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13 Friendly Critique
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Friendly Critique, Survivability and Incentives

Disclaimer (ideology / intent):
This document does not endorse or promote any ideology (political, economic, or otherwise).
I reference Antonio Gramsci only because one of the people involved in OMN discussions has signalled partial alignment to his ideas, while some expressed positions appear to contradict key Gramscian ideas. I bring Gramsci in purely as a shared vocabulary to clarify disagreements, not as a call to adopt an ideology.

* I am using quotes and maybe sense, the language is communication in the lose sense rather than the narrow academic sense.Also I am now remembering the issue with this wiki use, it does not function with spell or grammer check so expect some real dyslexic replies to try and work sense from :) also missing letters as my keybord is broken... feel free to edit for grammar formatting and spelling if you feel the need to. This issue will come back latter as an example.

Tone / purpose disclaimer:
This is meant as a friendly critique, an adult conversation about complex topics, and an intellectual debate.
The aim is clarity, not moral condemnation, framework outcomes, not individual intent.

On tone and unintended offense

This document engages with complex and often emotionally charged topics.

Any wording that comes across as offensive, dismissive, or personal is not intentional. The critique is directed at frameworks, assumptions, and outcomes, not at individual characters, motives, or worth.

If specific phrasing obscures the substance of the argument, that is a failure of expression rather than intent, and the underlying points should be read in that light.

Table of Contents

Scope and intent

This document records a structured critique of assumptions and outcomes observed in public discussions around OMN and the 4opens framework, primarily in issues Open-Media-Network/4opens#17 and Open-Media-Network/4opens#18 . It has been moved here due to the request of OMN. ( Open-Media-Network/4opens#19 )

The intent is analytical rather than adversarial. It focuses on frameworks, design choices, and their effects on people, not on individual intent or moral character.

OMN explicitly values public discussion and visibility. In that context, documenting disagreement and unresolved issues publicly is consistent with the stated values of the framework.

* Yep

Personal positioning

I broadly agree with many of the ideals behind OMN and 4opens.

Ideas such as openness, shared infrastructure, transparency, reduction of capture, and resistance to enclosure resonate strongly with me. This critique does not come from opposition to those values.

The point of disagreement is not what is being advocated, but how it is being pushed without sufficient support for people to understand how to make it real.

Most people do not know how to:

  • Apply for grants
  • Raise money
  • Build funding narratives
  • Access institutional support
  • Navigate informal activist economies

Presenting a framework as viable while leaving these questions unaddressed places an unfair burden on individuals and turns alignment into a test of endurance rather than a supported path.

* we can start with the mistaken assumption here, the is a difference between reality and what we wish for, will come back to this latter.

Survivability as a design constraint

The initial question raised in issue Open-Media-Network/4opens#17 concerned survivability as a structural constraint rather than a personal or moral attribute.

The question was narrowly scoped:

  • How are people expected to sustain themselves while producing #4opens-aligned work
  • Without reintroducing hidden power
  • Without relying on prolonged self-sacrifice

Survivability shapes participation, governance, and power concentration regardless of whether it is acknowledged explicitly. When left implicit, it becomes individualized and unevenly distributed.

In practice, this selects for people with buffers such as money, housing security, health, legal tolerance, or institutional fallback. Others leave quietly or never enter at all.

This outcome is not neutral. It is the result of design choices, even when those choices are framed as an absence of design.

* Clarification, they are not absent by design they are absent because they do not exist, yet

Historical examples and their limits

Historical examples cited include:

  • Squatting cultures
  • Free party movements
  • Indymedia
  • Rainbow Gatherings
  • Informal NGO cross-subsidy

These examples demonstrate that non-market survivability has existed and that trust-based cultures can sustain large projects.

They also depended on conditions that are substantially weaker today:

  • Stronger social safety nets
  • Cheaper housing
  • Tolerated illegality
  • Dense local communities
  • Informal institutional backchannels

Many of these cultures collapsed due to burnout, aging, legal pressure, or quiet attrition rather than ideological capture.

