 Well, welcome to today's session on alternatives to capitalist structures. I don't know how this ended up on the topics list, honestly. I didn't put it there, but I was delighted to see it. There's so many directions that we can go with this, pretty much infinite. And initially, I was thinking like, well, what are some, like, should we start with, you know, various other forms of government and governance? And realized I wanted to drill into the section of like, how do you get to a state of transition between the kind of world that we're in now towards a different kind of world and a different kind of governing structure? And hopefully some of the readings spoke to that. I know we had a lot of different readings, but not so many pages per reading. And so I was trying to look at different visions of what not only what a future could be, but also what a transition state would be. So there's essentially infinite things that we can go into here. Oh, and is there somebody who is excited about taking notes? I actually think I am because I am behind in the readings. So I would love to take a back seat and take some notes and practice. Thanks, Brenna. That'd be great. I think I want to open on the question of how do we, given that we can go in so many different directions and feel free to like draw from the themes if you're lost for ideas. But what are ways that alternatives to capitalist structures or any of these readings feel connected to stuff that we actively work on? I think there are sort of two pieces that have always felt connected to me around sort of like this material and Ed Shee's work. And I'll just say thank you for playing, I think, figuring out a right slice of like just enough to understand, but like not too much to get bogged down. I think it was like a great presentation of a lot of different things. But so the first one that comes to mind is this idea of like, I guess, I think in Federici and like J.K. Gibson-Grammes, where it kind of like reopening up space for possibilities. So I think Federici kind of frames her work as this sort of like historical imagination or like she focuses really carefully on that transition period to capitalism and to try and understand why maybe it wasn't inevitable and there are other routes. And I think J.K. Gibson-Grammes sort of do similar work about this concept of economy. So anyway, this is like a thing that I think Edgy does too is sort of like takes the familiar and kind of like thinks about how we got here to help think about ways to go somewhere else. And maybe I'll just say the one for now, because I could ramble too much. Is it you or I, Rob? Or are you speaking? I can go. I was similar to Don. I was really interested, fascinated by the variety of readings and also the one that struck sort of what I do a lot of was the one about capitalist economies and kind of like how work was sort of worked out and the history of that and how it has sort of developed over time and this idea of kind of like market economies and things that are it's laid out a specific way in the market and also laid out differently in other economics and other like functions of that that are equal or more unequal. And I work a lot in an industry that your reputation sometimes matters or who you know helps to kind of define and get work. And so it was interesting to kind of read a lot of these things where you know the idea of like work is different in these different societies organizations and we're stepping away from that kind of process. I can also go is I think that one of the things that we Well, I told Don earlier. I spent a bunch of today working on turning our civics discussion into a blog post and so I've been thinking about this a lot and it feels like one of the reasons why people don't participate or engage more as citizens and as as people who like define or question systems or otherwise participate is it feels like especially in the United States the way to be a good citizen is to do work and drive the GDP and it's it's this very it's this it's this all consuming drive that appears to be individualistic that drives powers that we don't understand. It's not even really individualistic right like you're you're you're working towards a goal. It's just not a goal that you necessarily understand or agree with and then at the end of the day you're too tired to do anything else. And so for me this is a really interesting topic because I I'm very interested to see what it looks like to have you know even Federici's idea of wages for housework like different versions of a life that you might care about living compensated in some way by the system or like if not financially I mean ideally you would need to be financially compensated for things that are important to do you'd need to be in a system that appreciates them instead. I thought that I I wanted you all to read Cori doctors walk away novel in its entirety if you had the chance but it has a lot of that feeling of people participating in a system and then this idea that if you just leave maybe we already have abundance. Yeah that was a really interesting excerpt and I definitely want to read that book because of that idea of just like it's definitely walk away or it's definitely walking out in society but it was like with the purpose kind of which was interesting to read about and I was also thinking reading that like other societies like I've been watching this there's this TV show called The Orval which is like this Star Trek takeoff thing and they don't have this idea of money you have this idea of like your kind of your value in society is sort of like your merit and it's partially because they can like mass produce everything so material stuff has gotten away but it's also interesting to think about that there's no like monetary value in society kind of like you're leaving that behind. Yeah I guess I thought it was interesting walk away that it was the ethic was more walking away ultimately from like the idea of possessing things and so that was only a physical act in so far as if somebody wants to possess something and you can also be there but otherwise it was really a metaphorical walking away and it was walking specifically from possession and ownership. Dawn you are next I have a loss for me sorry. Yeah maybe I'll say first something about walk away. I have read the whole book a while ago and I think it I think in the expert excerpt there's I just skimmed it I didn't reread it it looks like it it starts to figure out some of the mechanics of like how post scarcity like might operate which I think is like a really interesting thing to explore. So like in this idea of like yeah remapping possessions you don't have possessions or or things that you carry with you for a while or maybe or maybe also things that you're okay with if they disappear but then is there this confrontation between the guy who wants to gamify everything and then I think I don't I've never said that that well and and sort of that idea like I think it actually this question about like in a world about possessions like I think so that more is like what are these forms of social cohesion like she's like there's almost like a way that her system of doing work or that side of it as opposed to gamified one is really predicated on like re centering toward like relationships between people having to be very like deep and that that that provides the space to do that kind of work which I think is so interesting and the idea of like what we think decentralized technologies are doing and in particular maybe in relation to trust or this is my always like my wondering about blockchain stuff maybe but I actually had a thought that was a step back and maybe this is just a set up for something I'd like to ask y'all for a later. So I mean it felt like there was two bits or kind of two genres or groups of writing and the