Odoo is very FOSS friendly: https://github.com/odoo/odoo I have been mulling over the problem posed by automation and software participating in the labor market alongside people for quite a few years now. I love hearing about localized solutions to problems. The closer people are to the control of what they need to survive, the better. One of the ways to localize control are what David Graeber calls Debt Loops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs Since reading the book hes talking about in the lecture, I have been mulling over how one might make a digital version of gift-economies/debt-loop/auto-jubilee networks. One of the corrosive aspects of markets is the spot transaction. It anonymizes money (something that represents the labor of others owed to you the holder) and encourages us to dehumanize each other into economic means to our ends. Gift loops make each transaction explicitly a public act, and in doing so makes sure that we are confronted with our interdependence on a regular basis. Economically gift economies have the advantage of moving the issuer of credit and debt from a central bank, into the hands of individuals making the decision to trust other individuals and the debt loop system. Those with the ability to express trust in others, and when that trust is reciprocated, then that is the wealth creation engine. When any debt is paid forward until it reaches back to the issuer, the loop is canceled, and all the obligations are unzipped. Therefore one person initiating trust can cancel N nodes in a loop, effectively unlimited. Since it is also fully public, cheating means cheating in public. Beyond the exchange of labor in money or debt interactions, we have a deeper problem of the displacement of the labor market by automation. Beyond the economic arguments, there is a philosophical problem with selling a non-rivalrous commodity and failing to create in the market the demand for said commodity through wage creation. The expected effect of this process would be rising productivity, with stagnant wages as the few jobs remaining are competed for by an ever increasing reserve army of the unemployed. Turns out you can see that in the data as early as the mid 90's. I attached an article I am working on to outline this problem, if you are interested in reading more. On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 11:27 AM Tim Keller <turbofx@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a tangent, but on the same vein.
I find myself with my wife and kids at lots of craft fairs, etc. In all cases, the conversation goes something like:
"Oh, those earrings.. $12.50 with a card, $10 with cash." I know in all those cases, it's a situation where they're getting boned by a company like Toast or one of these other middleman transaction processors.
I think it would be cool if there was a more local option, but offered the same level of ease of use that [insert POS system] I see things like odoo out there, but I don't know how FOSS friendly they are.
Tim.
On Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 9:06 PM Gregory Boyce via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
For the last 5 years or so, I"ve been putting a lot of thought into what I would like the tech industry to look like in the future, and what steps we could take in order to achieve it.
What I see is locally managed tech infrastructure focused on local communities. Communities can share the same open source tools instead of depending on large centralized platforms. This would mean that the people who make the decisions about how online commerce operates in the area could actually be close to the users and acting on their best interests.
I see this looking like community sales platforms connecting people to the local stores, various Fediverse compatible platforms for Social Media, video sharing, chat systems, and jobs boards.
Each service is an opportunity to help people pay each other instead of sending money out of the community.
The services could be hosted on existing cloud platforms, but I've been looking at building community clouds, hopefully partnered with municipal fiber.
To me, it's more about a philosophical shift around the motivations of developers more than anything, but I'd love to meet with people who'd like to help build a proof of concept.
On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 6:14 PM Mike kantrowitz <mike.kantrowitz01@gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry I couldn't join for dinner after the last meeting. Sounds like it was a good conversation. I'm definitely interested in further conversation about tech and social change.
/mike
On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 2:55 PM John Stoffel via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
>>> "Gregory" == Gregory Boyce via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> writes:
Awesome. I'll have to try to make it to an upcoming event.
And we will be sure to publicize this on the wlug.org web site as well.
I was thinking about setting up either a Matrix server for chat, or a Lemmy server for a reddit-like set of discussion forums.
Would the chats be logged for later viewing? I'm not familiar with either setup. I honestly prefer email lists, but that's because I find interacting in a web browser for forums to be a pain in the rear because I have to use the mouse for some much, which just slows me down.
On Sun, Aug 11, 2024 at 7:48 PM Kevin Harrington <mad.hephaestus@gmail.com> wrote:
Count me in! I have been working on a book on the topic for a few years on and off. Fyi just about every meeting of Robot Club turns into one of those sort of discussions. We meet at technocopia Saturdays 1-4.
On Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 7:34 PM Gregory Boyce via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:
Hey folks,
At dinner after the last meeting we had an interesting conversation around the intersection of software/technology and big picture social change. This has been an area of interest of mine for a while now, and I'd love to connect with other people who would be interested in talking about ways to make meaningful change.
Would anyone be interested in joining a discussion on something like Discord, Slack, or maybe an open source alternative?
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