Fellow Thinkers,

I have been following the interesting dialogue on money and capitalism this past week on this discussion group: Social Models 4 P2P Networks.

As a synergic scientist, I look at things a little differently. Synergic science is the study of *working together*. The goal is the win-win relationship. I am seeking a win win win win future -- a future where I win, you win, humanity wins, and the Earth wins.

Synergic science demonstrates that from the perspective of the individual, humans are an INTERdependent class of life. Today,  our American belief in independence is so strong, it is almost beyond challenge. And most of us make no distinction between independence for individuals and independence for community. These are very different concepts. In an earlier post I wrote:

Stop reading and take a moment to examine the contents of your pockets or purse....

Can you find any item there, that you obtained without the help of someone else? Look around you. What do you see? Did you make the clothes you wear? Did you grow the food you eat or the tools you use. Look around your home or workplace. Can you find anything that you made. Do you know the names of those who did make all these things? Do you ever know upon whom you depend. Can you find anything in your environment that was obtained without the help of someone else?

I am not talking about ownership here. I will grant that you own your possessions. But would you have them if they had not been for sale. I would argue that nearly everything modern humans possess was obtained with the help of others.

As my associate Arthur Noll asks his students when making this point, "Lets start with your naked body. Can you manage to clothe and feed and shelter this body, with no hands touching any article except your own hands?" ...

As I examine my own world I discover that I depend on others to grow and produce my food. I depend on others to design and build my home. I depend on others to generate my electricity. I depend on others to supply my water. I depend on others to deliver my mail. I depend on others to educate my children. I depend on others to entertain my family. I depend on others to manufacture my automobile. I depend on others to refine the gasoline for my car. I depend on others to care for my family when we are sick. I depend on others to protect us from crime and war. I depend on others to .... I depend on others. I depend.

Our human INTERdependence is made less visible by our present economic exchange system. I go to work and help my employer. He depends on me. At the end of the month he pays me for my help. I depend on him. I can then take some of the money from my paycheck to pay my house rent. While I depend on my landlord for the roof over my head, he depends on me to pay the rent promptly. Sometimes I depend on others and sometimes others depend on me. When we buy and sell in the economic marketplace we are really exchanging help. When I help others they owe me. When others help me I owe them. Money is just the present accounting mechanism we use to settle up.

So, if as synergic science argues, INTERdependence is the human condition then all human individuals need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence. INTERdependence means some times I depend on others and sometimes others depend on me. Once we acknowledge our INTERdependence and accept our dependence on others, then there are only three ways that we can get help.

1) Adversary Help -- We can make others help us.

This is help obtained with coercion – force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help is low quality help.

I was forced to help him. Slavery, indentured service, tenant farming, and child labor are examples of adversary help. The criminal makes you help him, when he steals your money. The government makes you help it, when it forces you to pay taxes. You are forced to help others anytime you are given an ultimatum. An ultimatum is a choice between losing a little or losing a lot. Which do you want a broken are or a broken leg, you are free to choose.

Adversary relationships are hurting and negative experiences. The helper experiences a loss. He is less after helping you than before. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can.

In an adversary relationship, one individual plus another individual are less after the relationship. In other words (1+1)<2, and often much less than two. Adversary relationships are marked by high conflict, low effectiveness and poor productivity.

When you can make others help you, coercing them with force or fraud, the helper loses and will typically give you only the lowest quality help.

2) Neutral Help -- We can purchase help through the fair market place.

This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonalds, I pay them five dollars to feed me. The focus in the neutral market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is average quality help.

I was paid to help him. Macys, Sears, Mervyns, Pennys, Costco, K-Mart, Circuit City, etc., etc. – malls, stores, markets, shops, and restaurants – are all examples of neutral help. The yellow pages in the telephone book are lists of places where you can purchase help. Capitalism's fair market is where you purchase neutral help. You buy help in the open market place at a fair market exchange price. This is the modern free world where help is sold as products and services.

In the fair market, the helper experiences a draw and will typically produce average quality help.

