Network Nations Ep:3 Commons, Mutualism & Entanglement: Building the Foundation of Network Nations

Transcript

I see that we drop the baton. So when I listen to people talking about Dows, like I literally imagine that they see a stadium that everybody's sitting there and everybody votes together and it's like you've no wrong. >> How can we actually incentivize more of that not just at the local local territorial level but also across community that share similar value and have kinship. So basically I think there's like models that are you know attractors in terms of like thinking about uh the order of the world.

>> What is a lowhanging fruit that we could collectively pick across movements and work together in order to bring this idea of a network nation of you know like this network of networks of communities on a global scale into existence. Just one. >> Welcome back to the network nations miniseries on the green pill podcast. I'm Felix Bear and together with Kuma de Filipe, I'm your co-host for the coming episodes. Across the world, new kinds of civic communities are beginning to take shape. Communities that use decentralized technologies such as blockchain infrastructures or peer-to-peer networks to govern themselves, steward shared resources, and act together across borders. We call them network nations. And in this series, we want to explore network nations as a new design space for civil

society in theorked age. Our goal is to chart an alternative pathway from the network state. One where technology serves civil society, not the other way around. Instead of reproducing today's power imbalances in network societies, we are asking, what if network societies were built from the bottom up as shared commons rather than from the top down and startup ventures? What if they treated members as co-creators rather than customers? What if they practice cooperation and mutual care rather than competition and extraction? And what if they cultivated a sense of sovereignty as a collective good for the many rather than a private asset owned by just a few? Each episode brings together thinkers, builders, and organizers who are exploring this new frontier of community self-governance together with

us, helping us to imagine how a civil society can reclaim political agency in the age of networks. To dive deeper, visit our website networknations.network, where you find our manifesto and many ways to get involved with our movement. In today's episode, we're exploring the role of the commons in the vision of network nations. We're joined by two leading voices in this space, two people who have spent the last decades reimagining how communities can build, own, and govern shared resources. We are super excited to have Sarah Horowitz and Michelle Bounds on the show. Sarah is the founder of the Mutualist Society and the Freelancers Union. She's a longtime advocate for cooperivist economic models and practices. And her work really centers around a simple but powerful

idea. When traditional institutions fail to meet the challenges of our days, communities need to step in and create systems of care, trust, and solidarity collectively. Michelle is the founder of the P2B Foundation, also a frequent guest of the Greenpill podcast, and he's one of the most influential theorists of the common economy. Over the last three decades, he mapped and supported communities around the globe that use peer-to-peer networks to create and share value collectively. He's also the author of several landmark works like the common manifesto and he writes a brilliant substate called the fourth generation civilization which we recommend you to check out. Together with these two brilliant minds, we want to explore how collective resource stewardship and ownership can build the

foundation for network nations and self-sign communities in today's digital age. We want to really dive into questions of um how might these communal ideas of ownership help us to move from a fragile polarized society of individuals towards a more resilient andworked form of interdependence. Thanks for tuning in and let's dive into it. Great. So, thank you for being here Michelle and Sara. It is a great great pleasure. Um so to start uh this episode uh we would like both of you to kind of uh uh describe a little bit your own experience. Uh you've both been very

involved with many different communities that are operating uh through like a commoning approach or mutualistic approach etc. So uh it would be nice to like try to understand what are those communities, why do they choose to operate according to those uh to those principles and also like the extent to which beyond beyond operating with those principle internally as a community you have also been observing attempt or effective um effective achievement of interconnecting among other community that also operate of the same type. So I I founded the uh P2B foundation in 2005 and you know I I so basically I started

observing the you know the scene uh so for about 20 years now right and I using I use the I use a wiki to document uh what I see and so I would kind of have I would recognize three periods in my research. The first one is free software communities, open knowledge, open design. So you know 93 uh creation of the web and the browser democratized access to the networks and people start sharing massively code knowledge and design. So that's my first serving was like how do they work? Now I would not consider these like network nations or mutualistic.

They're like productive organizations. They, you know, they do things together, but I'm not very much aware of like any like solidarity arrangements or, you know, you're pretty much on your own. If you know, you have to have stage support or corporate support or you're freelancer, but it's like it's very focused on doing something particular. Then there's a a second group of communities that I looked at uh and this would I would call them the urban and the rural commons and this is already a bit different because this is local and there is a paradox that I want to mention here. So you know this these people know each other. So there's like

a a pragmatic solidarity. You know, it's what you do with people, you know, if if you see them really suffering, you might want to do something about it. It's not they're not like formally organized to do that, but you can just feel there's already a different atmosphere and and but there's a paradox which is, you know, so there's a local level and it's very local and they they they hardly work together with other people doing the same things which are like close by.

So typically a permaculture you know east in Gent may not work together with permaculture west in get but they do have this global permaculture uh design community. So there's a lot of learning going on. There's events online events physical events courses. So it is circulating at that level and then it's it's it's very local at the same time. So that would be you know so far as I can kind of remember my my observations.

Then the third type of community I looked at is web 3. There I I feel there's a paradox. So I think the the tension in web 3 is between a very strong individualism because they're libertarian most of them like they're very libertarian their ways of thinking. They want freedom above all but then there's community. and is it's not necessarily that they think about this together, they just do it. So there's very strong community and so I was actually pleasantly surprised uh and that's where I met also you guys uh you know in Suzalu Montenegro. I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of

like solidarity that was uh obvious there that people you know I I I was I wasn't doing very well at that time and you know I got my taxes paid and I I just had to say something and somebody would would uh so I thought that was like impressive and the capacity you know the pluralism of it was also very very amazing in my view and so that I I that created an attachment on my part on the web ethos because I thought yeah this is this is very human in in some way. So it's a bit paradoxical.

