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.
BruceMcF:
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
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.
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.