Neutral relationships are ignoring. The parties in these relationships experience no change. They barter to insure that the exchange is fair -- to insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither party loses. The open market of free enterprise generates a zone of neutrality which markedly reduces adversary relations. Neutral systems gain a marked production advantage over adversary systems. They are significantly more productive. However, this is primarily because they are not adversary. In a neutral relationship one individual plus another individual are the same after the relationship: (1+1)=2. Neutral relationships are marked by indifference with fair effectiveness and only average productivity.

Neutrality is that place where I work just hard enough to avoid getting fired, and, my employer pays me just enough to keep me from quitting.

How average is my help going to be?

Neutral relationships are ignoring and static experiences. The helper experiences a draw. They are the same after helping as before. When you ignore those who help you, you will get only fair help.

Or, 3) Synergic Help -- We can attract help by helping others.

This help attracted by helping others. When other individuals understand that by helping you, they will in turn be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they will win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is high
quality help.

I was helped for helping him. Examples of synergic help in today's world are much less common. We do find them in family businesses and within some partnerships and small business groups. Synergic relationships more often exist in start up businesses, where the originators work together sharing in the risks and the rewards equally.

If you wish to attract synergic help you must insure that when individuals invest their help with yours, they are also helped. Then they will automatically reinvest with you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success. Synergic relationships are helping, positive experiences. The helper experiences a win. They are more after helping you than before. When you help those who help you, you get the most help. When you help
those who help you, you get excellent help.

In synergic relationships one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before: (1+1)>>2. Synergic relationships are marked by low conflict with high effectiveness and enormous productivity.

We humans have the option to use synergic organization which is unavailable to the plants and animals. We can attract help by insuring that those who help us are also helped, then they will provide the highest quality help. They will further seek to invest their action with ours, for a share of the cooperators' revenues. They will
understand that when you win, they win, and will support and celebrate your every success.

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Human Exchange Systems

If you accept that humans as individuals are INTERdependent. Then it follows that they must exchange food, things, and "knowing" in order to effectively meet their needs. What is changing as our species evolves is not the need for EXCHANGE. It is rather the value driving our exchange. Synergic science defines these values as either adversary, neutral, or synergic.

All humans need *help* and humans get *help* by making exchanges.

1) Humans with the values of Adversity make exchanges using physical force. They make exchanges over the barrel of a gun. They use coercion or threat of coercion to force others to give them the *help* they need.

2) Humans with the values of Neutrality make exchanges using money. They buy and sell the *help* they need. The exchange systems of neutrality presently dominate human society. Neutrality is so pervasive it is almost invisible. Most humans cannot even imagine that exchange systems could have any other basis. When we begin to conceptualize a positive win-win future. We have to begin by thinking outside the box. We are moving into a new paradigm. This means that all of our assumptions are wrong. The difficulty is not so much with those assumptions that we are aware of, but with those assumptions that are unspoken. Let me explain:

The values of HUMAN NEUTRALITY parallel the laws of plant neutrality. Free and independent citizens relate to each other as equals. They are prohibited from hurting another free and independent citizen. The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price.

FAIR TRADE –def–> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair – to insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither party loses.

Human Neutrality is about FAIRNESS. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are guaranteed freedom from loss.

In the free market of Neutrality, our identities and personal relationships are unimportant. We purchase products anonymously, usually without knowing the seller's name, or he ours. When I enter McDonalds to purchase my lunch, I see only the product, the hamburger stacked in the warmer. I ignore the clerk. I don't know her name or her story. I see the hamburger, that's what I want. The clerk behind the counter ignores me. She doesn't know my name or my story. She sees
my five dollars, that's what she wants.

The store is clean and I feel safe. I expect the kitchen is clean and I will get a good product for a fair price. We will trade. We will speak the neutral words of the trading ritual. I never knowing her name, she never knowing mine. "May I help you?" "Thank you and have a nice day." We trade.

Now our trade is FAIR. By definition, the lunch McDonalds is selling has a fair market value of $5.00. My five dollars has a FAIR market value of $5.00. We trade FAIRLY. Economically nothing much has changed for me. I had five dollars in cash when I entered McDonalds, and I left with five dollars worth of lunch. My net worth is the same. While I obviously got some utility from the exchange, I preferred the lunch to my cash. In a strict economic sense, I am little changed by this exchange.