first one like in that walk away vein is also Peter Frazy and I'm not actually sure if I'm saying right the kind of four features and yeah I'm just curious what people thought about the different features or or like or maybe drawing on other ones they found in sci-fi that like are dealing with some of these things and then sort of this other the other kind of like genre or whatever is kind of like trying to think about structures right now that kind of speak to wanting there to be alternatives and then I'm super curious in there what people think about sort of these ones that are much more like kind of pragmatic or like transition oriented versus these ones that are much more like transformational so kind of like these like more incremental versus more radical ideas around how to get from here to a different future and something I'm super stuck on so that's like a later question but maybe as the first question yeah I'm super curious about people's thoughts on the other alternatives that were put forward in the Frazy one or even just to see more about like the world that is walk away and did you Vant sure yeah I again I haven't done the readings in the four but I do have an opinion on pragmatic small change versus revolution and I'm generally sort of naively of the school thought that sort of more incremental change is definitely the category that I fall into more mainly because I worry too much about the implications of dramatic upheaval particularly and I think that's one of the interesting things to sort of like keep in mind here when we're talking about like alternatives to capitalist structures like it's a phrase that it's such a big thing right like capitalism underpins everything and I think it's such a these kind of conversations have like sort of two they can fall into one of two buckets right you just like the wild the amount of it and go like you know completely different direction or you can sort of take it with this like oh my gosh we're talking about reshaping society like and immediately have this very I feel it has a very paralytic effect for it's like oh my gosh like I don't who am I to be sort of thinking on this on this level or who are we yeah and so that I then that tends to scare me very quickly into the small change but I think that the older you get the more you realize that like all actions including no action is a massive kind of risk and so that's just like maybe there really isn't a distinction between really really really big shifts and small shifts they're just yeah I don't know maybe it's possible to I'll stop there that was very very often awaits I love that it actually ties really directly to a piece that I pulled out of Adrian Murray Brown's emergent strategy in the part on creating more possibilities she she has this idea of working towards small changes versus the idea that you can't always work towards a small change sometimes you have to change everything and I think that's I mean I was trying to explain in a living room conversation with my parents like the Green New Deal and they were like why are they taking on like jobs and why why the whole climate change like why zero for permissions and I was just like because I wouldn't be excited about it and neither would anybody else if it was anything less than everything and like is it right is it going to solve things like is it going to do justice to the ideals probably not but at least it changes everything. Yeah Don. Yeah okay so I just want to say one thing when you when you said like because it because it changes everything I just immediately thought of the international noise conspiracy and they have a song called it's a small demand which should be our theme song for this episode because I think the like chorus is like all we wanted was everything we ever needed was everyone. It's just a small demand so anyway that as an aside I'll pick it up and drop it in the chat. Maybe just responding also there's like this whole idea of just transition and that was the original language that was used in Canada to talk about I guess our equivalent of a Green New Deal but with the popular Green New Deal they're talking about it now in Canada as well and yeah I mean I think this that even the scale of what needs to change is part of what makes me think it gives me pause about incrementalism I guess and so I'll say as an example in this context of like say just transition in Canada you know like an incremental model means like we're going to spend decades researching clean coal and give provinces option to do that rather than stop you having coal plants and also that also is the model that allows like the federal government to buy a pipeline because it will be better run you know like there's these ways that incremental kind of keeps you on a track and or it seems like that has played out at sort of like a policy government level and so I think people who position themselves against that like will point to that as not being enough or that like there's these ways that these these things need to be addressed to maybe at their intersection with another whole set of issues and it can be hard to do that if those issues have not been historically linked so by forcing a conversation about jobs and like climate and like I think that actually it that that offers something new that might not come out otherwise than if they were sort of pursued as slightly distinct policy tracks or something. Yeah, and I I'll just say that. Yeah, Brenda. Yeah, I can't I can't agree more and I can't be more terrified at the same time. It's it's it's a both and to me like I and I really love that that approach like because I totally agree. Like there are so many things that are just such wicked problems that like I just finished a conversation the other day. I apologize for bringing up work but like someone at someone is some other project is building like get for data and someone was like why why you know how are you different from this get for data thing I was like well you have to go back and you have to redo the whole thing because there's there are problems that are tragically connected that you you have to do it all at once and I think about like for since we're talking about the Green New Deal like talking about the New Deal the original New Deal like you have to there are many types that there's there are many categories of problems for which the only justifiable or like the best course of action is to break a whole bunch of things and like sort of start over and that's and maybe not start over but like I think there's a real question nowadays about how do we how do we engage with that practically because because of like I mean particularly in the US given the political spectrum and it's sort of like very entrance sort of side of things but we could also look at that from the technological perspective given like yeah there's a million ways to take that up gosh I'm too often the reason this conversation. Yeah actually wanted to bring this back around toward Don's question originally about the four futures and I'm going to like read them out just to recenter it's essentially he took a he didn't actually draw this diagram which would have been super helpful for quadrants right and you've got scarcity abundance egalitarianism and hierarchy so he named those quadrants for egalitarianism and abundance would be communism hierarchy and abundance is rentism which I'm going to come back to scrolling egalitarianism and scarcity would be socialism which like I don't know I think I need a better personal definition of socialism and hierarchy and scarcity as extremism which read to me as well intentional 1% 99% tech divide. But coming back to rentism and and this this pops up in my mind as really connected to the changing everything problem. Don pointed me to a book which I didn't put on the reading list called New York 2140 