So, but none of these uh movements, you know, are like formally the solidaristic, right? They they just people doing stuff together. But so you know if I take on my historical hat so I so basically you know when I talk about the possation of the commons if you remember that is the so the idea is that we have periods in history where you know where societies do well there's a centrifugal pressure things get organized integrated centralized and the state you know takes care of its citizens or whatever the the the state form is And that has a paradoxical effect that you become a

consumer of the state right in a way you become a consumer of the services of the state and that dilutes the horizontal self-organization solidaristic elements. uh and then in periods when the state and the market function less well and you have disintegration centripetal uh disintegrating decentralizing uh pressures people are in you know in a stress situation of like where do I get support where do I find a job what happens if I lose my job you know all these questions come up and that will create a pressure for people to to go back to real solidarity because

they're not getting it from from the state and I think this is where we are right so we we we come from a long period in which we didn't have to do that and therefore lots of the commoning that took place wasn't yet informed by this really need to like like to survive it's it was passion passionate projects things we want to do we look for meaning in our lives we you know we find people everywhere in the world who wants to do the same. Uh but it wasn't like I'm have to make sure that people have my back and I think that is changing. So I think people right now are very much looking into that and that's I think where

network nations come in as one of the ways of thinking of like how do we create real solidarity and you know I always like to say maybe a bit provocatively but that you know sacrifice and solidarity are the two requirements for community for a real community right if you don't have that you're playing if there's a bit of pressure you you you move around but if If you have those two things then then you start acclimating power because people will act in concert to protect something and we're not there yet but we are moving in that direction because things are obviously not going well in the world. So I I think this is of course depending where you live. You

know I live in Asia where things are seemingly still going well and so you know there's a bit more so social welfare now than five years ago and maybe that's still the case in China but certainly in Europe and and the US the trend is the other direction. Right. So that it depends also a bit where you are. >> Yeah. and uh and on your side Sarah like what are the what are the your own experience of those communities? >> Yeah, I I think that um the way Michelle is describing the role of the state is is actually quite interesting and I'll get to that in a in a minute. you know, I have been organizing freelance workers. Uh found that very interesting

what you were saying about the first the first phase. Um and freelancers were really to me the people who were starting to organize around their own needs because they had fallen out of the social safety net. And so to me they were the architects of building what what they needed. And I would say that to me has always been the way that any of this starts is what is it that more than one person needs that you have to do in a group in order to succeed. If you can do it on your own, you really don't need this. If you actually need to form a worker cooperative or a food purchasing organization or a community garden, you cannot do that alone. And so it's really starting from that

throughine of need of how groups then start to organize themselves in having more and more complexity in that arrangement. And so what I think is very interesting is in the last two years I've been organizing the mutualist society and really talking to mutualists globally and finding that it really is this notion of um I'd say an isolation where different groups are starting to kind of emerge starting to then see who else is doing this uh and to start to see what are some problems that are affecting the whole group, which to me is the opportunity for the network

nations is to start to say, wait a minute, th this probably isn't going to be a strictly libertarian operation. There's going to be some need to start to look at what are what are the decisions that we need to make in order to enable these groups to grow such that we start at a base and that base then grows is woven and connected together by their needs and their decisions and that that actually is the quarterbacking for how you build policy. And so I think one of the most important things is um and let me just say I I think that there's a very interesting ven diagram around

commoning and mutualism and mutualism there are three principles. One is it has to have a solidoristic group and by that it just means that you know whether you're a knitter or a farmer you kind of know who's a knitter and a farmer and you kind of know who isn't. It's not just open. It's not a park. It's it's not a library. Parks and libraries are wonderful. they're just slightly different. The second is it has to have an economic mechanism. It has to be services or dues or a lending circle. And the third is that it has to have a long-term time horizon. So to me, what I think is interesting about network nations as a concept is looking for the organizations that have a commoning orientation and a mutualist orientation

and maybe even others that in creating that ecosystem. And that's what I think is interesting is to see it in a kind of mosaic and weaving rather than a monolith. >> I I wanted to make a small remark on the relation between commoning and mutualism. I I find it very interesting and fruitful. I have a slightly different framing in which I I look at it historically. So you have basically physical commons and the focus is not on solidarity but on common access to resource that people need. So you know fisheries and mountain flanks and and common pastures all of that when we have the big enclosure movement uh in the 16th century and even earlier in the

13th century uh you know and people start being chasing away to the cities as proletarians that's when mutualism becomes a big need because they mutualize risk life risk and that's that's I think where mutualism then come from and it wasn't invented then because you know it existed in the free middle in the free city states of the middle ages and in the Ottoman Empire. So it's you know like guilds and stuff is pretty standard uh stuff. Uh so but I think you know there there is a very strong relation between commoning and mutualism. Their domains are different but I I think you know there's a family a family link. So I just want wanted to say that that yeah