In fair exchanges, $5.00 in cash equals $5.00 in food.

In fact, McDonalds created the lunch for less than $5.00, the fair market price contains some profit for the seller. But, when I earned my $5.00, I did it by I selling some product or service that cost me a little less. I'm entitled to a profit when I sell products or services. That's the neutral way.

If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that in a neutral exchange (1+1)=2. Humans institute Neutrality to to escape Adversity -- to protect themselves from loss.

The first principle of human Neutrality then is to AVOID LOSS !

In the language of games, where you can win, lose, or draw, we are obtaining a draw. We like the plants will be ignored by the experience. We will be the same after the experience as before. The advantage of changing from Adversity to Neutrality is not that we will win, but rather that we will avoid losing.

Neutrality offers a safe haven for humans from Adversity. With Neutrality it is possible for us humans to avoid playing the adversary game. We are free to work without fear that others will hurt us. We are free and independent citizens. We are free to create products or provide services and sell those in the great market for a fair price.

The capitalist economics of Neutrality produces a major advance over the economics of Adversity. Humans using neutral organization are much more successful than those using adversarial organization. Because human needs and wants are many and complex and there is no way any individual can meet these needs, we have evolved the great market. We operate as independent producers and consumers. Each neutral citizen is responsible for purchasing their own needs and wants.

Neutral government is committed to fairness for all its citizens. The government's only legitimate purpose is to insure economic independence and protect individual freedom. To insure a safe and stable environment that allows the free market to work best. Today's free world is dominated by Neutrality in the form of neutral
government, neutral nations, neutral organizations, and neutral value systems.

The unchallenged success of human Neutrality in the United States and within the rest of the Free World has established that most modern values and beliefs are neutral ones. Modern humans are strongly convinced that they are self sufficient and independent, or at least that they should be self sufficient and independent. They believe in their right to own property and to freely and independently control
their property. These beliefs are so strong in our present culture – it is almost impossible to imagine things any other way.

3) Humans with the values of Synergy make exchanges using helping relationships. They attract the *help* they need by helping others, and by making sure that when others *help* them those helping are also helped.

In a truly synergic exchange where all members are humans committed to win-win relationships, there is no need for accounting. We might (as my associate Barry Carter suggests) call this synergic exchange system a *gifting network*. Within a group of humans committed to synergic relationship -- committed to only win-win relationships -- you would give to the *gifting network* based on your talents and skills, donating whatever action, "knowing", things, or food you can create. You would take from that same *gifting network* whatever you need. Because all members of the network are committed to having only win-win relationships. The system would work and there would be an excess and abundance for all.

However, today we live in a world in transition. Most humans are not SYNERGIC. Many humans are not even NEUTRAL.

The committed ADVERSARY would simply take from a gifting network, by force or by fraud. They are not appropriate members.

The committed NEUTRALIST would view the *gifting network* as just another capital market -- a place to buy and sell. This is where we modern humans are currently concept-pated. We always assume there must be a market. There must be careful accounting. I will not give anything to anyone unless I know what I am going to get back. We don't trust each other. This is normal. It is stupid to trust in our present adversary-neutral world. Committed Neutralists are not appropriate members for a gifting network.

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When I first started thinking about synergic exchange systems or *gifting networks*, I came across the writings of the open software community advocate and software developer Eric Steven Raymond. He has a lot to say that is very relevant to this discussion.
 

The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture

by Eric Steven Raymond

To understand the role of reputation in the open-source culture, it is helpful to move from history further into anthropology and economics, and examine the difference between exchange cultures and gift cultures.

Human beings have an innate drive to compete for social status; it's wired in by our evolutionary history. For the 90% of that history that ran before the invention of agriculture, our ancestors lived in small nomadic hunting-gathering bands. High-status individuals (those most effective at informing coalitions and persuading others to cooperate with them) got the healthiest mates and access to the best food. This drive for status expresses itself in different ways, depending largely on the degree of scarcity of survival goods.

