on the move. Since the beginning of June, the Internet-based political party has nominated a presidential ticket, chartered affiliate parties in eight states, and is now in the process of endorsing candidates in states where it lacks its own down-ticket ballot access.

The party's first slate of candidate endorsements includes Phil Rhodes for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina and Morey Straus for State Representative in New Hampshire. Both candidates are running on the Libertarian Party's ballot line in their states.

Also endorsed is the party's only sitting elected public official, Jim Y. Casarjian-Perry. Casarjian-Perry, a Town Meeting Representative in Billerica, Massachusetts, is seeking election to the town's planning board.

"As a new party, we have our hands full seeking ballot access for the presidential ticket and building active organizations in the states this year," says Boston Tea Party chair Jim Davidson of Lawrence, Kansas. "Endorsing qualified independents and candidates of other parties is a win-win proposition -- it helps us build the party and it hopefully helps those candidates gain additional support for their efforts."

The party's national committee expects to endorse additional candidates between now and the November general election. The party requires candidates seeking its endorsement to certify that they support the party's one-sentence platform: "The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose."

The party's presidential candidate, Charles Jay of Florida, will appear on the November ballot in Colorado. The party expects to achieve ballot access in several additional states. It has recently chartered affiliate organizations in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas.

-30-
about 300 words


BOSTON TEA PARTY WEB SITE
http://www.bostontea.us

JIM Y. CASARJIAN PERRY FOR BILLERICA PLANNING BOARD
http://casarjianperry.com

MOREY STRAUS FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE REPRESENTATIVE
http://vote.stra.us

PHIL RHODES FOR NORTH CAROLINA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
http://www.philrhodes2008.com

"100 million insecticide-treated nets?" How about 100 trucks rigged out with DDT spraying equipment instead? It would be cheaper, more effective, and require fewer people to queue up in lines, bow and scrape before bureaucrats ... oh, wait, I see why now. As you were.

Even as government projects go, the shuttle program always struck me as a costly and dangerous digression. Pursuing it pushed manned flights to points beyond earth orbit back by more than three decades, blocking humanity's reach for the stars ... or at least for Mars.

Now with the shuttle program coming to an end and a projected four-year gap (that's a government projection, so count on the gap to widen) between the shuttle and Orion, perhaps the private sector will have enough maneuvering room to make progress toward visions like this one.

At least I hope so. My goal is to die -- and, more to the point, live -- on some other rock some day.

Yes, the general election is still a long way off ... which is why attempting to predict outcomes is so much fun. Besides, I'm feeling my oats, having predicted McCain's nomination eight months out when virtually everyone except me, and maybe McCain himself, thought he was done. I may revise these predictions, but I won't memory-hole anything.

Popular Vote

Based on a guesstimated 120-million vote turnout, with a fudge factor of a little less than 1/10th of 1%:

Barack Obama (D) -- 54%(63.6 million)
John McCain (R) -- 44.5% (52.8 million)
Bob Barr (L) -- 0.6% (720k)
Cynthia McKinney (G) -- 0.5% (600k)
Ralph Nader (I) -- 0.3% (400k)
Charles Baldwin (C) -- ~0.15% (200k)
Charles Jay (BTP) -- ~0.03% (25-50k)

Electoral College

Obama -- 333 electoral votes
McCain -- 205 electoral votes

Yes, I know the map below looks like hell -- I'm not an artist, I just filled in colors in a public domain image by Wikipedia author Scott5114.

Dark blue represents states won by Obama. Light blue represents "Barrbama" states -- states Obama picks up because Bob Barr takes McCain down. Red represents states won by McCain.



Final answer? No. Like I said, I may revise as things develop. You'll know I've frozen my predictions when I'm willing to bet on them. On the one hand, I still have this nagging hunch that McCain will find a way to pull it off -- but that hunch conflicts with my state-specific hunches that Obama will find a way to put Florida and Missouri in play.

"Former Georgia congressman and Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr tells Newsmax correspondent Ashley Martella why he's running for president. Hear his views on John McCain and why he dismisses criticism that he could be the spoiler in the presidential sweepstakes. He explains his reasons for turning against the Patriot Act after having voted for it while in the House of Representatives."

So much for all the quacking about "freedom" and "sovereignty" and "free elections" -- the Busheviks put Nouri al-Maliki on notice that US troops will continue to occupy Iraq for as long as neoconservative cadre continues to infest the US political establishment.