>> thanks. >> Yeah I just wanted to come in really quick. So you both kind of describe this uh macrohistorical and political trend that um forces more and more communities into considering you know to organize in these mutualistic or solidaristic ways and we see this all over the place right popping up like communities organizing often on a local level but they're very much in a patchwork at the moment right um in the comments community and in the mutualistic community I think we are observing the same thing even in the web free space so there's a clear need and desire to collect effectively organized at a scale where you can have actually an impact. But um and and as you both say like network nations can provide like an institutional wrapper to um facilitate this kind of governance at

like the network level. integrating all these local nodes into a larger political entity. But um this is obviously a consideration which is also not completely new and there have been attempts in the past in both of your communities I suppose as well right the comm's movement and the materialistic movement. So why have we not seen the emergence of such an entity and what would a network nation have to look like in order to actually facilitate that effectively? I really think something happened in the 1990s when we started talking about scale that it actually trips us up because it makes us feel like we need to start at a point of impact first. And what we really have to see is that it's a runway. And so what I

think really the secret here is for me one of the biggest issues is people need access to appropriate capital. there are no capital markets that are really appropriate except somewhat in Spain, somewhat in Italy, and probably in other places too. Um, but it's realizing that you have to start with this patchwork of groups and and really find out what they need and then keep letting them grow and then the policy can come in to start to change laws. If you look at Madreon in in Spain, it's exactly how it started, right? It started as a training educational program amidst a fascist government. By the time it started reaching maturity instead of living in

the cracks and crevices, it started to dictate policy. And now it's the economic juggernaut of the region and I was just there and you can be sure that the top officials not only have ministers there, but they're there. So I think they're the metaphor in many ways for that. I would like to stress the importance of you know some transcendent element to achieve a high levels organization as well. So I think uh you know first you have religions and you know the guilds are are linked to religion you know like every guild in Italy has a a patron saint and it's linked to the to the local and and probably you know larger church as well and it also motivates people to organize

the higher scale then you know uh after secularization sets in in the west we have ideological movements you know I I used to be part of the socialist movement when I was younger and it was still you know really strong and people believed in it and you know every every village in in in the Flanders where I lived had a a people's house and the socialist pub and and you know the I mean so there there was something there that bound people together and I think we are still missing that. So we're still missing some kind of motivational ideology uh that we don't have you know and in my more naive years I thought

commoning you know the ideology of the commons might be that but it hasn't really I don't feel it has happened and paradoxically I do think the blockchain has actually that kind of effect uh you know this kind of particular I I know it's provocative but I I like to say that probably to provoke I say blockchain is Jesus right Because you know I I follow a coach in Karatani's idea that people always want to go back to this convivio uh stage at a higher level of of complexity right so you have commoning and gifting that's what people want you know to trust people to have friends to have family that everything is smooth smooth and warm but then civilization destroys that and then we

want to go back so we do that first through world religions and then through these secular utopian movements and I think we at the stage of constru constructive networks. But what what can bind those constructive networks is not clear yet. But suddenly blockchain ideology itself paradoxically functions, right? Like many people know Dows don't really work very well and it doesn't matter. It's the belief in Dows that that functions to bind people together. But is that enough for the the broad mass? I I don't know yet. uh but we we so I would also like to introduce uh a concept that I myself just learned about from Venatees Rao which I think is very illuminating

which is cosmopol right so I used to think that you know with with digital technology we now have something entirely new that can create these network nation and translocal organization but he reminded me that no this has been going on forever so we always had a mix of territorial torial and non- territorial. The Pope, the Caulif were already the heads of non-territorial communities. And so you always have cosmopololis, you know, more or less organized from the Republic of Letters, which is like more like informal to very, you know, international guilds and and all kinds of uh really existing uh transnational.

Of course, now we have a technology which kind of supercharges it. I I still think that is true. But what is going to bind it? This is my big question. I don't know. And right now it's the blockchain which is you know the the mo let's say the most imaginative ambitious people they're thinking blockchain. But there's still such a such a rift between that layer that cosmopolitan layer if you like of postnational kind of mentalities and the people who are rooted still in their region and locality and and may not think that way at all and and and and may even reject it for you know because they don't like

technology or so we we have a problem here that I don't know yet how how humanity is going to solve. Yeah, I'm actually I want to take the opportunity um to actually bring so if if I understand correctly what you're saying is like um there is the commoning which is managing common pool resources or ping resources in common which can become then mutualized resources to some extent but that's really more on the production and consump consumption level and then you have like the mutualist approach which is more like the solidarity of like we want to make sure that everyone is fine and so we're going to provide services and support each

other and um what uh so one of the question I think that we're also trying to understand is like do those we can observe a lot of realities in which those things happen but we can observe less so maybe like some some exceptional case of course exist but it's not a common practice that we can see these intra community uh So multiple community that have their own commoning and perhaps their own mutualist approaches that all of them are like well actually I want to common or I also want to extend my mutualistic approach to other community and I think Michelle that's pretty much what you're touching at which is the question of

like why would we do that uh it is easy in the local territory where there is this kind of like relation it becomes much harder when we move outside of a territory story where this relationship doesn't exist and I think this is where we we come in with the network nation approach which is well actually we can see that there is reasons to do that when and only when there is this sense of community this sense of kinship this sense of nationhood that emerge in which I want to I want to protect my people I want to know that the people that are part of the same tribe they feel good and so this goes beyond a collective or a guild of fishermen and wanting to manage a fishery but it's actually I

want to make sure that everyone is okay so we have this uh word within like the network national approach which is entanglement which I would love to actually pick both of your brains on that because like I feel like I would say entanglement is probably both a consequence but also a source of mutualism uh meaning that I if I'm entangled with people, I will be more likely to want to make sure that everyone is okay. But also as I engage in those practice, I am creating kinship with those people. And I will say perhaps common is the same which is like I will choose to put things in common with the people that I care about and