Most ways humans have of organizing are adaptations to scarcity and want. Each way carries with it different ways of gaining social status.

The simplest way is the command hierarchy. In command hierarchies, allocation of scarce goods is done by one central authority and backed up by force. Command hierarchies scale very poorly; they become increasingly brutal and inefficient as they get larger. For this reason, command hierarchies above the size of an extended family are almost always parasites on a larger economy of a different type. In command hierarchies, social status is primarily determined by access to coercive power.

Our society is predominantly an exchange economy. This is a sophisticated adaptation to scarcity that, unlike the command model, scales quite well. Allocation of scarce goods is done in a decentralized way through trade and voluntary cooperation (and in fact, the dominating effect of competitive desire is to produce cooperative behavior). In an exchange economy, social status is primarily determined by having control of things (not necessarily material things) to use or trade.

Most people have implicit mental models for both of the above, and how they interact with each other. Government, the military, and organized crime (for example) are command hierarchies parasitic on the broader exchange economy we call `the free market'. There's a third model, however, that is radically different from either and not generally recognized except by anthropologists; the gift culture.

Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy.

Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away.

Thus the Kwakiutl chieftain's potlach party. Thus the multi-millionaire's elaborate and usually public acts of philanthropy. And thus the hacker's long hours of effort to produce high-quality open-source code.

For examined in this way, it is quite clear that the society of open-source hackers is in fact a gift culture. Within it, there is no serious shortage of the `survival necessities' -- disk space, network bandwidth, computing power. Software is freely shared. This abundance creates a situation in which the only available measure of competitive success is reputation among one's peers.

This observation is not in itself entirely sufficient to explain the observed features of hacker culture, however. The crackers and warez d00dz have a gift culture that thrives in the same (electronic) media as that of the hackers, but their behavior is very different. The group mentality in their culture is much stronger and more exclusive than among hackers. They hoard secrets rather than sharing them; one is much more likely to find cracker groups distributing sourceless executables that crack software than tips that give away how they did it.

What this shows, in case it wasn't obvious, is that there is more than one way to run a gift culture. History and values matter. I have summarized the history of the hacker culture in A Brief History of Hackerdom ; the ways in which it shaped present behavior are not mysterious. Hackers have defined their culture by a set of choices about the form which their competition will take. It is that form which we will examine in the remainder of this paper.

The Joy of Hacking

In making this `reputation game' analysis, by the way, I do not mean to devalue or ignore the pure artistic satisfaction of designing beautiful software and making it work. We all experience this kind of satisfaction and thrive on it. People for whom it is not a
significant motivation never become hackers in the first place, just as people who don't love music never become composers.

So perhaps we should consider another model of hacker behavior in which the pure joy of craftsmanship is the primary motivation. This `craftsmanship' model would have to explain hacker custom as a way of maximizing both the opportunities for craftsmanship and the quality of the results. Does this conflict with or suggest different results than the `reputation game' model?

Not really. In examining the `craftsmanship' model, we come back to the same problems that constrain hackerdom to operate like a gift culture. How can one maximize quality if there is no metric for quality? If scarcity economics doesn't operate, what metrics are available besides peer evaluation? It appears that any craftsmanship
culture ultimately must structure itself through a reputation game -- and, in fact, we can observe exactly this dynamic in many historical craftsmanship cultures from the medieval guilds onwards.

In one important respect, the `craftsmanship' model is weaker than the `gift culture' model; by itself, it doesn't help explain the contradiction we began this paper with.

Finally, the `craftsmanship' motivation itself may not be psychologically as far removed from the reputation game as we might like to assume. Imagine your beautiful program locked up in a drawer and never used again. Now imagine it being used effectively and with pleasure by many people. Which dream gives you satisfaction?

Nevertheless, we'll keep an eye on the craftsmanship model. It is intuitively appealing to many hackers, and explains some aspects of individual behavior well enough.