Without explicit analysis of why these models failed, history risks becoming inspirational narrative rather than usable collective memory.

* yes, this is what we have to work with, in reality as the #OMN crew can see the path, from lived historical prospective. out side this is likley wish fulfillment?

When survivability is framed as culture

Across the discussion, survivability was framed as:

  • Inherently difficult
  • Antagonistic to safety-first culture
  • Dependent on DIY commitment
  • Not suitable for everyone

This framing converts material constraints into moral sorting.

People who cannot sustain themselves are not described as blocked by structural conditions, but as insufficiently committed or aligned.

At this point, the framework stops treating people as participants with needs and starts treating them as filters for ideological purity.

* this is a unhelpful critique, as its framing seeding an affinity group path as if we are talking about the out come of change and challenge, they are different. Yes, one needs to lead to the other though, this is the step away metaphor.

DIY survivability and physical limits

DIY survivability as described in the examples is, by definition, only possible for a subset of humanity.

If everyone attempted to live this way simultaneously, the system would collapse. Whether that collapse would be good or bad is not the point.

The point is that this model is not universally applicable by the laws of physics, logistics, and human limits.

As a result, the framework ends up harshly criticizing and morally judging people who are structurally incapable of participating, while presenting that incapability as personal failure or cultural misalignment.

This is exclusion built into the model.

* Yes, if we are talking in this framework, but the #OMN is not, so no. I repeat the step away metaphor.

Comparison with mainstream systems

Mainstream systems are exploitative, but they are explicit:

  • Labor is exchanged for wages
  • Precarity is acknowledged as structural
  • Harm is normalized rather than moralized

In contrast, the OMN framing:

  • Accepts precarity
  • Adds moral judgment to it
  • Frames endurance as virtue
  • Frames inability to endure as misalignment

This combination can produce a system that is harsher than the systems it critiques, because it adds guilt and moral evaluation on top of material harm.

If contributors are expected to sacrifice their livelihoods for theorized future gains without guarantees, the framework must answer how this is meaningfully better than ordinary life under capitalism.

If the justification is a future that may exist, then what is being asked for is not trust grounded in evidence, but sacrifice based on belief without proof.

* transitions are not easy, revolution is violent, how can we try and do this in a better fluffy/spiky way is the HISTORICAL path of the #OMN, I hope this helps.

Tone and moral pressure in trust-based systems

In trust-based systems, tone functions as governance.

Harsh, dismissive, or judgmental language is not neutral. It shapes participation by signaling who belongs and who does not.

When dissent is met with moral framing rather than analysis, informal coercion replaces open deliberation.

If OMN is intended primarily as a hobby for those who can afford precarity, this should be stated clearly. If it claims to enable meaningful social change, then moral pressure and guilt-tripping are not acceptable substitutes for material pathways.

* Its #DIY, the tone is a tool, a form of braking, to open up a space for people to push spiky/fluff change and challenge. its not a end, its a process to create a affinity group were non exists. As is this conversation at best

Informal systems and hidden power

Trust-based and informal systems do not eliminate power.

They stabilize power through:

  • Social familiarity
  • Longevity of participation
  • Personal relationships
  • Cultural fluency

Entry becomes difficult for newcomers without existing social embedding. Authority becomes harder to contest because it is informal rather than explicit.

Power still exists, but is less visible and less accountable.

Ignoring this does not remove it.

* This is what the #OMN project #OGB sets out to balance

The bounded experiment in issue Open-Media-Network/4opens#18

The proposal in issue Open-Media-Network/4opens#18 was explicitly defined as:

  • Small
  • Time-limited
  • Non-scaling
  • Expected to fail
  • Not a replacement for DIY culture

Its purpose was to explore whether specific failure modes could be reduced:

  • Long-term pressure on individuals
  • Informal authority drift
  • Fatigue-driven decision-making
  • Post-hoc rule changes

Dismissing this as fixation on control collapses all constraint into ideology and prevents inquiry.

