Re: [ox-en] Re: Mathieu O'Neil * The social impact of online tribal bureaucracy

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Hi Stefan, all

[Apologies for delay in response]

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> > Legitimacy online
> > -----------------
> > 
> > * Who rules in autonomous / distributed systems?
> > 
> > * Why do others accept their authority?
> 
> I'd like to ask the other question: Why should they not?

If they disagree with a decision?

> 
> > => Leaders must *justify* their central position.
> 
> But isn't this the case for every leader?

Yes.

> 
> For some time now I see leadership as one part of a system. If the
> system benefits from leadership then leadership is accepted and often
> leadership is even wanted by people.
> 
> In fact leadership - i.e. taking responsibility - frees those 
> who are
> led from making difficult decisions and caring about the complete
> system all the time. In this sense I'd see leadership as one 
> part of
> freedom.

Well yes, except in situations when leaders have to take sides in a dispute for example. Then there is a group who sees things differently... those who did not get their way.

> 
> > Defining online authority:
> > --------------------------
> > 
> > 1. sovereign authority (role separated from person)
> > 
> >   - bureaucratic (also rules, release schedules, 
> official repositories,
> >     written records): needs to be 
> democratised to fit communal form
> > 
> >   - 'value-rational' (Weber 1978)
> > 
> >   - collective basis, will of the people
> > 
> >   See Debian: Project Leader, Constitution 
> (organisation science:
> >   O'Mahony & Ferraro 2007).
> > 
> > But does not account for...
> > 
> > 2. charismatic authority (role relinked to person)
> > 
> >   - charismatisation of meritocracy (expertise not 
> bureaucratic /
> >     hierarchical)
> > 
> >   - affective attachment to personal qualities:
> > 
> >     - brilliance of great founder (hacker-
> charisma) 
> > 
> >     - position of great node (index-charisma)
> 
> May be it gets a bit boring but the non-alienated character of
> leadership in peer production projects is key to me. To me it is in
> partcular this non-alienated character which makes leadership useful
> for a project.

Non-alienated: don't understand what this means here. Anti-authoritarian? Non-capitalist? Free? 

> 
> > Role of leaders
> > ---------------
> > 
> > * Integrate contributions / adjudicate conflicts
> 
> I think another important function of leaders is to reinforce the
> goals of the project and to keep the project on track.

I suppose that's true though I think leaders should also be open to evolutions... so as not to turn into "sole keepers of the truth".

> 
> > What replaces the market?
> > -------------------------
> > 
> > - Capitalism rejected domination based on transcendence / tradition.
> > 
> > - Reversion to earlier models of exchange (closeness, mutual help,
> >   solidarity): risk of reversion to precapitalist exchange
> >   (role=person).
> 
> I don't think there is a really a danger here. IMHO mutual help plays
> a minor role in peer production and solidarity is widely unknown
> unless it goes against a common enemy. In fact I think it is dangerous
> to measure peer production with measurements from the past. It 
> *is* a
> different society where contemporary ideals are transformed 
> which may
> mean they are void.

I was wildly speculating about what would happen in a majorly scaled-up version of this sort of activity, so your guess is as good as mine, I suppose.

> 
> > - Tribal model: charismatic / traditional leader
> 
> Well, there are examples where leaders lost their position because
> they tried to move the project on a track which seemed wrong for too
> many. So I'd emphasize that even a traditional leader may loose
> influence if s/he does to much wrong.

Yes.

> 
> > Important questions remain: justice provision in relation to
> > bureaucracy / State?
> 
> In which way do you think justice is necessary in peer production
> projects?

In my view justice is an essential component of any social arrangement where leaders rule by consent, not force: if a leader's (or maintainer, etc) decisions are perceived by a majority of participants as unfair, the legitimacy of the leader is affected and the viability of the project will be compromised.

> 
> > Connection to State? Possible? Desirable?
> 
> This is probably one of the most interesting question. For this
> question I think we need to separate the phenomenon of State into
> several aspects.
> 
> For instance a State cares about lots of regional and super-regional
> infrastructure. That is a purpose which is certainly needed in a
> post-capitalist society as well. How it will look like is of 
> course an
> open question. However, I could imagine that tasks like this are run
> by peer production projects.
> 
> Another purpose or contemporary States is to monopolize power. This
> includes the use of physical force (military, police, ...) as 
> well as
> making laws. An important element of this is to create a currency
> backed by the power of the State.
> 
> Well, money is no longer needed for a peer production based society.
> Do we need State laws? No idea. Do we need to monopolize power? No
> idea.

I went to a conference organised by the EcoRev magazine a month or so ago to celebrate the release of their new issue. There was a speaker called Jean Zin (French) who was quite interesting. One of his points was that a possible scenario for the future would be that the sphere of capitalist production would exist alongside emerging arrangements of production such as local systems, free software, etc - which nibble at it, thus reducing its size. But capitalism would be highly unlikely to ever disappear completely. I suppose some would argue this would be a transition to an all-peer production society. IMHO I regard this as extremely unlikely. I think a worthwhile task is to develop not just theories of how a whole peer production society would work but to help develop institutions, legal sy
 stems, procedures, norms etc etc that can favour the development of peer production. 
As to the relationship to the state, I have come to believe that there is very little scope for significant interaction between essentially top-down administrative systems and more open / horizontal peer production systems: since the two systems are fundamentally antinomic and for meaningful correspondence one or the other would have to abandon one its defining characteristics (this observation only applies to large / national administrations, at the local level interaction and integration may be easier to manage).

> 
> > Expertise and identity
> > ----------------------
> > 
> > - Tension between mass projects based on participation of 
> amateurs and
> >   elite projects based on participation of experts.
> > 
> > - In one case anonymity is accepted.
> > 
> > - But: is anonymity viable (no responsibility)?
> > 
> > - But: total surveillance? 
> > 
> > - User-centric IDM? Web of trust? Solutions?
> 
> May be one size doesn't fit all in this case. For some projects I
> think responsibility is ultimately needed - and this works best 
> if it
> is done by visible persons.

Yes. In addition: I have nothing to hide...

> 
> But there are cases where you can live well with anonymity. For
> instance IIRC there is a project where volunteers find unusual things
> in photos from the sky - I think they are looking for meteors 
> IIRC. In
> a case like this you can simply evaluate an average over the 
> input of
> many answering the same question and get a quite good result.

Well sure but what are the governance issues there? Are there any at all? Ultimately I don't think political responsibility is compatible with anonymity.

Thanks for comments!
cheers,
Mathieu
> 
> 
>                                         	Grüße
> 
>                                         	Stefan

****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php





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