Institutions are intrinisically part of those things we take for granted as we make the routine decisions of our day to day life.
I see no future for institutions or organisations in the emerging post-Internet "Peer to Peer" economy. I see the future in networked self organisation within consensually negotiated legal framework agreements.
BruceMcF:
As far as why banks are not aggressively pursuing this form of financial partnership, note that under existing capital adequacy requirements, the
In my own simplistic language, banks lend: they do not tend to invest. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Maybe you are reading "institutions" in a derivative sense, rather than its fundamental sense? EG, the often described "financial institutions"? I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
institutions as far back as our history stretches, the idea that Peer to Peer networks will eliminate regular habits of behavior and suddenly people will start making conscious decisions for each and every one of their actions, a la neoclassical fantasy economics, is just an outlandish claim.
..and it's not a claim I'm making.
Maybe you are reading "institutions" in a derivative sense, rather than its fundamental sense?
Possibly. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Since a legal framework is a formal institution, supported by informal institutions, and consensual negotiations rest in part on informal institutions, often supported by formal institutions, this is saying there is no role for social institutions because the future will be dominated by activity in the context of a named list of social institutions. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Financial enterprises may be more to the point ... there will be going concerns engaged in providing the peer to peer networks, but under your thesis, they will finding ways to make money off of the communications traffic they generate, rather than from taking a financial stake in the process of extending credit, so they would not be financial enterprises as such. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
That is not obvious, necessarily true or even (in my view) likely to be true: it seems to me that you've managed to hide institutions and organisations away in the details of your peer-to-peer network.
When it comes down to it, everything in human society is a peer-to-peer network with some structure on top.
Your assumption seems to be that the nodes in a network will be of somehow comparable size and power.
Where do you get that idea from?
Colman:
Correct.
Our current conflicted and obscure legal and financial overlay or "structure" is the problem, and it is here that changes are not just necessary, but already taking place.
I see a decentralised and non-hierarchical network of networked partnership protocols coming about bottom up to gradually make the existing system redundant. But it's not a case of "either/or", rather of organic evolution. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Is this just a reformulation of libertarianism then?