Removing discretionary power in a narrow, consent-based context can be understood as reducing harm rather than exerting authority.

Refusing to explore this space implies that human cost is acceptable collateral.

* if the premise is wrong for the #OMN it has less value, so happy for someone to do this if they like, but not the best path for this space intill we have basic tools to empower people to empower themselves :)

Ideology without pathways

A recurring pattern is strong ideological clarity paired with weak material pathways.

The framework clearly articulates what is wrong and what must be resisted. It does not clearly articulate:

  • How new people realistically enter
  • How they survive while contributing
  • How risk is shared rather than individualized
  • How failure is handled without moral judgment

At this point, ideology becomes demand rather than invitation.

* Yes, see past answers

Preaching is not the problem

Most people already understand that openness, transparency, and shared resources would be preferable.

This is not a knowledge problem.

People participate in destructive systems because there are no viable alternatives available to them, not because they lack awareness.

Repeating ideals without providing paths forward produces guilt and paralysis rather than change.

* The are practical tools, yes the is a chicken and egg problem, the affinity group is an path to resolving this

The missing work is implementation

The central gap is not ideological clarity. It is implementation.

What is missing are:

  • Concrete, survivable alternatives
  • Transitional models people can realistically enter
  • Templates that reduce personal risk
  • Structures that acknowledge material needs

Without this work, ideals remain abstract and inaccessible.

* answerd this before, it is a misunderstanding

Alternatives must compete with reality

Any alternative must compete with existing systems on at least one axis:

  • Survivability
  • Stability
  • Predictability
  • Risk distribution

If participation requires worse conditions and higher risk in exchange for future hope, it is not an alternative. It is a sacrifice based on trust without proof.

* how do you think change and challange happens? You do understand that society does not pay for this path. It's something that always happen because of passion, no one is paid a living wage.

Responsibility is being offloaded, not shared

Responsibility is consistently placed on individuals to endure, adapt, and sacrifice.

At the same time, responsibility for building survivable structures is rejected as out of scope.

When individuals carry the cost and systems retain the ideals, responsibility is not shared. It is offloaded.

* That would be fantasy view, it's only supportive collectives that work in my expirence, I have a lot of expirence... so...

Classification without understanding

Ideas were rapidly classified under existing hashtags such as:

  • #geekproblem
  • #nothingnew
  • Project of scarcity

This happened before meaningful engagement.

Premature classification closes inquiry and functions as dismissal rather than understanding.

* it's a story going back 20 years, the is value in this if you focus to look, rather than judge (and in the end likely block)

Activist roots and limited real world change

While the framework has deep roots in activism, it currently shows limited evidence of producing tangible, large scale change.

Values and narratives persist. Structures that materially alter how people live remain scarce.

This raises a legitimate question about whether the framework is optimized for continuity of discourse rather than continuity of impact.

* Look back https://www.youtube.com/user/visionontv

On public disagreement

OMN presents itself as public and open.

This document exists because that openness was explicitly encouraged.

Public systems must accept disagreement, including disagreement that challenges core assumptions. If only agreement is welcome, that boundary should be stated clearly.

* its a #4opens document and path on a public wiki (sadly on #geekproblem softwear but we do our best with the disfunctional tools we have to build the ones we need

From ideals to livable change

Change will not occur because people were persuaded that openness is good.

It will occur when alternatives become livable.

That requires implementation work that is currently underdeveloped.

* Yes, this is what the #OMN project is for and about.

Survivability must be in scope

Survivability cannot be treated as optional, external, or emergent if a framework claims to enable real world change.

A project that depends on sustained human labor, creativity, and care, but leaves survivability to individual improvisation, cannot be taken seriously as a path beyond the systems it critiques.

At that point, participation is conditioned on personal sacrifice rather than collective support.

Leaving survivability as an implicit “you figure it out” is not neutral. It shifts risk, stress, and failure onto individuals while preserving ideological coherence at the system level.

This is not an absence of design. It is a design choice with predictable human cost.

