Here we outline families of patterns in the 'machineries' that intermediate provision in the real economy.
These machineries are secondary to three primary fields of material provisioning in the real economy: wild nature, domestic ecnomy, digital means. See: Primary attention - Diverse material in the real economy
The material form of these machineries is **social-cultural** - that is, like the fields of domesticated economy, they manifestly are *labour processes*, and exist in ‘second nature’.
The real economy - Machineries of intermediation
These are technologies of intermediation; they *organise* practices of provision and access rather than themselves directly provisioning anything. Typically, in many instances they are intended to run either as much *like* literal machines as possible (rigorously rule-based systems of practice) or, sometimes, *as* actual hugely extended (digital) machines.
Sometimes - more occasionally than frequently, in the modern, Fordist and post-Fordist eras - the rationale of rules is transparency, fairness or impartiality: an intentional absence of subjective consideration and emotional labour in the execution of an exchange, a helpful *simplification* of relationship.
In all these cases of ‘machineries’ the challenge is plainly to discover how these relationships can be stewarded within commons so that contributions in the commons and the enjoying of a commons are manifestly fair and visibly *valued in actual performances* of aware practice within somehow-knowable communities, rather than being abandoned to ‘invisible hands’ and the abstract calculus of ‘value’; or even, to ‘values’ or custom-and-practice/status quo.
# Commoning Thus, we are concerned with the commoning of . .
- Machineries of exchange - for example, alternative moneys, systems of credit, banking, funding and venturing.
- Machineries of provision - logistics, operations management, accounting in openvalue networks, contribution accounting.
- Machineries of fair trade - Cross-region trade, organised in mutuality, in the face of dramatically uneven development and powerful capitalist and colonial formations. Reparation is a major consideration here.
- Machineries of access to provision, including: lawgiving, forms of legal right, owning vs stewarding, privileges and obligations of enjoying commons, sanctions in commons, legal identity, privacy. Also rights of fiat: force of arms, imprisonment, citizenship.
- Machineries of rescue - Disaster response, emergency public health, humanitarian emergency. Rescue
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