After I published the first version of this paper on the Internet, an anonymous respondent commented: ``You may not work to get reputation, but the reputation is a real payment with consequences if you do the job well.'' This is a subtle and important point. The reputation incentives continue to operate whether or not a craftsman is aware of them; thus, ultimately, whether or not a hacker understands his own behavior as part of the reputation game, his behavior will be shaped by that game.

Other respondents related peer-esteem rewards and the joy of hacking to the levels above subsistence needs in Abraham Maslow's well-known `hierarchy of values' model of human motivation. On this view, the joy of hacking is a self-actualization or transcendence need which will not be consistently expressed until lower-level needs (including those for physical security and for `belongingness' or peer esteem) have been at least minimally satisfied. Thus, the reputation game may be critical in providing a social context within which the joy of hacking can in fact become the individual's primary motive.

The Many Faces of Reputation

There are reasons general to every gift culture why peer repute (prestige) is worth playing for:

First and most obviously, good reputation among one's peers is a primary reward. We're wired to experience it that way for evolutionary reasons touched on earlier. (Many people learn to redirect their drive for prestige into various sublimations that have no obvious connection to a visible peer group, such as ``honor'', ``ethical integrity'', ``piety'' etc.; this does not change the underlying mechanism.)

Secondly, prestige is a good way (and in a pure gift economy, the only way) to attract attention and cooperation from others. If one is well known for generosity, intelligence, fair dealing, leadership ability, or other good qualities, it becomes much easier to persuade other people that they will gain by association with you.

Thirdly, if your gift economy is in contact with or intertwined with an exchange economy or a command hierarchy, your reputation may spill over and earn you higher status there.

Beyond these general reasons, the peculiar conditions of the hacker culture make prestige even more valuable than it would be in a `real world' gift culture.

The main `peculiar condition' is that the artifacts one gives away (or, interpreted another way, are the visible sign of one's gift of energy and time) are very complex. Their value is nowhere near as obvious as that of material gifts or exchange-economy money. It is much harder to objectively distinguish a fine gift from a poor one. Accordingly, the success of a giver's bid for status is delicately dependent on the critical judgement of peers.

Another peculiarity is the relative purity of the open-source culture. Most gift cultures are compromised -- either by exchange-economy relationships such as trade in luxury goods, or by command-economy relationships such as family or clan groupings. No significant analogues of these exist in the open-source culture; thus, ways of gaining status other than by peer repute are virtually absent.

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The complete essay by Eric Steven Raymond from which the above was excerpted can be found here:
<http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/>

I highly recommend carefully looking at Eric Steven Raymond's other writings. His most relevant papers are collected here:
<http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/index.html>

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I think you will agree that what Eric Stevens Raymond calls a *command-economy* is what I would call an adversary exchange system. What he calls an *exchange-economy* is what I call a neutral exchange system. And, what he calls a *gift culture* is what I call a synergic exchange system. Building a *gift culture* or what I call a synergic exchange system will be quite different from our present adversary-neutral economies. It will require a new form of trust.

SYNERGIC TRUST

Trust is not a new word for humanity. It was coined long ago when the world was dominated by the adversary way. Trust meant that I could rely on you not to hurt me. In a world of black and white – good or bad – friend or foe –  trust meant that I was safe to assume that you were not my enemy. Trust meant the ability to rely on the absence of a negative.

Synergic trust is much more than simply the ability to rely on the absence of a negative. It is that plus the ability to rely on the presence of a positive. Synergic trust means that I can rely on other not only to not hurt me, but also to help me.

In the future, we humans can use co-Operation to attract help from others by insuring that those who help us are also helped. When we co-Operate, others will seek to invest their action with ours for a share of the cooperators' surplus. They will understand that when we win, they will win, and they will support and celebrate our every success.

If we humans choose a synergic future, we will trust each other. We will care about each other. We will help each other. Our relationships will be loving positive experiences. We will all win. We will be more together than we can ever be apart. We humans can create a future based on synergic trust. We can build it by working together. We can heal ourselves and our world by co-Operating. The choice is ours.

Thanks for taking the time to read and think about this post. I apologize for its length, but I think it is on topic and speaks to the theme here: Social Models 4 P2P Networks.