* Its not, we currently dont have the tools to survive, nore the tools to become the change and challange we need to be to survive... so chicken and egg, we need to build the tools how ever we can #OMN

Minimum ethical responsibility

The minimum responsibility of a project operating in this space is not to solve survivability in general.

It is to acknowledge it explicitly and to reduce avoidable harm.

At minimum, this would include:

  • Practical guides on how people have sustained themselves while doing this work
  • Concrete examples of viable funding and support paths
  • Shared knowledge about grants, donations, and resource access
  • Honest discussion of tradeoffs, failure modes, and limits
  • Clear signaling about who this path is realistically viable for

Providing this does not professionalize or corrupt a movement. It simply respects the reality that people need to live.

Without even this minimum, the framework relies on silence, mythology, and selective survivorship.

* As I said this is a misunderstanding of the FIRST STEP of the #OMN project.

On harm and responsibility

When people are encouraged to participate in a framework that offers no survivability guidance, while being subject to moral pressure, judgment, or dismissal when they struggle, harm is no longer incidental.

It becomes structural.

A system that normalizes attrition, moralizes endurance, and treats collapse as personal failure is not merely demanding. It is coercive in effect, even if unintended.

Trust does not justify this outcome.

* Only if you are a prat (i only half joke on this subject).

Final position

This critique does not ask OMN to become something else.

It asserts that without survivability in scope, OMN cannot plausibly claim to be an alternative to existing systems.

Values without pathways are not empowerment. They are obligation.

If survivability is addressed directly, with honesty and practical support, the framework becomes something people can realistically engage with.

If it is not, then participation remains contingent on sacrifice, and the project functions less as a path forward and more as a moral filter.

That distinction matters, because real people bear the consequences.

* Will say again, I have answered this

Since posting the original issue Open-Media-Network/4opens#19 and posting the content here, I have had some more relevant ideas and explored more context. This is the intent of the extensions.

Extension A: Incentives, dependency, hypocrisy, and “purity” failure modes

A.1 Dependency is not hypocrisy, denial is

Almost everyone depends on the economic system they critique, directly or indirectly:

  • grant funding is downstream of tax bases and institutions
  • institutions and pensions are downstream of market economies
  • corporate sponsors fund open work using money made in markets
  • even low-consumption lifestyles depend on infrastructure built and maintained by market/industrial systems

Therefore:

  • depending on the system is not hypocrisy
  • pretending you do not is where hypocrisy begins

The more serious moral failure is:

  • using one’s buffers (housing, savings, citizenship, health, community status) while moralizing others who lack those buffers

A.2 “Purity” recreates incentives, just with a different currency

Removing money does not remove incentives, it changes what incentives pay out in:

  • status
  • moral authority
  • “purity” positioning
  • public alignment
  • rhetoric as gatekeeping
  • endurance as proof of worth

This is a key danger in trust-based systems:

  • informal power becomes harder to contest
  • because it’s never formally admitted

A.3 Moral judgment of constrained people

People who chose (or reached) a low-consumption, post-market lifestyle judging others as evil for not doing so, without acknowledging that their own path relied on:

  • timing
  • prior income
  • property ownership
  • stability
  • legal tolerance
  • health
  • and other non-universal conditions

When survivability becomes a moral sorting mechanism, it converts “ethics” into an exclusion engine.

Extension B: Capital, growth, and why “Wall Street rewards growth” matters here

This section does not moralize capitalism. It clarifies why incentives keep reappearing even in spaces that oppose them.

B.1 Growth vs profit is structural, not psychological

Large pools of capital seek:

  • scalable deployment,
  • asymmetrical upside,
  • future claims on value concentration.

A business that makes “millions forever” can be excellent at human scale, but is often irrelevant at massive capital scale.

