Who Owns All the Bitcoins – An Infographic of Wealth Distribution

Jay OwenWealth of Networks

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P2P FoundationP2P Foundation” – 4 new articles

  1. Who Owns All the Bitcoins – An Infographic of Wealth Distribution
  2. Ten Degrowth-Oriented Policy Proposals
  3. Will Syriza pave the way for a Commons-oriented society?
  4. Book of the Day: Cyber-Proletariat
  5. More Recent Articles
  6. Search P2P Foundation
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Who Owns All the Bitcoins – An Infographic of Wealth Distribution

This brilliant infographic is from March 2014 but still worth sharing. It was originally published at Cryptocoins News



Everyone knows that global wealth is unevenly distributed. The top 1% has control over almost 50% of the global economy. But how does bitcoin wealth distribution compare to the global distribution of fiat and fixed assets? This gorgeous infographic explains:

 

Who-owns-all-the-bitcoins2

It turns out that the distribution of bitcoins among users is even more skewed than the distribution of traditional wealth across the globe. This is understandable, since bitcoin favours early adopters who either mined or purchased their coins a few years ago. Furthermore, the amount of bitcoins in circulation is capped at 21 million, which also helps create an unequal distribution of wealth. Interestingly, the FBI has the second largest known stash of bitcoins, a whopping 174,000 BTC from the Silk Road seizure. It’s unknown exactly when and how the FBI will sell these bitcoins, but the agency should auction them off sometime soon, a common practice for getting rid of assets seized from criminals. All in all, it’s interesting to see such a skewed wealth distribution, and it’s difficult to predict how this distribution will change in the future.

Infographic from WhoIsHostingThis?.

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Ten Degrowth-Oriented Policy Proposals

Degrowth is a historical necessity but a very hard political sell, and at the P2P Foundation we use rather the post-growth thematic and a focus on ‘thrivability’. But these proposals from Giorgios Kallis seem entirely reasonable and even vital.

Giorgos Kallis:

In what follows we present 10 proposals that we wrote for the context of Spain and Catalunya, and which we submitted to progressive political parties such as Podemos, the United Left, the Catalan Republican Left, CUP or Equo . The context to which these proposals refer to is specific; but with certain amendments and adaptations they are also applicable elsewhere and relevant for radical Left and Green political parties all over Europe.

* Citizen debt audit. An economy cannot be forced to grow to resolve accumulated debts that have contributed to fictitious growth in the past. It is essential not only to restructure but also to eliminate part of the debt with a people’s debt audit, part of a new, really democratic culture. Such elimination shouldn’t be realised at the expense of savers and those with modest pensions whether in Spain or elsewhere. The debt of those that have considerable income and assets should not be pardoned. Those who lent for speculation should take the losses. Once the debt is reduced, caps on carbon and resources (see 9) will guarantee that this will not be used as an opportunity for more growth and consumption.

* Work-sharing. Reduce the working week to at least 32 hours and develop programmes that support firms and organisations that want to facilitate job-sharing. This should be orchestrated such that the loss of salary from working less only affects the 10% highest income bracket. Complemented by environmental limits and the tax reform proposed below, it will be more difficult for this liberation of time to be used for material consumption.

* Basic and maximum income. Establish a minimum income for all of Spain’s residents of between 400 and 600 Euros per month, paid without any requirement or stipulation. A recent study suggests this is feasible for Spain, without a major overhaul of the tax system. Design this policy in conjunction with other tax and work reforms so that they increase the income of the poorer 50% of the population while decreasing that of the top 10%, to finance the change. The maximum income for any person – from work as well as from capital – shouldn’t be more than 30 times the basic income (12,000 – 18,000 Euros monthly).

* Green tax reform. Implement an accounting system to transform, over time, the tax system, from one based principally on work to one based on the use of energy and resources. Taxation on the lowest incomes could be reduced and compensated for with a carbon tax. Establish a 90% tax rate on the highest incomes (such rates were common in the USA in the 1950s). High income and capital taxes will halt positional consumption and eliminate the incentives for excessive earnings, which feed financial speculation. Tackle capital wealth through inheritance tax and high taxes on property that is not meant for use, for example on the second or third houses of individuals or on large estates.

* Stop subsidizing and investing on activities that are highly polluting, moving the liberated pubic funds towards clean production. Reduce to zero the public investment and subsidy for private transport infrastructure (such as new roads and airport expansion), military technology, fossil fuels or mining projects. Use the funds saved to invest in the improvement of public rural and urban space – such as squares, traffic free pedestrian streets [paseos y ramblas] -, and to subsidise public transport and cycle hire schemes. Support the development of small scale decentralised renewable energy under local and democratic control, instead of concentrated and extensive macro-structures under the control of private business.