that I want to support. But the fact that now we have stuff in common, we're entangled, right? So, so I would love to hear from both of your side like first of all like how do you see the relationship between commoning mutualism and entanglement and if you have ideas because we're exploring those questions. If you have ideas about like building from the scholarship of common and and the empirical example of commoning and and uh and mutualism is like what can we do like how can we actually incentivize more of that not just at the local local territorial level but also across community that share similar value and have kinship. So I recently wrote an article on the cosmo on the geopolitical

cosmolocism and so basically I think there's like three models that are you know attractors in terms of like thinking about uh the order of the world and so there is like a western model you know based on individualism conflict democracy uh markets trade and I think it's kind represented by the WE the World Economic Forum and the idea is you know multistakeholder domains with uh finance capital weak nation states and and approved NOS's and they kind of you know an expert class that decides like how to organize these different domains but

there's no play there's no people like there's no sovereignity anymore it it just kind of disappeared and then there's this other force that wants to go back to sovereignity and that you know is Russia China the bricks and you know they kind of want to go back to the United Nations but without western hegemony and even with civilizational you know elements infused so you know people talk about the civilization states approach like a postwave was failian nation state approach so that's the other model right where like you know it's kind of paradoxical they're more authoritarian but they actually believe in popular sovereignity you know in their way of thinking that you know like the Chinese party believes, you know, it represents

the people. They they they really believe that and that's the model they they have and it seems that the western model is declining and that that model is going up and who knows for how long and you know because there's climate issues, there's resource issues, there's danger war. So you know it's hard to say how these things will evolve but I think that there's a third option and you know I called it the archipelago of regenerative villages and I think especially for example in Europe which is you know decaying very fast in my view uh you know because I I I travel there like every 18 months and

I it's just like every time I go there it's worse than the last time and the same in the US. I was in San Francisco recently and I thought oh my god you know anyway so it's it's decaying and paradoxically that motivates people right more to have to look for alternatives and we have very strong civil society with highly educated people um and so that third option I think is is is real is like people doing things on the ground because they want a better life more meaning more solidarity and and they look like how can we how can we get stronger? Okay, so this gets me to the entanglement issue and especially

around capital because if you look at it and I you know I did this study in Gent in 2016 or 17 and I looked at 500 urban commons and typically you know there were two people working halfime for an NGO and getting burnouts every five years and being replaced by other people like that's that's the scene. So the people doing all this extraordinary good work, they're impoverished, they're precarious, they don't have capital. So you know that's the paradox. If you do something regenerative, there's no capital. And I think there's an opportunity and that's, you know, what I call the cosmological financing facility, right? where and you know I

use the historical analogy of you know so the Roman Empire is is going down and you know people are leaving the cities and you have these monasteries that are doing well and people are you know looking to live around them and and at some point there is kind of a merger between the old Roman elite and the church and they start investing in it because it's in their interest right and so I see today this $3 trillion of floating capital you know an exit strategy from postnational uh people but it's not going to work because people are going to go after them with pitchforks when things get really bad right and so I think there is an historical opportunity to attract part of that capital for investing in

regenerative entities and that I think is where the network nations come in like I see federations or regenerative projects creating common digital identities and trying to attract this kind of capital and there the entanglement would be you know in terms of micro capital right because I think this is very important like materium I really like what they've been doing you know is basically you can bypass venture capital big banks uh black rock by doing crowdfunding crowd lending crowd investment and so you can imagine forms of capital where you know you have like 70% local and 30%

non-local local, right? So, you keep control of the local, but you attract these people. Uh, and you know, it sounds like Ethopian, but that's how the Middle Ages worked. This is this is how the Ottoman Empire worked. This is how preodern decentralized societies worked. They had, you know, people were very local and people were moving around like the gills, the cathedral builders. Um so I I think this is this is uh possible and I I personally want to work to make that possible right and and um yeah so that's kind of entanglement is this kind of combination of let's say the bio- regional guilds and the cosmological

guilds bio-regionalism functions as a hor horizontal solidarity all people doing different things in the same region and cosmological is all people doing the same thing all over the world and and those two things come together to create like a defense mechanism for this archipelago you know and they can have good relationships locally if they want to if they can but if they don't get local friendly uh state they can defend themselves to that translocal aspect. So to you the entanglement just just to understand you're you're um you're you're using the word entanglement to describe that um interweven network of financial

investments. >> Yeah. Yeah. but also you know people that can move around you know so for example you have a network of eco villages and I heard they have a passport now you know the gen the what's it called the I forgot the name but you know there's like a a global organization for eco village they don't call it passport because they don't want to attract attention but they have some kind of password >> they have some kind of password so this is like really interesting that they're doing that so they so that people can move between those eco villages and they have some kind of privileges because they belong to that federation. So it's like mutualized identif identity system

identification guilds in the middle ages you know if you were like a member of a guild in the middle ages you had halfway houses throughout Europe and the Mediterranean like if you were part of a Venetian guild you could go to Marrakesh you could go to Gent and there will be a house for you you know >> you know I this is what I'm really worried about I think that when I look at the energy needs of AI and data centers And I look at foreign policies of nation states are now enabling that growth at an exist ex exponential and existential rate.

I start to really worry about and and I hear a lot of talk and especially in Montenegro of exit that people are thinking about a nation state or a network state as a way for a group of people who have the most means to exit a lot of things that planet earth is having a problem with. I take that really seriously. And so when I look at how are we building, I really am trying to think about how do people start to organize to get food, shelter, housing, health that in this context. So it's not

abstract at all. Not that this whole this conversation has been abstract in any way, but I think the outside looks like we're discussing this in a laboratory, but I don't think any of us actually feel like we are. So to me, in that the idea of entanglements is that we're going to have to start to work together. You know, it's a wonderful thing to be an individual if you're young and rich, right? It's never better. You can do what you want and you don't have obligations. But the truth is in unions and cooperatives and in faith communities, you know that something's real because people don't get along because they're human and there are mechanisms for them to navigate that.