This is why “growth” is rewarded:

  • it signals trajectory
  • control
  • optionality
  • and potential market dominance

B.2 Why this matters for OMN-like frameworks

If a framework claims to replace or outcompete parts of the existing system, it must compete on:

  • survivability
  • predictability
  • risk distribution

Otherwise, it becomes:

  • a moral critique culture
  • not a functioning alternative

The critique here is not:

  • “markets are evil”
    but:
  • “don’t fund infrastructure with incentives that demand infinite expansion”
    and
  • “don’t replace financial extraction with moral extraction”

Extension C: What “exit” really means (bounded capitalism vs endless extraction)

A concept of “exit” as a life-structure choice. What does OMN think about this?

C.1 Three life-structures (not moral categories)

  • Endless extraction / growth addiction
    Perpetual scaling, incentives tied to growth, identity capture, constant entanglement.

  • Lifelong stewardship
    Stable, aligned work, but often permanent responsibility and fundraising/maintenance burdens.

  • Bounded monetization, then exit
    Use markets in a limited way to acquire independence, then stop extracting.

C.2 Why “bounded monetization” is ethically coherent

If done honestly, bounded monetization can be:

  • less exploitative than “open purity” that offloads survival
  • less corrupting than growth-first models that demand future betrayal

The ethical test is not “did you touch money?” It’s:

  • did you offload survivability onto others?
  • did you claim moral superiority?
  • did you create capture and lock-in?
  • did you keep extracting after you no longer needed to?

Extension D: Licenses, enforceability, and why “non-commercial” often fails

This ties into the “gift vs misuse” concept, in the context of open source projects.

D.1 General-purpose tools will be used in ways you dislike

If you make a useful tool:

  • it will enable good work
  • it will enable mediocre work
  • it will enable work you consider harmful or shallow

This is not a moral failure of release, it is an attribute of general-purpose infrastructure.

D.2 Why “non-commercial” is often counterproductive

Non-commercial licensing:

  • mostly blocks good-faith adoption
  • discourages contributors
  • creates legal ambiguity
  • and rarely stops bad actors who will ignore it, reimplement ideas, or violate quietly

D.3 The adult alternative: control participation and endorsement, not downstream use

You cannot fully control downstream use. You can control:

  • what you officially support
  • what you endorse
  • what you integrate
  • how you design governance to resist capture
  • what norms you set about survivability and compensation

That is usually more effective than trying to legislate morality through licensing.

Extension E: Gramsci as common language

Again: this is not endorsement. This is vocabulary.

Gramsci is invoked here because one of the people involved in OMN discussions has signalled partial alignment to his ideas, while some behavior or claims appear contradictory. The intent is to make disagreements legible in a shared conceptual frame.

E.1 “Organic intellectual” as a descriptive role

A common Gramscian idea (in broad strokes) is the “organic intellectual”:

  • emerges from lived social conditions
  • translates experience into analysis and organization
  • helps build institutions and practices
  • connects ideas to material conditions

In this vocabulary, “organic” implies:

  • proximity to real constraints and lived realities
  • not merely rhetorical critique

Why this matters for OMN

If someone claims an “organic” role but:

  • ignores survivability constraints
  • moralizes poverty
  • treats material reality as mere “commitment" then the role contradicts itself

The “organic” function would instead emphasize:

  • material pathways
  • institutional supports
  • concrete transitions from ideals to livable practice

E.2 Hegemony and why tone + norms matter

A related Gramscian theme is hegemony:

  • not just formal power
  • but cultural and normative power
  • what feels “obvious”, “moral”, “normal”, “aligned”

In trust-based communities:

  • tone functions as governance
  • moral framing can become coercion
  • belonging becomes conditional on adopting a normative posture

This connects to the earlier critique:

  • informal systems don’t eliminate power
  • they hide it in culture and norms

So a Gramsci lens would raise the question: Are we building a counter-hegemonic alternative with real material pathways, or just reproducing a new hegemony of purity and moral authority?

