Computing for Community-Based Economies: A Sociotechnical Ecosystem for Democratic, Egalitarian and Sustainable Futures
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses systemic crises—including widening wealth inequality, ecological degradation, labor alienation, and political polarization—exacerbated by automation and large-scale industrial production. Methodologically, it advances a community-centered economic transition empowered by AI and computational technologies, grounded in three novel design principles: *prefigurative* (embedding equity goals directly into technical architectures), *generative* (disrupting value extraction to enable regenerative feedback loops across labor, nature, and social relations), and *solidaristic* (balancing individual autonomy with collective mutual aid). The approach integrates participatory action research, on-the-ground experimentation in Detroit, computational system development, and political-economic analysis. Its primary contribution is a reusable framework for a community economic computing ecosystem. Empirical findings demonstrate that such systems can support democratic governance, localized wealth redistribution, and ecological justice—establishing the first embodied, practice-based paradigm for an alternative digital political economy.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Automation and industrial mass production, particularly in sectors with low wages, have harmful consequences that contribute to widening wealth disparities, excessive pollution, and worsened working conditions. Coupled with a mass consumption society, there is a risk of detrimental social outcomes and threats to democracy, such as misinformation and political polarization. But AI, robotics and other emerging technologies could also provide a transition to community-based economies, in which more democratic, egalitarian, and sustainable value circulations can be established. Based on both a review of case studies, and our own experiments in Detroit, we derive three core principles for the use of computing in community-based economies. The prefigurative principle requires that the development process itself incorporates equity goals, rather than viewing equity as something to be achieved in the future. The generative principle requires the prevention of value extraction, and its replacement by circulations in which value is returned back to the aspects of labor, nature, and society by which it is generated. And third, the solidarity principle requires that deployments at all scales and across all domains support both individual freedoms and opportunities for mutual aid. Thus we propose the use of computational technologies to develop a specifically generative form of community-based economy: one that is egalitarian regarding race, class and gender; sustainable both environmentally and socially; and democratic in the deep sense of putting people in control of their own lives and livelihoods.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Address harmful effects of automation on wealth disparities and pollution
Mitigate social risks like misinformation and political polarization
Promote democratic, egalitarian, sustainable economies using AI and robotics
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
AI and robotics enable community-based economies
Prefigurative principle integrates equity in development
Generative principle prevents value extraction
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