which is if you if you ever read read Mars and it's the same author who does extremely well researched science fiction. And New York 2140 is a book that eventually gets around to the idea of needing to stop having well coming back to actually the readings definition of rentism essentially was this concept of IP so you can make stuff and it can be shared and the ideas can go out to the cloud and such but in order to make sure that the person who invented the thing gets appropriately compensated within the system. You have to add in this idea that anytime the thing is used the person gets paid which seems like it's a good thing that rewards artists creatives inventors except for when you get down to it then it sort of creates this weird classism. Hey Kevin welcome. Did anyone else have an have a like looking at this rentism piece and the idea of a by P as rentism did anyone have a reaction to that? Yeah, Brendan. Okay again. I'm sorry. I haven't read it. But the book that I have most read that most closely speaks to this is Jerry Laney's who owns the future which gets to proposes a theory of how to do sort of like owner author attribution basically added at scale and he sort of like gets this notion of like yeah we need basically says we need two way links in a way to say when I make a thing everything that uses my thing can link to it and from it and we need to retire for the internet to accommodate attribution at a at a comical level. And he thinks that like every time you have a thought or somebody if you're if you're one piece of DNA that you contributed would you know if it leads to a genetic revolution there are some new drug then you would be wildly compensated for that because you own that thing. I'm really not a fan. The more I think about it the more I think it's just I don't know personally like my relationship to like making things doesn't like I don't do things for the sense of ownership and I think that if we really get down to the reason that we make stuff and the reason that we exist is like is some attempts to connect with each other on like a more on a more emotional plane personally but and so like I don't I just think building economies around that is overly convoluted down to do something. Sure. Yeah. I'll sort of just respond to my initial oppression impression reading like I have no words impression reading before futures and also so I skin this article but I read the book so I might have a slightly different version of it a little while ago. It's really it's very short. I kind of saw it as like this walk of like plausibility which was like personally extreme exterminism that like we don't figure out like equitable arrangements of resources and we in no way address power and hierarchy as like our most likely future in terms of like if we stay online like if you stay on like the current track we're on I see it see it happening and there was sort of this like plausibility walk it felt like to me through like do we do we somehow like get to the socialism which is the like we still there's still scarcity but but then maybe we have these more egalitarian sort of like forms of society and that that and the rentierism like both feel like in this space of like next next possible outcomes like because it like you know it's just like it's you know attenuating down one axis versus the other or like change really only addressing one I would say right now just being like you know reading a lot of stuff that's come out in the last while that are kind of like it was like that moment where the economist called themselves neoliberal and I was like a moment has arrived here in this era where you have like taken up this term which was used to critique you it's like you've acknowledged the thing that you've been called by academics for decades or academics and I and there's been that as well as like a I think kind of like a acknowledgement around labor but I think that it's acknowledging it that in a way that is not bringing us towards a better world like so there's like you know people saying like maybe we need to transition to like a nine hour work week and and that will like address like like some people say it'll like dress climate things and like you see these think tanks who also talk about it as being tied to like maintaining economic growth but like making space for automation like there's just this way that people are talking about changing work in society who are like the type of people who are I would say pretty much in have no interest in like redistributing power and I think that like pushes us towards this like rentier style future and that there are these like types of like it does feel like it takes off of some very recent patterns it reminds me Gibson's newest book I can't remember any of it which I guess is becoming a new trilogy also has this idea where it sort of it thinks about like kind of like a everyone gets 3D printers and they become a place where you can go and like pay someone to print off a design for you which by the way there is a platform that currently does that work of like trying to connect on-demand production that's like you know hi yeah the peripheral it's like hyper like piece meal I don't want to spoil the peripheral if I want to read it so this is all I will say about it but it's a good read and I love William Gibson but yeah I don't know so I feel like I am torn but thinking we actually have a better through line to rent rent here or like the rentier capitalism which I think is mark what's the marks call it had a this model of rent your capitalism which is playing on and I I have a soft spot for full bone luxury communism but I find that like really hard to imagine which is I think he means like a specific type of communism and a specific type of socialism which is whatever no I think rent here is I just think it's likely I don't think it's good Rob I feel like you've been making skeptical face through a lot of things do you have anything you wanted to address even if it's from a previous part of the conversation a lot of skeptical phase but I will I will confine my comments to the to the poor futures thing for now which is I didn't feel like I got a lot out of it and maybe that's because I am unimaginative but basically I've had that book I didn't even know there was like a shortened article one but I have no interest in reading the book now after reading that because for me the entire like the framing of like looking at the four corners of how things could go with some given assumptions is super useful and valuable but I I personally have never been particularly grabbed or convinced by and like maybe this is just being unimaginative but particularly convinced by what feels like the major modern like techno philosophical argument that everything ultimately reduces to intellectual property in that that piece it felt like was entirely framed around that and like I that just never has like quite group with me and so I felt like a lot of the core framing of that piece was just like for me so so if not IP Rob is there something that you feel like can you put your finger on something that you think is missing now I don't I don't have a particular other argument either just that it doesn't it doesn't seem clear to me that really you can just reduce everything to the blueprint for a thing and and then everything else is ultimately just the blueprint for a thing and there's nothing worth possessing other so I I shocked myself by putting zero universal basic income readings on this reading list though I can recommend the actually the one I would call out is raising the floor by Andy Stern which is written by a labor organizer who like has this revelation that the robots really are going to take the jobs and what do we want to happen it's really interesting he he explores a lot of the different ways that people are looking at changing