And that is just at the node level, but that I think what we're going to need around these entanglements is actually looking at the metaphors for the federated bodies that always exist. So every trade union has a federating system of different locals to different nationals and then even the national unions have international federating bodies and so they didn't come out of some abstraction they came out of actually figuring out needs and trade and trading information.

So I think that there's something about in this context that we are going to start to see this need for people to start to federate and figure out what those practices are. I don't think that starts with government actually. I think that that starts with people coming together and then saying what it is they need right now. I think what they need is capital and and so that you can start to have these groups have the ability to grow and they need to grow either with something that is like um a grant or a very low interest loan um and starting to go from there.

Mhm. Yeah, I think that's a that's a really good point and um I think like the the narrative of exit is precisely what we with the network national thing uh are trying to counterveail with actually not just saying we don't want to exit but actually saying that interdependence is desirable. It's something we have to cope with anyways like we cannot escape from it but actually we even want more of it because we want to be more entangled with the people that we resonate with and with whom we want to have this kind of like solidarity. One thing that I really am seeing that I think um is an interesting issue and Michelle sort of was talking about this a bit too is I look at the

way people in web 3 organize and what the way I think of it is these generations that came before up to the 90s were passing the baton because they had institutions that taught one generation how to manage and to build for the future. And then after the 90s when we destroyed so much of the social sector both especially in the United States I see that we dropped the baton. So when I listen to people talking about Dows, like I literally imagine that they see a stadium that everybody's sitting there and everybody votes together and it's like you've no wrong and the the level of sophistication and governance is so shocking from such very intelligent people and I would say that

has been very striking to me in two years that people don't understand it's not just quadratic voting, it's really having forms of delegation of authority and power and that those aren't bad things. they just have to be designed properly by people with an ability to iterate when they don't work and they don't work all the time. >> Yeah. I I think you know there's a a great relearning that that is taking place and but I think there's a psychological u change you know when like when you have the level of social disintegration that we see in the west you know people are going to get experiences where it becomes really important like who can I count on you know I had that myself and my life has

changed like I I always say I've become more feudal and I mean that in a special way that I want to be able to trust the people I work with, you know, not that they like look the other way when something happens. Um, >> you know, when you're in a rich and you can go anywhere, that doesn't matter so much but >> it's is it is going to start to matter more and more and so so, you know, we'll have to go in like a accelerated learning because it's it's becoming existential to find these ways of solidarity. But I I see it I see it happening in in in many different ways.

You know like the broad funds in Holland uh you know I work for smart which had like you know 30,000 full members and 300,000 u uh like light members. Um there's yeah I think people are starting to look and I think you should look at exit not just in a negative way. There's a negative exit which is you know as long as I make it I don't care but there's also a positive exit is like the old system doesn't work anymore and we have to find another way to do to do things and to survive right so I I I would also think that exit in terms of like when you realize that maybe you know you're not going to get your

pension you know uh that you counted on and that's that's also an exit. It's you didn't choose it. It's a, you know, it's because that your society is not is not working as well as it used to. And so you you then you you know, if you think about the Middle Ages, all the people in the cities in Europe were farmers who fled the farm, right? You there was a law that that if you fled one year and your master didn't catch you, you were free. And so they end up in these cities and they have nothing.

Nothing. you know there was no state. So that's where the gills come from from like a really you know existential motivation like we we can only count on each other and those times I think are coming back. I want to poke uh at the question of exit a little bit further because I think this also like it's another important point uh that we're trying to uh elaborate and and crystallize with the network national framework which is um one way is exiting and the other way is is like which is substrative is like I'm leaving this system and I'm going to another system and when we're thinking the terms of the network connection

we're thinking more in additive layer which is like we're not really exiting, we're just adding something in order to fill the gap, right? Because that where that which the state is no longer providing, that which the corporate world is providing in a slightly distorted manner. Um it's not that we want to exit the system, it's just that the system needs more and and I think this is like the more traditional commons approach, which is it's not like we're exiting everything and we're off grid. is rather let's bring the commons back into the picture but it doesn't require exiting. It's actually quite the opposite is like let's be even more entangled and let's add an additional layer.

>> Yeah. But it's also the system is exiting you. Right. The system ex is exiting you because they're no longer providing support and >> Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But but I think there is an important distinction to be made between the more like you know libertarian approach of like I'm exiting the government is failing me. I'm exiting and I'm starting something from scratch with all the complexity that is entails versus the government is failing me. How do I fill the gap and potentially how do I find partnership uh in the same way as like you know you know public comments partnership there can be a >> I think there's something else here which is you need these organized institutions of people who have their own power and resources and and self-

financing because they actually have to exist as a counterweight. They are a check and balance. Like part of what has happened in the last 30 years is the governments even in in Europe really have been backing corporate the corporate interests so much more. And so they're now able to look at, you know, antitrust laws and and the platforms. Now there's a time to say it's not that we're asking government to be kind and nice. It's that people have the authority and power because they can make change happen. And I think that we shouldn't forget like commoning and mutualism are really really the keys

and they're the keys and the root system to actual building power. And that I think is what we really have to be thinking about here because you want to create not just incentives for people to get together but to have the authority to determine what happens to the water that we drink. You know what how are we enriching the soil? How are we preventing climate change? All of those were changes that happened um not because we were having um an earth that was focused on humanity per se.