* Support the alternative, solidarity society. Support, with subsidies, tax exemptions and legislation, the not-for-profit co-operative economic sector that are flourishing in Spain and include alternative food networks, cooperatives and networks for basic health care, co-operatives covering shared housing, credit, teaching, and artists and other workers. Facilitate the de-commercialisation of spaces and activities of care and creativity, by helping mutual support groups, shared childcare and social centres.

* Optimise the use of buildings. Stop the construction of new houses, rehabilitating the existing housing stock and facilitating the full occupation of houses. In Spain those objectives could be met through very high taxes on abandoned, empty and second houses, prioritising the social use of SAREB housing [those falling under the post-crash banking restructuring provisions following the Spanish real estate crisis], and if this is insufficient, then proceed with social expropriation of empty housing from private investors.

* Reduce advertising. Establish very restrictive criteria for allowing advertising in public spaces, following the example of the city of Grenoble. Prioritise the provision of information and reduce greatly any commercial use.

* Establish committees to control the quantity and quality of advertising permitted in the mass media and tax advertising in accordance with objectives.

* Establish environmental limits. Establish absolute and diminishing caps on the total of CO2 that Spain can emit and the total quality of material resources that it uses, including emissions and materials embedded in imported products, often from the global South. These caps would be in CO2, materials, water footprint or the surface area under cultivation. Similar limits could be established for other environmental pressures such as the extraction of water, the total built-up area and the number of licenses for tourist enterprises in saturated zones.

* Abolish the use of GDP as indicator of economic progress. If GDP is a misleading indicator, we should stop using it and look for other indicators of prosperity. Monetary and fiscal national accounts statistics can be collected and used but economic policy shouldn’t be expressed in terms of GDP objectives. A debate needs to be started about the nature of well-being, focusing on what to measure rather than how to measure it.”
(http://www.thepressproject.net/article/71088/Yes-we-can-prosper-without-growth-VIDEO)

Giorgos Kallis then comments on these proposals:

“These proposals are complementary and have to be implemented in concert. For example, setting environmental limits might reduce growth and create unemployment, but work-sharing with a basic income will decouple the creation of jobs and social security from economic growth.

The reallocation of investments from dirty to clean activities and the reform of the taxation system will make sure that a greener economy will emerge, while stopping to count the economy in GDP terms and using prosperity indicators ensures that this transition will be counted as a success and not as a failure.

Finally, the changes in taxation and the controls in advertizing, will relax positional competition and reduce the sense of frustration that comes with lack of growth. Investing on the commons and shared infrastructures will increase prosperity, without growth.

We do not expect parties of the Left to make “degrowth” their banner. We understand the difficulties of confronting, suddenly, an entrenched common sense. But we do expect radical left parties to take steps in the right direction, and to pursue good policies, such as the ones we propose, independent of their effect on growth. We do expect genuine Left parties to avoid making the relaunch of economic growth their objective. And we do expect them to be ready, and have ideas in place, on what they will do, if the economy refuses to grow. Is this a reasonable expectation in the current political conjecture of Southern Europe for example? Yes and no.

The draft economic policy of Podemos released in November, has many elements that fit with the above agenda. The document does not set growth as its strategic goal. It omits any reference to GDP. It proposes to reduce working hours to 35, it sets a minimum guaranteed income for the unemployed, it calls for a forgiveness of part of household and public debt, and it promotes a shift of investments towards caring, education and the green economy, posing the satisfaction of basic needs through an “ecologically sustainable consumption” as its primary objective.

The policy could go further by shifting taxes from labour to resources, establishing environmental limits, controlling advertising, generalizing the basic income, and reforming the welfare state by thinking ways to universalize the solidarity economy that is thriving in Spain, providing viable and low cost solutions for health, care or education.

In Greece in contrast, the huge overhanging debt, and the need to escape the socially disastrous policy of austerity and structural adjustment imposed by the Troika, makes it much harder to ignore growth.

Syriza confronts austerity rightly with a proposal to forgive part of Greece’s public debt. Unfortunately though, the objective of such debt cancellation is seen as the relaunching of growth, with Syriza adopting Joseph Stiglitz’ proposal for a “growth-clause”, whereby the remaining part of the debt will be growth financed.