Short version:

I'm going to be including embedded news and commentary (fed from Voxant, at least initially -- I'm looking at other providers as well) in this blog's content stream (at least temporarily).

Long version:

- I occasionally link to interesting news stories from KN@PPSTER anyway. Monetizing that linkage will give me an incentive to do so more often (and therefore to blog more frequently). I'll probably comment on most of the stories above the embeds.

- I publish and co-edit "the freedom movement's daily newspaper" -- five days a week of political news and commentary of likely interest to libertarians, blurbed and linked. A lot of that stuff comes from the "regular" wire services ... and this embedding scheme lets me turn a dime per thousand views by linking to that stuff at one of my own sites instead of someone else's.

- I may go ahead and set up a different scheme later, where a master page (to be hosted at knappster.ws) links out to the blog and the news/commentary embeds separately. I want to get the hang of this first.

Offhand, I expect to probably do a maximum of five stories per day -- but I'm definitely winging it here. So: Introducing the KN@PPSTER Wire Service

"Certainly, [US Representative Todd Akin, R-MO] seems as safe as any Republican can be in an otherwise bleak atmosphere for the GOP," writes Deirdre Shesgreen in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "The 2nd Congressional District includes the high-income, reliably Republican suburbs .... Akin won the seat in 2000, squeaking through a five-way GOP primary by 56 votes and then winning easily in the general election. He has coasted to re-election ever since."

Appearances can be deceiving. Todd Akin's seat isn't nearly as "safe" at it looks.

Over the last three elections, Akin's poll performance has declined from 67.1% to 61.3% ... versus Democratic opponents who each spent less than the $5,000 FEC reporting threshold, and with third party numbers topping out at 2.1%.

Todd Akin has been losing ground versus moneyless Democrats and "paper" third party candidates for six years. So, what does 2008 look like?

As of the end of the first quarter of 2008, Democratic primary candidate Byron DeLear reported $116,000 cash on hand (most of it from his own pocket); Democrat David L. Pentland reported $65,000 on hand, most of it raised from contributors.

The Democratic "base" in the suburban St. Louis metro area is in a growth pattern, probably pushing 40%; the GOP "base" is in decline and almost certainly no longer constitutes a majority in the district; and nationwide polling says that non-"base" voters are looking hard at third party alternatives.

I've been brutally honest with my supporters, and here's my honest opinion:

No, Missouri's 2nd District won't elect a Libertarian to Congress this year. Nor will any other US House District in the nation do so.

However, a strong Libertarian campaign in my district can make a difference.

With your help, I can turn the district into a battleground.

With your support, I can force Todd Akin out for a fight. I can make him keep his money here instead of spreading it around to threatened fellow Republicans elsewhere.

Together, we can put pressure on the resurgent Democrats -- not just the candidate in this district, but the incumbents in Washington -- to live up to their rhetoric on issues like the war in Iraq and civil liberties at home. We can make them earn any seats they gain.

There's even a real possibility that we can be the "balance of power" in this district and send an incumbent home. If the election result is DeLear or Pentland 46%, Akin 44%, Knapp 10%, the story won't be that the Democrat won -- it will be that Libertarian voters made the difference.

There are voters in the district who don't want to vote for a pro-war, anti-freedom Republican ... but who won't vote for a Democrat either. We can reach those voters. We can represent those voters. We can empower those voters.

But it's going to take a little money.

I've already ordered the campaign's first batch of postcards/doorhangers. They'll be here in a few days, and will be mailed and distributed between now and the August 5th primary.

This is a critical point for the campaign. The first step is at least doubling, and hopefully quadrupling, participation in the Libertarian primary. The next step is doing the same thing in the general election. The second step will be a lot easier if the first step gets taken.

I need to have yard signs available for constituents who respond to the postcard drive. I need to have signs in front of polling places on primary day. But the money isn't there to buy them without draining the campaign bank account. I need to raise at least $500 in the next week to make this first big step happen and still be positioned to take the second step as well.

If you're looking for a time and place to make a difference, you've found it. Please point your web browser at:

http://www.tomknappforcongress.com/contribute

... and make your best contribution today.

Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Libertarian for US House of Representatives
Missouri, 2nd District

Paid for by Thomas L. Knapp for Congress -- Paula Benski, Treasurer. Approved by the candidate.