>> Yeah. And I think what's interesting is that um and I think both of you are already riffing on this is that with network nations and similar frameworks, we are not trying to build a power from an individualistic point of view, right? Like the network state in comparison is a quite libertarian or corporate model, right? The inspiring book is of course the sovereign individual which tries to in use network governance in order to enhance individual autonomy basically, right? The starting point here is quite different. So we are thinking about self-s sovereign community networks which are bottomup organizing around shared needs and urgencies actually in the world in order to enhance collectively their impact. So it's a

very different theory of power and theory of change and um I think also something Michelle you touched up on it as well is um if we're thinking now about the institutional rapper we need to build in order to facilitate this kind of like bottomup community governance then it's not enough to think about like technological systems right like a DAO is a nice thing but it is not an institution itself an institution is a sociotechnical system so it has on the one hand side like sophisticated governance designs which allow to organize at scale. But it also needs a shared culture and identity like a sense of nationhood, a sense of shared belonging and some sort of like you know um forms of legitimacy, accountability

and responsibility. So norms and values that make the thing oper be operational. And that's often lacking. I mean web 3 is building a lot of interesting tooling but it's lacking the institutional dimension and the dimension. So I just want to ask the two of you um how we what are actually the next steps we can take in order to build these more sophisticated more embedded kind of institutional forms that are actually enabling communities to scale up from the bottom from the grassroots to a global translo scale. You know, I I've been thinking about that a lot in the two years with the mutualist society because, you know, Michael Zarum and others have really been thinking about

mutualist tech infrastructure. And I find there's kind of a paradox. On the one hand, it's very easy to enter and start anything, you know, with Squarespace and Substack and everything is so plugandplay, but it gets you onto the wrong highway. And so it kind of helps you get the first few miles going. And so I've really been thinking a lot about and I think this is not unusual to think about how do you put things in technological systems that are a little bit rudimentary in the beginning and I say that really importantly. So keeping track one of the biggest things I think is an example of let's say a Facebook

group like what's wrong with a Facebook group? Well, they don't give you notifications like you need to elect leaders. Why don't you start passing the hat and having a due system? They don't want you to build independent institutions because you would exit. And so what is really important is to use the platforms to start and really start to hack at them to figure out how you then build something. And I would say that's like a very practical step for the here and the now. But I think that goes to the idea of a network nation is to start to pay attention to what what would be systems that are useful and how do you create processes because I think that starts building the infrastructure

for governance and that really is the important thing like you don't have to get things right you just have to have the ability to change them when they go wrong and that's called iteration. We all know that's really important. Um so yeah I think that to me building mutualist tech infrastructure is really important. I think that uh you know it's to start from the people right so for example one of my frustrations web three is okay you've all these amazing funding mechanisms but it's coders applying for funds as coders and they say oh we should do this we should do that for example oh let's have a piece of software that connects organic consumers and organic producers well guys there's like maybe 400 of them

already why don't you check it Why don't you know that? But they don't and they don't they don't look it up. And so they they they're completely divorced from the kind of communities that I studied in 2017, the urban and the rural common. And so I think it has to be turned around. It's like these people who are doing this and they're like small groups of people who trust each other at first and then they you know slowly scale and these people need tools to scale.

But why don't we have people who ask them what they want, right? And start from their needs and and so that's that's hardly happening. Uh and so the that's the problem today and that's what I want to change is that this complete disconnect between these two worlds is detrimental. >> Right. But can can I maybe pull up really quick on this point because I think it's interesting one. So so what would be needed in order to flip this around? Well, you know, I think there's a really good example about mutual aid networks which have cropped up everywhere all the time. One of the things that I've watched is the foundation worlds go in to fund them and instead of saying what do you need? How do you build it? It's here's the advocacy agenda.

>> Go can you can you make sure to plug into that? And that advocacy agenda was very typically created by management consultants and under the category of you can't make this stuff up. it hasn't built that kind of infrastructure. So I think it really is maybe looking for um one example that might be widespread and start to try to build that and watch how that grows because I do think that sometimes it gets very heady that like we want to we want to think about like the complex infrastructure but actually like when you get down to it I really think like you're walking around with your yellow pad and you're saying like

what do you need and you're deeply listening and you're seeing the patterns and you're network building from there which is kind of like what entrepreneurs know how to do. So we do need to to go back to that orientation I think. >> Yeah. You know, one of the things that I I wanted to do with my wiki is that, you know, really let people know what is working because I I I personally believe, you know, yes, there's a lot of experimentation, you know, and that's good and healthy, but in the end, it's a few things that work really well that get emulated and become the norm, right?

And people tend to forget that it's not just like a thousand. No, no. For example, you know, Will Rick with Sarafu. network is now doing very well and people are flocking to it because it's working you know and so whether he is a perfect system or not doesn't matter because it's working well enough and so that gets emulated right and so I think that also these stories should be circulating what is working >> and it's never like the best technical system that is working it's it's almost always like a mismatch of things that just pragmatically were put together but because of the charisma and the trust of a small group of people that is what gets emulated and and so this kind of

human experience is what we we need to pay much more attention to and >> and I think also when we often talk about the strategy of how to build like sophisticated governance many people often apply very managerial engineering mindset in terms of linear planning right Michelle that's something you I think like build on right now like there's this idea that we can foresee a specific specific future and then we can have like you know backward planning and like defined steps and then technical mechanisms to achieve these steps but that's not how the complexity of the world often works right we we know >> I look at history >> learning cycles right it's iterative learning and in this way it's also a collective endeavor because we can learn from each other's best practices but also from each other's failures but we