work including the reduced our work week including like making jobs and he lands on universal basic income as like the correct way to go whether or not you dispute his arguments for it but personally I think that that's a very like UBI in general is a very interesting concept because I think I don't know if it falls into one of these defined futures very well I guess the first one yeah Don go ahead actually this is like going to be my question to you I and I would say my my my response would be I don't think it does because I actually think UBI is kind of like a tool so it's more like a mechanism than it is an outcome and and this actually is a thing that comes up in like people who think more from like a transition litter like space versus transformation like you know transition town movement just transitions there is like an occupant like an attention to like the mechanisms and yeah so my my thought or response to you is like maybe it's not it doesn't necessarily lead lead to one of the other and then my ask back to you is like does it seem like there's some tension in the different motivations going into who promotes UBI because it I think that the varying places that come people promote it from is like very interesting so you're talking about a labor organizer being one I mean I think the other model is like you know like the capitalists the Peter feels of the world. No it's super interesting right because you have people who see UBI as a way to not have any kind of other safety net and that is generally touted as the main way to get the funding for it. A another thing that's interesting. I went and saw a rally for Andrew Yang who's running for president and he's running on a UBI platform and one of the things that he said in his speech was look Trump got elected because he identified the problems correctly. But if we could figure out a system where people whose jobs have been taken away like no longer are in such pain because of that or have some kind of room to make a transition or shift or something maybe that solves that problem and and moves that voter base just a pretty interesting take although he's only looking at $1,000 a month which is not like an income. I I also saw something really interesting when I was first looking into UBI there's a reporter and I forget his name maybe one of you will know it who is funded on Patreon to write about UBI and one of his things is that he is funded up to a specific level and then he says well that's the metric that I'm fighting for and so once I hit that then I'll put all of the overage into other people's UBI patreons and what I loved about that was that he had this very specific like and that will be enough. Um, which is so counter to the capitalist structure, right? Like in in classic capitalism and in like, you know, invisible hand type of stuff like you're supposed to go keep going for whatever you can get you're supposed to like raise yourself up as high as you can possibly go and then like seeing that patreon was like huh this guy says that's enough for him or if you look at like Adrian Murray Brown stuff like this idea of kind of leaning back on people or any of this like acknowledging the idea that you might already be in abundance and then sort of letting go creates this space that didn't exist. Brandon? Yeah, I find this so interesting because like I hang around way more capitalist than most of you and I see UBI is this massive extension of capitalism like to me it's just like I really deeply agree with Don's assessment that like it's a mechanism and it's a really like if you look at growth based capitalism when you run out of or consumption based capitalism, when you run out of people who can spend money you run into real problems and so one of the best ways you can sort of like keep things going is just give the people money so that they can spend on your stuff and you can keep the growth curve going at the rate that it needs to and to me it's like that's where I'm like I'm so I'm like in no way surprised that Peter till ends up in the on the UBI spectrum because it's like we're running out of people who can buy our stuff. We need we need more people to buy our stuff. So let's make the government pay for the people to buy our stuff and it's just like and I think that Kelsey you says something really interesting there which is like there's that relates back to Don's question. I think of like we need to sort of ask whether the framing is large enough and this question of like what is enough and like I think we have we have that is a cultural definition right this this cultural definition of of ascertaining greatness by some means I think if you if we're all competing for money or if we're all competing for better cars like it doesn't really matter right like the status symbol is is is there and it's sort of ingrained in our culture and I think that's where we have like a really that I think that's an intrinsic problem that like UBI has very little to say about. I'm not anti-UBI because I honestly think that you can do it the right way but I think it's a lot easier to have a conversation about taxes and just like and that's what to me the Green New Deal is really interesting because like you could just tax a lot more and now all of a sudden it's a lot easier to sort of put a damper on the people who are out running the economy. But yeah, I think it's really interesting how like we can talk about alternatives to capitalist structures but we can also talk about alternatives to the present capitalist structure which is just like wildly why like we have we've gotten off off track from like there's the current in our incarnation that could definitely be questioned and I can feel myself slipping into that incrementalist framing again. So maybe I should Rod. I mean this is also incrementalist but like I I was thinking about that renting IP thing and the idea that like the rights expire for intellectual property after a certain point of time. What if it was after a certain point of money like there's a lot of different ways that make things not a subscription service. If you just pick a different framing. I just there's not really any incentive to do that. What do you mean about certain money like this is like I'm thinking about K Dick wrote that short. It's so great. Is it UVic where it's like you have to the guy has to pay to like get out of his door. So it's like it's like everything has been turned into a single microtransaction. It's like such a it is I mean you know how big is uneven but it's such a great can see is that what you mean or no I don't know what run out of money. Oh no what I meant was like as the designer of a thing maybe your intellectual property rights expire once you hit like you know 10 million would that be enough something like that. Can so my I can I say back sorry I just jumped in. I said it in the chat about why I think maybe rentism is is like happening or going to happen. Like I just think we're actually now in this like decades like deep my asthma of like in internal so in truck country legal structures and then international regulatory regimes that are actually predicated on respecting what ends up being multinational corporations intellectual property over even the like legal rights and like self determination and sovereignty of people in those countries and that started to play out around like environmental issues but but increasingly others and I think things were clunky for a while in the like early odds around DMCA stuff but like they're getting really good at it and a lot of the like takedowns and like automated like there's just enforcement mechanisms in like a digitally mediated space that are also getting very good. So I just see a convergence of those and I think to change that direction is like is a major dismantlement like that is like that's radical. I don't I