Syriza proposes a European New Deal and espouses public investments that will spur growth in Greece, but unlike Podemos, it does not talk of a “green” New Deal, or about a shift from conventional to clean industries or from resource intensive sectors to caring and education.

Within the current conjecture of powers in Europe, the dictatorship of the markets and the fixation of Germany with austerity, even the Stiglitzian proposal of Syriza comes to pass as “radical” and stands slims chances of being realized, save for dramatic socio-political events in Greece and a political upheaval in the EU. Assuming that Syriza were to implement its strategy one day, the question is what would it do if, even after a restructuring of debts, the professed growth was not to come.

Would it recoil into a left version of austerity as the “socialists” of Hollande did in France when faced with the same problem?
Would it pursue even more intensely the current extractivist model of development, exploiting the environments of Greece for resources, exports and tourism, even though this would be against the wishes of its political base that is at the forefront of current struggles against extractivist projects?

Or would it stop and listen to its youth, which is involved in the thriving solidarity economy of Greece, trying to decipher and think how to universalize these pre-figuring local experiments into something new for the national economy as a whole? Not an easy feat, but a radical left was never supposed to follow the easy path.”

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Will Syriza pave the way for a Commons-oriented society?

In a previous article we attempted to provide a bird’s-eye view of the political agendas of four Greek parties in relation to the digital/knowledge Commons. We saw that Syriza —the left-wing party which, according to the gallops, will win the elections— has one of the most thorough and well-documented set of policies towards a Commons-oriented society.

Andreas Karitzis, member of Syriza’s think tank on digital policies and a candidate MP in the ongoing elections, recently wrote an article in the Greek version of the Huffington Post highlighting the commitment of his party to free/open source technologies, transparency and participatory democracy. Mr. Karitzis claims that Syriza will support the adoption of free/open source software in the public sector and the distribution of public data under Commons-based licenses. Moreover, it seems they recognize not only the value of the free/open source technologies per se, but also the collaborative productive processes that create such technologies.

Andreas Karitzis, member of Syriza's think tank on digital policies & a candidate MP

Andreas Karitzis, member of Syriza’s think tank on digital policies & a candidate MP

This becomes evident if one reads Mr. Karitzis’ answers to the questions posed by EEL/LAK, an Athens-based NGO focused on the promotion of openness, concerning Syriza’s agenda in relation to Open Governance and the Commons. As mentioned in our recent article, he explicitly states the intention to further develop copyfair licenses for open hardware, in the vein of the P2P Foundation’s proposals. Moreover, the creation of networks of distributed micro-factories (fablabs/makerspaces) is considered as another key point of a Commons-oriented political agenda.

In addition, it is argued that Syriza has clearly defined policies for reforming certain laws and adopting , we would say, Partner State Approach  practices with regard to education, governance and R&D. To mention a few: i) opening the public data; ii) opening every realm of knowledge produced with tax-payers’ money; iii) creating a collaborative environment for small-scale entrepreneurs and co-operatives while favoring initiatives based on open source technologies and practices; iv) developing certain participatory processes (and strengthening the existing ones)  for citizen-engagement in policy-making; v) adopting open standards and patterns for public administration and education.

It is true that from program to implementation, several steps are required, however the first step seems to have been made: Syriza appears to not only be aware of the advantages of free/open source technologies but also to realize the potential and the new political economy of this emerging proto-mode of production.

Will Syriza create the conditions for a transition towards a full-mode of Commons-based peer production?

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Book of the Day: Cyber-Proletariat

Book: Cyber-Proletariat/ GLOBAL LABOUR IN THE DIGITAL VORTEX. Bhy NICK DYER-WITHEFORD. Pluto Press, 2015

URL = http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo20704212.html

 

Description

“The utopian promise of the internet, much talked about even a few years ago, has given way to the information highway’s brutal realities: coltan mines in the Congo, electronics factories in China, devastated neighborhoods in Detroit. In Cyber-Proletariat, Nick Dyer-Witheford shows the dark side of the information revolution through an unsparing analysis of class power and computerization. He reveals how technology facilitates growing polarization between wealthy elites and precarious workers and how class dominates everything from expanding online surveillance to intensifying robotization. At the same time he looks at possibilities for information technology within radical movements, casting contemporary economic and social struggles in the blue glow of the computer screen.

Cyber-Proletariat brings Marxist analysis to bear on a range of modern informational technologies. The result is a book indispensable to social theorists and hacktivists alike and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how Silicon Valley shapes the way we live today.” (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo20704212.html)

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