need this collective sense making infrastructure in order to weave these experiences together so maybe do you have some concrete idea because like network nations and many other approaches are an urgent need for this kind of sensemaking infrastructure like how can we build this you think >> so what this is what I would do uh so you know some years ago I was working with David Bolier and Silka Hri the common strategies group and we would do deep dives right and deep dives were like every six months we did that for five six years in a row 25 30 people five five days and bringing two different groups together like the commons and the co-ops, the commons and

ethical finance, the free software and open hardware. And they like to your surprise or maybe not, they actually didn't talk to each other, you know, even though they're the same ethics, but they didn't talk to each other. And >> you know, by letting them know their language, their subjectivities over time, like it was amazing. 18 months after our deep dive, there would always be like five, six projects that didn't exist before. So I would do that, you know, domain specific. Let's get people doing, you know, organic food. Let's bring them together and get web three right and let them talk together so that they know so

that the people who do this high level coordination you know can actually start understanding what the needs are of the people on the ground. So that's that's what I would do, you know, to to to stimulate this disconnection between those two worlds that are not talking to each other because I do think that, you know, if we need if we want social power, we do need some of these tools. We need we need capital, we need fast learning, we need uh I think that's our only hope because I think the you know the rapidity of the interlocking collapse uh is very bad is very fast but we also are learning already eight times faster

than 20 years ago right uh and that's good news so that we can also react and learn uh a lot faster but you know we have we've got to do it from the ground up from the people in the field who who know how to do things. >> Yeah. You know, it's I think that we've been trying to do is bring together mutualists from co-ops and unions and faith and Dows and social entrepreneurs to come together and to start to build relationships through these ideas of apods which are learnings where people can teach and learn from one another.

And now we've been building out workshops which do that like give people an ability to have a round table of a 360 point of view. And I think that is probably the most important is to realize like nobody has the 360 right now. >> And um and that is probably the essential problem. And now I think it is really starting to create ecosystems around groups of people. Whoops. Who can come together to solve what they need as an ecosystem and then have those ecosystems be fluid in their networks.

So they're not um they're they're not closed systems, they're open systems, but you still have some solidarity around the community. So we focus on mutualist practitioners, people who are on the ground doing things, but that obviously would work nicely with the network nations with entanglements because people could come into the network to start to find who would be helpful to fill out a 360. And I think that's what we're going to start to see is these nodes then mutual society as a network others are networks and then looking at a full ecosystem.

>> And just to comment the last comment and I played uh to you P um but um I think an interesting point you're touching on here is there is a need for a point of convergence and an umbrella for um adjacent movements um to learn about each each other. So there needs to be signaling, right? Hey, we're here. we're doing these things you just mentioned and to conversion coordinate and share and this kind of needs a a meme or a narrative or a trope um which is broad enough as an umbrella to encapsulate many of these things. Um I think we're not trying to say that network nations is the only one uh capable of doing this but I think this is how we try to design and think of it also as an integrated function as an integrative movement that

allows to build a platform for many of these already existing and and partially like established uh movements like the commonance movement like the mutualistic move the many others regenerative movements to come together um and see where they are overlapping because there is a shared interest across these communities for building these large scale governance >> and and there in lies the cultural difference, right? If you were doing this 30 years ago, everybody would be having big territorial fights. It that you don't have to have a territorial fight here because actually the power is having the organization and many networks being able to be connected to one another. So if you close your network like it's it's not going to work and it also has to be politically

heterodized. So it really this is going to be a culture of kindness. This is going to be a culture of openness because it has to be. And I think that's really important in moving away from a notion of individualism. You have to be thinking about what are the connections? How do you help build something? Don't just critique. Don't just say no. Say how. >> Yeah, it's a uh but I I I still want to pick your brain S. Um I think like there's one thing that uh um also like often times comes in when we talk about like commons mutualism and things like this um which is that basically if you

don't have like a very um good governance structure which includes uh mechanism of monitoring uh like ensuring that people actually are following all the rules uh and potentially sanctioning the people that do not follow those rules. Um there is always the risk of free riding, there is the risk of like overexloitation, under contribution and so forth. Um and uh and like this is yes of course we can monitor and sanction and then we can solve the problem. Um what I was curious to hear from you um and Michelle if he comes back is like if you had experience within the community that you've been

working on uh in which alternative mechanism like how do we solve the tragedy of the commons without having to necessarily um abide by this system of monitoring of sanctioning. Um, one of the underlying hypothesis that we have within the network framework is that uh we can actually avoid uh the tragedy of the common if we have sufficient degrees of entanglement because obviously you don't want to free ride on your own people.

Um, so I'm curious like but this is an hypothesis. These are strong hypothesis that we have but of course we need to validate it. So I was curious if within the community you have encountered um both of you um have you been exploring community that did identify whether through entanglement or perhaps through other means mechanism that are not monetarian sanctionings and that somehow avoid uh or resolve the tragedy of the common. I would say one thing that comes to mind is like the the stories of the sick the sick societies of like a hundred years ago where people um would pull their resources obviously so that when somebody was sick um they would be able to get health care and surprisingly

what people don't realize is that the committees that would decide would like go to the person's house and be like Joe you're not that sick up and out you're going to work and I think of that really as an important point because we think, "Oh my god, that's so nice." Like, they pulled their resources because that was a perfect example of entanglement. Like, I know you're not really sick. You just drank too much. Get out of bed because we're not paying for you to have a sick day, right? And so, >> but isn't that exactly what monitoring will be? It's like a very strong monitoring, >> but it's what I think we do sometimes is we it is exactly an example of monitoring. And so what I'm saying is what happens is the first step is