mean and so maybe I I am slightly unsure about and also you know I've like reinforced this so I should just like check myself. I think that there is not a binary that you have to be either or and I think there are people who do different framings that think about this like even donella metals on leverage points waste intervening the system or even most people who maybe want radical change would like still do the incremental things anyway right like I don't I don't think it's like you can only be one or the other but I think that things are so complex and interwoven. It's very hard for me to imagine even like what the small steps in isolation would be that would have enough impact. One thing that I wanted to make sure that we talked about and this might be a bit of a transition. But the idea of money as a thing that can be converted into anything else. And for me I think that's one of the foundational tenants of our system is like you can logic it out to a certain extent where things that are valued you should be rewarded for and you should be rewarded for them in ways that don't control you like the barter system isn't just inconvenient it's like very limiting right. So having money as this thing that exists and is convertible into any other kind of money or any other kind of good makes sense in a lot of ways but also creates these totally absurd I mean like for example if I go to Southeast Asia I'm suddenly very much richer than I am at home or or even the absurdity of like buying a really nice dinner versus buying an airplane ticket versus buying a like things that really do not convert to one another can suddenly be compared in a really quantitative way. I guess I was thinking about this partly in terms of when I hosted our first decentralized Web Meetup here in Seattle some of the people who showed up were working on Filecoin and the whole idea was to incentivize decentralized file storage by rewarding you in coin. But it's funny because the decentralized Web is this like forming thing and I'm I have this worry that starting with incentives is maybe the wrong thing. Yeah and like it's I find it's so interesting how some of these conversations collide like deep if you go deep into the Filecoin GitHub repo there's an issue posted somewhere about hey we should should create this new feature that allows you to use IPFS but then pay in Filecoin to speed up your your access to files and my brain just goes to your healthcare system like we're in Canada we've talked about this notion of like oh I can just pay for their access to healthcare and like this the implications of and like that debate is no way settled but they're just these dramatic implications of like now you have an incentive system that has to flow through a specific form of transaction and I love the way Kelsey you're sort of like contrasting that with barter systems which seem more limited but also have a more broad definition of exchange which I find like the definition of an alternative to a capitalist structure so I'm all for it. Yeah maybe I'll I'll just say well I don't I mean I think that I think that money is not always an incentive. I mean maybe I think that you're Kelsey you kind of brought up to two points there and so the first point I was responding to is that I think there's actually been a ton of work kind of like pushing back on on kind of this like idea of like like on some of the work that money does when it moves in a market and so like this like classical liberal formulation is this of on me sees like Hayek but I think Weber is like involved in it the why money is good is because prices are one of the most efficient ways to communicate information in a market model which is part of what I was responding to in that like I actually don't know if I agree with that and also it was sort of used as a way to take down like more forms of planning which or like sort of like a more socialist model and I think that's also like a different that came out of a different era and I think we should not let that drive the conversation now. But yeah I mean the idea of like in incentivization it is so tied to it. I mean I guess this is the like my my I mean I think this is a point where like you acknowledge the importance of like that flexibility in some ways but then think about at a structural level like kind of like what other levers there are or what levers are you're working with when you are kind of like needing everything to go back to a currency. So I'm very unsure about the like market mechanic model that it feels like a lot of technology projects are like kind of starting with because I don't know if markets do all the kinds of are that are like I don't know if markets are the white way to address all of these problems and like my gut check and I like totally admit this is a bias is like that they're probably not for most of them. Yeah anyway. We have some folks on my call who've been quiet. Do you have any anything you'd like to add? I guess sort of responding to Don's thing about markets and money and I'm with all you guys were like bartering especially when it comes to Internet like what you're talking about Brendan with popcorn seems a lot like net neutrality which is kind of scary in terms of I know in the U.S. now like Comcast and other ISPs can insert ads between you and your service provider and it could easily bleed into like paying for access or that kind of stuff and that's scary in the sense that you're creating pipelines that you pay to kind of play or pay to use it. But in the other sense money is a good incentive for a lot of people at the moment and so I think identifying ways to make that work and in terms of software there's a lot of companies that will do some stuff for open source and then pay the bills by providing support or higher tier access which is sort of like that to tier healthcare but it is a way to like support this kind of market while still like providing stuff for free. Do we have the language to talk about what's wrong with that? That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is a really good question. I was going to say I don't know. I don't think this selection is maybe the right one to do it but some I think people who did try and think about like that question like giving ourselves these languages J.K. Gibson Graham. So they wrote a book before I think they wrote this section just called take back the economy which is actually kind of doing like a redefinition of like what is understood about economy or economic practices. Yeah, so they do have they do talk about this strategy in one of the three strategies in that reading of redefining the economy. And I think that was okay. I think their other one take back our economy was a little bit more practical. So what they did was just like profile all of these examples of ways that people have kind of tried to like make it work in a different way which I think kind of helps like unpack some of the assumptions that like are like understood as like oh this is always a part of what we need when we have a way to support like you know distinct people making their livelihoods at a distance or like you know far away from each other like all the reasons why people are like well of course like money is the best for doing that like of course you want to free market they were like well we're going to try building this example that's not those things to help us like unpack those assumptions. But yeah so maybe it's not maybe part of the tactic is like to build that language together which I think is kind of what those projects do. And I'll say maybe that the Commons article offers something as well. So that was like GEO writing along the seven cooperative principles which were developed in the 1800s and then GEO is this is a work of co-op right but their whole goal is to like catalyze more work of co-ops and GEO is