Thoughts triggered by the Beyond Cultures of Ownership

I propose a framework aimed to promote collective ownership by removing infinite potential gains from transactional interactions.

The violence of operating with infinite gains within a finite environment is known and well exposed, but the economic frameworks still favours unlimited accumulation of resources (property). Within a finite environment, gains shall also be finite.

Within digital environements, infinitness or endless abundance of content seems the logic, specially when considering in the automated production of media content. On top of the externalised socio-environmental factors that need to be factored in, applying traditional and anachronical ownership approaches to digital content and environments seems futile.

I propose a framework of finite shared ownership that serves as an algorithmical defense for capitalistic speculation and as an equitative distribution of ownership.

We can call it UFMO: Unlimited Finite Mass Ownership

As a pilot, let’s explore this framework within the arts and creative digital production:

If an artist aims to have fair economic retribution for the labor, there are currently several approaches

artist is commissioned to do the work, with inherit power dynamics and master-servant relationships.
artist creates and then sells
1. transfer the content to a sole owner capable of paying fair price for the encapsulated labor: selling to collector / gallery / wealthy individual
2. atomize/reproduce the content at lower price ranges: i.e selling prints / memorablia

All the above scenarios fail as they can:

limit access to ownership to wide ranges of individuals or collectives.
Allow uncapped generation of wealth that might not be evenly distributed.

To mitigate this, new models need to be explored:

The approach aims to favour fair pricing and access to ownership at scale.

The framework is the following:

A creation has a price: that is the cost of production (material and intangible) + the operational costs (environmental and social compensation)
This is the price that the artist aims to collect
A slicing factor is applied to create initial units of ownership
The piece can be owned by purchasing one unit
The process goes on until all units are purchased
at that point, the artwork is fully paid, equitatively by its all owners.
Artist, price and profit is removed from the equation
Only ownership and redistribution takes place form now on
A new owner can buy a new slice, adding a slice to the total
The price of the slide is redistributed with all owners.
Each new slide is cheaper than the prior ones
The work becomes cheaper every new owner, with a tendency towards 0

Achieve mass infinite ownership, with decreasing entry barriers

The costs are covered, initial owners get refunded, the subject becomes free and can be owned at scale.

With this system, content with high demand becomes free over time, inverting the capitalist practice of chocking demand to extract economic value.

This framework could work in multiple entities/scenarios where the entry barriers to ownership are high.

This framework could serve to redistribute ownership at scale in an accessible way.

- work in progress -