bringing people together so they actually have a point of view. Then the second part is to then start to be thinking about these monitoring systems. But sometimes I think that we prioritize the the monitor the monitoring I think will come organically because there's a there it's not abstract. There's a set of resources. It's like musical chairs. There's 10 people who want eight chairs. It's just the truth. and you have to make hard decisions and that's when the group will do it and will set up their protocols. But I think oftent times we go to set up these systems that get overly complicated and overly regulated

like let's have a set of shared resources. Let's have some disagreement. Let's then notice what those disagreements are and build our systems around it. And so I would say it kind of goes back to some of our earlier discussions about starting from the ground up. Don't worry so much about monitoring. Let it let people have their problems. That's how you know you really have an entanglement. Then set up your processes. >> I would just like to mention my experience with smart maybe because I thought that was like a really great formula. Uh so this is so you know for freelancers and so you join them and you know you have an account where

so so they they'll do your invoices and it goes to an account after six months they'll calculate with some kind of algorithm how much you can pay yourself based on an average of your income. right at that moment you become an employee of the co-op and so you're both employer and employee uh of the co-op and then basically you get all the protections of the social state even though you're an independent freelancer right and they call this autonomous workers and I thought it was absolutely a great formula it worked quite well they have you know 30,000

full members in nine countries And these people have unemployment, have health care, have everything that an employee has, but an employee has a subordination contract and they are free workers. And unfortunately, you know, I try to convince them to go transnational because people like me, you know, like I leave my country, they ask me to, you know, to dregister from from everything. So, and I'm not allowed to work in Thailand officially, right? So, and and there's 50 million of us. There's 50 million digital nomads in the world.

So, there's this huge opportunity. And, you know, I I would not mind like exporting the national to the transnational. What I mean is that, you know, you you could still join your Belgian protection mechanism, right, from anywhere in the world. there would be like a a translation layer between your nation and the trans national situation. Um anyway, so I think we need these kinds of mechanisms that uh yeah I know that doesn't respond to your question maybe but no but I think it's interesting because it also gives an idea of what they could be achieved and worked on together and uh I I want to close this very interesting conversation

um with a a short question but we talked about uh the idea of network nations being maybe an integrated function right like creating intersections and opportunities for collaboration across different movements with you know shared intentions to uh collaborate at a global scale. What is a lowhanging just name one what is a lowhanging fruit that we could collectively pick across movements and work together in order to bring this idea of a network nation of you know like this network of networks of communities on a global scale into existence >> just one >> okay one project that I find interesting which seems to be able to scale uh is will radic um with his commitment pooling I have to say I so you know the

story probably you know starting with 1,000 and rotating savings and loans associations in Kenya, putting some of their money in a common pool, creating a first mutual credit uh you know an alternative currency for their community with like eight times more value than they had put in. But they it works because of the collateral. Then he did the cyber physicalization of sharing practices. want to talk to these, you know, tribal chiefs and how they were doing the and then trying to digitalize it and then commitment pooling and I'm I'm going to be part of it basically you know you you can make commitments like I can say I want to teach 40 hours doing

this at at this and people can buy that value can invest in that value you know you're committed to do it and it becomes like multilateral exchange change of value and um this is this is going very well like this is growing you know in Colombia in Malaysia you know starting from the slums of Kenya um so I think we have to look at real cases like that like you know what is actually working and I you know like Benedicting rule is like one guy made up eight rules bit like astrom or there's more than eight rules but anyway and it became the rule for thousands and thousands of communities following that

rule and having a common identity. Um so you know this is the way it's going to work uh with with people who are successful locally and then get emulated. Um and and and we have to know that right that's that's the thing why why the the knowledge has to circulate about what is working and what is not working. I think that's very important. I think the lowhanging fruit would be uh setting up very local capital pools and enabling people to apply for that money and then setting aside each stage for some who which ones survive and do well um and then seeing how they go because I

think that would be a game changer. >> Thank you so much for this uh super enlightening conversation. Uh it's great to talk to not only two great thinkers but also community builders and uh I guess this conversation was also a way to extend the invitation to your communities as well to come in and start putting logs on the fire and uh build together with us or co-create this idea of a network nation. Thanks so much. >> Thank you so much. >> As we close, can you please uh let us know uh how do we get in touch with you?

How can we follow your work? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for me it's very easy. wiki.p2pfoundation.net uh and then forge civilization substack uh where I write every two weeks uh about these types of issues and you know I'm more on the tactical strategical kind of monitoring. Um so yeah that's where you can uh you can find me. So, um, our network can be accessed at mutualistsocciety.net.

We're, uh, running pods in the fall. So, if that's something that's interesting, usually on, um, everything from beekeeping to mcelium networks to mutualist banking and indivisible reserves, uh, teaching and learning, and we're going to be launching something in the next couple weeks. So, come and sign up and be a part of it. That would be great. And thank you so much. really this is a great conversation and I really appreciate it. Thank you. >> Yeah, happy to see Sarah again and also you too. >> I hope we will get again Turkey. I'll be in Turkey for three weeks in Zukash. Uh cash is the place where the first parliament was built. Uh 10 miles away from the place where the first money was

forged and 20 miles away from Ephesi. Uh so come to visit us and the team is civilization building. >> So >> perfect. >> Right on right on topic >> tasks, right? >> Amazing. Thanks a lot. >> Thanks. Bye. Bye. >> Take care. Bye.