an acronym like it's like such a it's such an overwhelming term. I love the word GEO but it also stands anyway. Yeah that cooperative article is really really interesting and I think part of the reason why it was interesting was a very large co-op and Cambridge just actually failed this year after like 25 years in business and it was probably failed I don't know for a lot of reasons but it seemed like from their frantic emails of trying to get people to shop there that they got squeezed out by Whole Foods that moved into the area and so it was just you know rent was increasing and they were competing with this national chain you know that a lot of people shopped at and had a reputation and so it was interesting to read this article about these cooperative principles that this local institution had and had for a long time in this like urban environment with a lot of people that are passionate about those type of things and seeing it sort of not work on the ground unfortunately due to like markets and economics and that kind of stuff. I think that brings up a really interesting point Evan of like on many levels like the criticism of alternatives to capitalist structures is like well how it has to be better than capitalism and I think you have this like well if it's not better out the gates then it doesn't then it's not truly an alternative which like right like it's it's it's very that that conversation feels very faded right like Whole Foods has this massive massive corporation just juicing money into this into this operation that like you quite literally have no capacity to argue with like you if that co-op you know poured all their resources in like Amazon has every incentive to come in and just add whatever whatever figure that they put in plus some percentage and so like I think that when we talk about alternatives it's a very it could often be a very frustrating framing where it's like very much feels like the electric car versus the combustion engine like it's a Herculean lift to come up with something that performs at the efficiency of the current incumbent process and that that can be really frustrating. Brennan what's the why do you think that startups sometimes succeed where mega lift mega companies fail in the same area? Do you want me to consume the rest of the call? My favorite answer is by exploiting a strength in the area of weakness right by you know obviously I said at the table of the the red hat version of this which was like Microsoft was had a had a lock hold on the operating system and the only thing that that red hat could offer you that Microsoft couldn't offer you was control right and they published every line of source code and so you could change the bug you didn't have to wait for somebody to shift we didn't have to wait for someone at Microsoft to ship a fix and that combined with what I believe is a barter economy is funded by a lot of other people allows you to compete at scale which is really interesting but I think you need that magic combination of some departure a paradigm shift that also maps on to a familiar metaphor which is really really really difficult and why we throw I'm also frustrated by the fact that in our startup world we throw thousands of these companies at these problems and they're mainly as Don made an illusion to these the inherent complexities of these systems you just it's so driven by timing and luck and funding and all these things I just wanted to say it was a really interesting framing that I think it would be probably supported by or that like thinking it that way would be something that I don't think some of these people writing would disagree with what I would ask or like what I would like maybe probe is like it almost seems like like this idea of like you have to be so much better to succeed if you're not capitalist or not. Yeah, like pursuing an alternative. I mean just thinking about like what path dependencies exist right now to support certain types of experimentation like like that ecosystem to allow this like Silicon Valley bubble of like entrepreneurship and failure. It's also like these like these like people who get to fail up into like another company. I would love to be a CEO. I would love to be able to fail that big that many times and keep getting more money every step along the way sometimes. I think it's really like like what is the inter I don't know how to say this. I guess my my my thought is like like and I think this is a little bit what Federici does and maybe J.K. Gibbs and Graven some of their like broader work is like kind of doing this like looking at man. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm not being good with ours today. Like they're trying to like reopen these things that don't that have been naturalized or like been normalized and like can like then asking asking us to start there instead of like start at the point where we are working with all of the operating assumptions that make certain pathways possible and and I think even Michelle Murphy's like work excellent. I decided to say your whole name and like the economization of life and I think a lot of other feminist scholars or I'm not just feminist have like pointed to this way that like it's a lot of work to like keep capitalism going and I and I want I think about that a lot because I also am so disheartened that it keeps going. So I'm like why does it take so much work as it keeps going and how like how do we think about coordinating otherwise anyway. So yeah, Rodney and I think it's a really evocative point and hopefully this is building like I want to point to a really obscure thing here as an alternative in Canada. We had this. We still have this concept called the Bravo factor much fact which are standing grants to make a music video and which sounds ridiculous, but I want to contrast that very briefly with the Silicon Valley chance to fail up where you have this like sort of just pool right like and that's a PC money is the end of the day right it's just like handouts to go take a kick at making something successful. But the Canadian government actually gives 20 up to $20,000 to new Canadian artists to produce Canadian content because we have a cultural mandate in Canada to produce Canadian content and out of that has shaken Drake, Justin Bieber, Celine Dion like stars broken social scene arts and crafts recording level like all like an incredible sort of like Canadian music scene that I'm like deeply proud of and it's but it's all so it is a very similar government mandated simulation of a place where it is okay to fail right like the fast majority of those music videos that get made I worked on a bunch of them and they were really bad but every now and then somebody turns out to be wonderful and I think in so many ways like that's not it's not a capitalist system it's it's cultural production right like it's just we want a Canadian national identity and so they just fund it outright and so maybe it's just this opportunity to fail that's the thing that we really need to hone in on. I don't know reminds me a lot of academia. Yeah, I think that's really interesting and it's kind of the opposite of the thing I was thinking about in response to like Don bringing up wages for housework and I feel like with Airbnb Federici got there but it turned out to be late stage capitalism like this this ties in so strongly Brandon with like this this idea you're talking about of startups hitting a niche where like oh like think about when people first started driving like not now but when people first started driving for UberLift or when people open their houses at Airbnbs they don't think of it as a job or they think of it as a job with extreme freedom or they think of it as just some extra cash versus like I've done a lot of Airbnb hosting and like per hour I am not making nearly enough to spend time just