Enric,

Thanks for your reply. I have to concede that my critique of FairCoin was
mostly a byproduct
of my critique of the discourse of P2P Foundation. I was definitively
focusing on that, and critiqued your project by association, perhaps
unfairly.

Please don't get me wrong, it is not that I have had a horrible experience
with P2P Foundation, in any way. We have done some great work together over
the last years. It is just and only that the underpining ideas of the
foundation are not really either P2P or anarchist.

It is interesting to me what you say about sharing concerns about the
Partner State discourse. I met with Bauwens a few weeks ago, and asked him
how he reconciles that discourse with the views of more anarchist partners,
but received no clear answer. In reference to what you narrate about it, I
am afraid it is not true. The concept of Partner State has been discussed
and presented at public events as a keystone of the P2P Foundation's ideas
since at least one year before Bauwens was even contacted by the government
of Ecuador. I remember the feeling of astonished disbelief I felt when I
heard him outline the thing for the first time at an international meeting
in Bangkok, in 2012.

I appreciate your objection to my email. You make a very valid point: "if
you want to critize, fair.coop, do this in base of our background,and the
concret plan that we are going to do". My reply, then is that I certainly
don't particularly WANT to criticise fair.coop. And I also don't know about
it enough to do it anyway at this point. It is more that, from my
experience, I would definitively advise to be careful on the P2P Foundation
partnership, pay attention to what is said and the language used. While
probably it will all be good and productive, it is also possible that the
ideological mix would prove over time to be unsustainable.

Again, my reply was more interested in Bauwens's critique of Bitcoin, than
in fair.coop itself. Apologies if I unfairly overextended the critique to
an unrelated project.

NM


On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 5:08 PM, Enric Duran Giralt <enric@???>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> This Bauwens article, was wrote some weeks ago and is not related with
> fair.coop in any way.
>
> Otherwise, I am collaborating with him from last months and i have better
> experiences than you. For intance i dont liked
> also the partner state reference, and i confirmed with him that it was
> needed in the context of Flok society project
> to include the funder in the proposal, but he agreed with me and like more
> that this transition can be done without the state.
> We, as a CIC, are going to work together with p2p-f, in a transition plan
> from below without governments, to generate a more p2p alternative to the
> first process.
>
> Also, i see as a phalacy to critize fair.coop plans because p2p-f is
> involved, because
> the 99% of the plan and ideology behind it, comes from me and other
> Cooperativa Integral Catalana related comrades. (some of there also related
> to dark wallet)
> So please, if you want to critize, fair.coop, do this in base of our
> background,and the concret plan that we are going to do.
>
> In relation between institutions and protocols. I dont see contradiction,
> because we are going to create a open participatory process
> responsible to agree about protocols. Therefore collective organization
> could be able to create p2p tools that becames useful to all the
> decentralized network
> i can see that this has been done succesful diferent times (for example,
> FSF with defending free software...).
>
> In this sense the decition process, is very less centralized than the
> current practices of a lot of groups that could be involved
> https://fair.coop/decisions-process/ and very less than bitcoin
> foundation or other bitcoin representative organizations
>
> regs
> enric
>
>
>
>
>
>
> El 19/09/14 11:12, Nicolas Mendoza escribió:
>
> Don't fall for the positive pandering at the beginning of the text.
> That is there only to make it seem like an honest and impartial analysis.
> But it is not, as the manipulation of distribution figures, lack of dates
> and references, and use of heavily biased terminology show.
>
> This is just more Krugman from someone who is unable to understand Bitcoin
> and unwilling to think beyond the rigid framework imposed by Marxist
> terminology. As someone relatively close to Bauwens and the P2P foundation,
> I have tried for years to make him see how it is the Dollar-USArmy dynamics
> that perpetuates Empire, or how politically controlled currency by
> definition fosters an elite class that dominates society. But such notions
> are way too close to actual reality to make a dent in a mind that is
> already shaped by a quite rigid abstract universal model and by the
> vocabulary in which it is rooted. Trying to reason Bitcoin with Bauwens has
> been a very frustrating experience, since we always come back to some
> liberal catchword that is meaningless in the context of the blockchain.
>
> After working with/for P2P Foundation for some time, I've grown
> disillutioned by the direction it has, because the underlying project is
> not really P2P. For instance a term that is being pumped is "The Partner
> State", which I think speaks for itself. The Partner State is the
> contradiction of the very notion of P2P. In addition to the Partner State,
> P2PF discourse has steered towards proposing a society based on the
> conformation of a series of institutions that are aligned with their
> ideology. This, again, is far from being a real P2P project. I have
> expressed repeatedly that for real P2P we must go beyond platforms, and
> think in terms of protocols. As you can see in FairCoin, the important part
> is not really the Coin, but the control institutions attached to it. It's
> more of the same.
>
> I think it's a combination of ideological rigidity (even if disguised as
> a P2P guy, a liberal will always be a liberal), the inability to think
> differently due to decades of ideological conditioning, and sheer lack of
> imagination.
>
> For the record, I too think Bitcoin is massively flawed, and at the same
> time I've been holding some since 2011 for obvious reasons. The point I
> want to make is not that Bitcoin is perfect, but that the Bauwen's critique
> is irelevant because it originates exclusively from the fact that Bitcoin
> differs from his liberal ideology, and it does not further explore the
> complexities, paradoxes and strangeness of Bitcoin in the real world.
>
> There are other critiques that do, and I find those much more important,
> but that is another story.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Joerg Platzer <joerg@???> wrote:
>
>>
>> This may be a good moment â to quote the definition of fascism as
>> defined by its inventor, Benito Mussolini:
>>
>>
>> "Fascism as the merging of politacal and corporate power."
>>
>>
>> And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, take a look around you and tell me
>> what kind of system we live in!
>>
>>
>> ++jp
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *Von:* unSYSTEM <unsystem-bounces@???> im Auftrag von Tim
>> Patrick <judoman589@???>
>> *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 18. September 2014 21:12
>> *An:* System undo crew
>> *Betreff:* Re: [unSYSTEM] A political evaluation of Bitcoin by M. Bauwens
>> Â
>> So this lad thinks bitcoin will bring about the negative consequence
>> of fascism....
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Enric Duran Giralt <enric@???>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting read
>>>
>>>
>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-political-evaluation-of-bitcoin/2014/09/09
>>>
>>> regards
>>> Enric
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Nicolas Mendoza
>
> PhD Researcher
> School of Creative Media
> City University of Hong Kong
> China PDR - HKSAR
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.nethttps://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>


--
Nicolas Mendoza

PhD Researcher
School of Creative Media
City University of Hong Kong
China PDR - HKSAR