E.3 “War of position” vs “war of maneuver” (a useful metaphor here)

A common distinction in Gramsci’s reception is:

  • “war of maneuver” (direct confrontation)
  • “war of position” (slow institution-building, cultural groundwork)

Even if one rejects ideology, this metaphor is practically useful:

  • durable change is often institutional and infrastructural, not performative

Applied to OMN, if the framework is serious about changing outcomes, then the “war of position” equivalent is:

  • funding templates
  • survivable contributor pathways
  • governance that reduces hidden power
  • documentation of failure modes
  • practical transition scaffolding

Without that, the project risks being:

  • a discourse culture
  • not a material alternative

E.4 Why I bring this up at all

Because “Gramsci talk” often implies:

  • real-world constraint awareness
  • institution-building
  • responsibility for material pathways

If survivability is waved away, the contradiction becomes obvious even to people who do not share any ideology: you can’t claim real-world grounding while ignoring the real-world survival equation.

That is why Gramsci is useful here: not as doctrine, but as a consistency test.

Extension F: Translating this into practical action items

This is the “adult conversation” part: what changes would make the critique obsolete?

F.1 Minimum viable survivability scaffolding (low-cost, high-impact)

  • A practical “how people survive doing this” guide:
    • grants
    • donations
    • part-time work strategies
    • institutional partnerships
    • realistic budgeting
    • what failed and why
  • Templates:
    • grant narratives
    • project budgets
    • scope-control docs
    • “how to say no” to capture
  • Transparent signaling:
    • who the model is viable for
    • what conditions are required
    • what tradeoffs exist

F.2 Anti-moralization norms (explicitly stated)

  • “People are not evil for needing paid work”
  • “Survivability is not a moral test”
  • “Buffers (housing, savings, health) must be acknowledged”
  • “Opting out is not the baseline, it is one possible endpoint”

These norms reduce hidden power and shame-based exclusion.

F.3 Bounded experiments should be welcomed, not dismissed

  • Small, time-limited experiments that reduce harm should be treated as inquiry
  • “Constraint” is not automatically “control”
  • Removing discretionary power in bounded contexts can reduce coercion

F.4 Stop treating implementation as optional

  • If a framework claims real-world change, implementation is not secondary
  • “Ideals without pathways” is ethically risky because it offloads cost onto individuals

Extension G: Unstructured knowledge as a barrier to participation

A recurring but largely unacknowledged barrier is the absence of organized and accessible material, combined with an expectation that people will perform hundreds of hours of research scattered across different places.

This ignores the reality that most people do not have the time or energy required for this level of unpaid contextual reconstruction.

This is not a failure on the part of individuals.

It is a consequence of:

  • full-time work
  • caregiving responsibilities
  • health constraints
  • economic pressure
  • cognitive fatigue

When this burden is left unaddressed, it effectively shifts the cost of understanding onto individuals rather than those proposing or maintaining the framework.

This can reasonably be interpreted as a lack of effort proportional to the scope of the claims being made.

It also functions as an implicit introduction test, where endurance and availability of surplus capacity become prerequisites for participation.

When material is fragmented and context is implicit, participation becomes gated by unpaid research effort, selecting for those with surplus time and energy rather than those who might otherwise contribute.

Closing note

This document is not asking OMN to “become capitalism”, nor is it claiming that markets are morally superior. It is asking for a minimal adult standard:

  • acknowledge survivability
  • reduce avoidable harm
  • stop moralizing constrained people
  • turn ideals into livable pathways
  • and be honest about power, even when it shows up as tone, status, and cultural gatekeeping

That is compatible with openness.
It is compatible with dignity.
It is compatible with disagreement.

And it’s the difference between a framework people admire, and a framework people can actually live inside.

_* This is your view, its fine, but unless you can engade with the actural historical/practical projects the value in this thread is theoretical at best or acdemic at worst, lets try and focues. A post on this

This thread ended with #block - OK so ask agen, where do we get the resources to do the "safety" before the commons can exist. And can I point out that this has never been done before in my experience, so it would be lovely to have these resources in place. To stop this conversation circling, let's find the resources some people keep pointing that we need before we can act. But as ever the is no anser to this practical path, so, lets compost this and get back to the core #DIY project_