changing that many sheets that is not interesting work that is not like it feels like you got a lot at the end of the day because you get a payoff but it's it's like it's not even just the changing of the sheets it's the communication it's the care it's the vetting of people it's making your house perfectly clean all the time and if you have housemates making them make it clean all the time and it's just like no wait apparently you can pay me to do that but why yeah done as like a parallel example so like yeah maybe that's a moment where you see like yeah here's here's a way that that type of labor gets paid but like it gets paid in a system that individualize it individualizes it and still hides the labor right it like moves it moves a sight of production closer to you but while still figuring out how to hide that as reproductive labor in some weird ways yeah maybe people figured out eventually but also like you know in Toronto there's been a bunch of like there's been a lot of Toronto star reporting on it and I don't know why they decided to coin their own term to talk about it it's like great why do you just use the same words that everyone else was using around the world to talk about Airbnb and you know most of people aren't hosting in their own home most of people are managing most full listings and actually paying someone to do that labor like they have inserted themselves in that slice right so they don't even do the labor anymore of the most popular ghost hotels in Toronto but my other example and this is sort of a weird one but it struck my mind is that there's this brief moment I guess and around pre-World War one where Vienna was run by like hardcore socialists called the period is called Red Vienna and they built all these like child crutches and like they actually re-architected the city along like a wages for housework line because they wanted what like women to not have to do all this unpaid labor so every apartment building would have like a communal laundry and baths and like child crutch areas where people were paid to do that work and they did that like pocket in a hundred years ago so I just think that I don't know I think it's like a funny like so that speaks to a collectivist you know example as opposed to the individuals Airbnb wants. What do people think about like gut reaction to the concept of wages for housework or expanding from housework to like the whole the broader emotional labor type of stuff like how does that feel to you yeah Kevin. I like I would be supportive of it I just have no idea how it would be implemented I don't know enough about it but it makes a lot of sense to me that's all. Don I mean I think part of what it does is like point out the like some absurdities around how the system of production works right but just even the campaign but I think my thought about it is both like heck yeah but also that I would I would hope and I kind of think this was the intent that the act of trying to actually realize that would act would require such a transformation of society that we wouldn't be in a system where there's like this individualized wage labor and so I don't know if I would want to live into I don't know if I would want to live in a world where like say you have everyone had their own personal time tracking app and they tracked every single thing they did all day and that there was like some way that you got paid for reproductive labor and it was accounted for you know like I could see dystopic implementations of it I guess. I mean I have a pretty strong negative gut reaction to the idea of getting paid for emotional labor or housework like care work personally like I feel like you should do it because you care and that's complicated because that is that is the other side of the argument right. I guess I'm also in this position where I'm like also the other work you should do you should also do less because of money and more because you care and we're not in that world so it's kind of a it doesn't make sense in our current framing. Kelsey I'd sort of feel like I hear you articulating for like there are things that should sort of exist outside of the bounds of the economy like we should be pushing things farther away from the sort of like more rigid system. Does that feel fair like because I think there's a question of like what is the scope of capitalism like can we just like contain it a little bit and then have more things that exist outside of it. I don't know actually I might be thinking of a completely money free system where there's just abundance. I mean it's interesting to have both me and Kevin on this call because we both work for edgy for money and then also Kevin volunteers for edgy and I don't and like my gut reaction to that would be like well a person getting paid probably doesn't care about it as much or comes to work for a different reason but obviously that doesn't have to be true. It just often is true in the general workforce I think I often wonder too sometimes if money is besides a motivation if it's like an identifier it makes people realize the value of something fortunately so it's like yes maybe it's not great that you know all these people are getting paid like a lot of money or a little money or whatever but at least if they you know you see how much they're making for the work they're doing and if that was somewhat more fair and I don't know what fair is if that's money or if that's something else maybe I think that would help and they're emotionally we're thinking maybe it's what Brendan says where it's like that's out of a capitalist economy you know maybe they're valued some other way besides like a monetary return but in the short term at least money is a good like hey we recognize that you're doing a hard job or you're doing something of value. Yeah maybe I'll say one more thing about like under like the motivation behind the campaign as I understand it is like there's there's two extra pieces which making me think it's really important one is like this work is already getting done and it's getting done by you know it's I think she talks about transnational like circuits of like care where it's like women from global South countries come and do care work in people's homes and like there that in some ways that is remunerated as labor but it's not treated as like formal like labor in the same way so it can be exploited and so by like bringing all reproductive labor under like this like notion of like work forces like addressing that and then also so that that's sort of like one thing where it's like there's types of already paid care labor that are being I think are that those are so exploited like work relations and then the other one is like where it doesn't even get considered work but that is actually totally necessary for people to do work like that's what so reproductive labor is being a requirement before there is productive labor and so it's kind of like a saying like hey like this shit is actually a requirement for like the world we're in to actually be operating and it's sort of like let's not allow this system to externalize this you know similar like to like maybe environmental concerts I think maybe I just want to tie that back to your point Kelsey about you and Kevin both getting paid but treating your involvement in very different ways because it makes me think a lot about still very edgy specific but our trials and tribulations with attempting to pay for people to do work on what monitoring and that interesting nuance between paying somebody to do work and compensating somebody who did work which like there's a whole lot in there and differences both subtle and not so like I think for example we've we've tried my idea early on was to like use the money to pay people to do work to make sure that like somebody was doing the work and that mostly pretty much that and you could