(2010-09-14) Ugarte Phyles Tribe

David De Ugarte on the steps in creating a new Phyle (Tribe, Community? Trade Guild? See Wikipedia and Diamond Age.) for the new SmallWorld. They are not companies linked to a community, but transnational communities that have acquired enterprises in order to gain continuity in time and robustness. They are phyles. Phyles may function democratically and be cooperative-based, as in the case of the Indianos, or else they may have a small-business structure and even a religiously inspired ideology, as in the case of the Murides. But they share two key elements: they possess a transnational identity, and they subordinate their companies to personal and community needs.

Oct'2010 update: Michel Bauwens summarizes/reviews.

Nov24 update: Michel Bauwens will be working closely with Ugarte's Las Indias CoOp. We have successfully democratized the means of creating value, but have not been able to democratize the means of realizing that value. Creating livelihood independently of the capital players that profit from our social cooperation and obtain asymmetrical hyper-competitivity through our contributions, remains an arduous task. Localization through global open design communities is still mostly an effort to avoid the dislocation of the global meltdown, it’s a strategy of resilience, not yet of thrivability.