see you know it's not that that that was necessarily a failure as an idea but but it requires a certain kind of treatment and has a certain kind of results and so so now there's all this discussion about maybe trying to pay me and the the only way I can frame that in a way that doesn't feel bullshit that works for myself is that I'm not being paid to do work for edgy I'm being compensated for the amount of time I'm putting in for edgy anyway which is a really different way to think about it and I think comes background to that in in what way is the word is the money or the capital that's so different way that's maybe less trade based or is it really if it's if it is for trade but not quite like I don't know but like that's not set of thoughts instead of nuances has been spinning in my head for the last couple weeks. I think that's really interesting. I think there was a quote from Marx and this is a much more negative take on that but in the week's book the quote is one concerns to give the other his or her labor power for a limited period of time and in return the other agrees to pay the first a specific amount of money but to see what happens after the employment contract is signed the analysis must now move to a different location the site where the special commodity will be quote consumed the activity of labor and the social relations that shape direct and manage it will be revealed as the locus of capitalist valorization. I think that that's a really interesting like it goes from being a barter to a giving of power sort of how like indentured servitude is not the same as having paid with money or there's something in there that speaks this concept of doing doing work that you would not have done without incentive the work that nobody wants to do except for that is so directly at odds with the this is also from weeks this concept of like not just what is it here to note the other one starts the P Protestant Protestant work ethic but also like this this very modern concept that your work should be your passion. You should love what you do and also get paid very well for it. And that's what success looks like. Yeah, Rob. Have have anybody has anybody on here read or listen to the real world this technology by Ursula Franklin. Super worthwhile. I've been regularly buying copies of it so that I have something to give away to people. It explores a lot about the idea of framing technologies as sort of control oriented versus work oriented or process oriented process oriented versus like holistic. Yes, her messy lectures. And like there's there's a lot in there that's interesting about like how do we frame technologies whether they be money or like other physical tools around like is there use in value to direct people in doing things and very often that can be framed around like oh this is a way to like make sure that like the drudgery gets done versus what would all look like if everything that we built or framed around being a tool for use by by people to like holistically do a process to the idea of like how how can the tools like help somebody do all parts of the thing and make the drudgery less as opposed to like how do we use the tools to control people to make sure they do the drudgery which is like I always think that's super valuable and super interesting framing around so and very worth reading if you haven't. Yeah, I think that really goes towards the question of like the robots taking over the jobs and the question in the back of my mind that says well wait is that a bad thing if you assume that the jobs aren't necessary and the people get taken care of by their society like should we want people to want to do drudgery? Don, I mean, I don't think we should I'm super mindful so in Alberta right now I think there has been acknowledgement from conservative people conservative thinkers. I don't think Kenny in particular because the UCP is in their own bubble but that like look all of these jobs that were lost in the most recent economic downturn in the oil patch most of them are not coming back. They have really changed how that work happens. Some of the office jobs might come back especially like the exploration side of stuff because of all the production cuts that are put in place and sort of like those companies not pursuing exploration opportunities because of the price of oil. So basically there's a situation where like a lot of mostly men between the age of like I guess 19 to like 29 so up until 30 who maybe didn't go to school but we're working in the oil patch have like been out of a job and maybe out of a job for a couple years now and it's like a significant it is a significant cut to the amount of people who are doing this work and the jobs aren't coming back and but so all I would say is that I think it's not so straightforward an issue as like maybe we don't want people to do this like maybe dangerous or like this drudgery work because because work is so bound up into so many other ideas of like our identity our role in society and etc etc and Weber kind of talks about it in the selection that you had from the weeks book and I just think we like there's I don't see anyone talking enough about that in the conversation around automation so I'm just sort of scared with like wrote automation and that those other parts not being attended to I'm to highlight that there's only two minutes left and I don't think we have anything we need to address other than this discussion in this discussion but if anyone has been holding on to an idea this is the moment Kevin I just wanted to bring up I've been trying to help with the stewardship readings next week but so I might need help people want to lend the hand and then I don't think we have anybody signed up for the decentralization so because I think initially Mad Zed was volunteering to do that but you know he hasn't I think he might be in Tibet or something now so just wanted to bring that up make sure that we're aware yeah Brendan yeah on that point I'd be happy to sort of like first try and find somebody to talk about decentralization I think it'd be really fun to reach out there's some other folks who like are around and might be really fun to see if they could take some interesting meeting but it's a bit of a long shot so yeah I really enjoyed working with Eric to do the first set of readings I'd be happy to take another crack if others have time I think it'll be hard for me to help with stewardship just because of where I will be Kevin I think I had originally said I would be able to so I could try if you want some reading help I can do a pass but yeah be able to help with anything I think on the day because I'm time I might not I'm actually not sure I'll be able to attend yeah that's okay actually reading help would be the best I talked to Kelsey and she says she could help facilitate and it's just and I reached out to Justin shell and make her hurts for readings but they haven't had time to respond but if anybody has anything to to recommend that'd be great but then I think Kelsey and I can Kevin I put some reading suggestions on the issue I don't know if you saw them oh yeah I haven't had a chance to look at but I did notice yet the comment you made about like if we're talking about also like not just data stewardship but more like care ethics of care I think that makes a lot of sense to include that stuff too so it doesn't have to be just data stewardship but just stewardship in general they're the same thing in the end right I think it's 401 so it's time to wrap it up for whatever time it is where you are thanks for joining everybody enjoyed this conversation thank you so much for facilitating Kelsey it was really great and like I do have to point out like Kelsey put in way more like work than like like the average and so I am very thankful I'm definitely going to go back and look through this list