Computers, Unemployment and Wealth Creation

Andy Oram writes "Anyone who writes programs or plans system deployment should start thinking, "What can I do to bring average people back into the process of wealth creation?" A few suggestions."

Comments

Jobs instead of efficiency?

[NineNine]

This seems like a ridiculous suggestion. This is essentially backwards capitalism, which quite simply, doesn't work. I could create plenty of jobs... I could throw out my business' computers and instead hire a few people to track inventory by hand and place orders by manually counting inventory. Sure, I'd create more jobs, but those jobs would be very short lived, ebcause I'd quickly go out of business. Efficiency, in the long run, *does* produce wealth. That's how capitalism works. We may not see "wealth" growing in the US, but in the economy (which is now a world economy), wealth is most definitely being created. Standards of living are rising exponentially around the globe, even as they slip in the US. Nothing's broken. Nothing to see here. Go back to work.

Re:Jobs instead of efficiency?

[radish]

Famine is very common in many parts of the world, including (as an example) Africa. As far as I know, every country in Africa (bar one or two small ones, I forget which) is capitalist. So your assertion that "famine is practically unheard of in capitalist countries" is patently absurd. What you meant to say was "Why do you think that famine is practically unheard of developed western countries like the USA and UK?", the answer is that they use their world influence (obtained historically by slavery and imperialism amongst other means) to exploit other countries and thus secure cheap food supplies. They are also blessed with ample fertile land and moderate climates. You take your wonderful american farmer and dump him in the middle of the Sahara with nothing but 3 half dead cows and a sack of grain, and see how long he lasts.

As for your North Korea example, you seem to be getting things confused again. The number of truly non-capitalist countries in the world is very small, almost vanishingly so. They have a hard time of it, partly due to bad government (a bad politician is a bad politician regardless of his leanings), partly because of being isolated within the wider world and so not being able to trade, and partly due to a whole number of other things (like getting the crap bombed out of them every few years). Whilst the economic system may be a factor (I'm no economist, I can't say) you are inferring a causal link where there is no evidence of one. Just because a country has food problems, and is communist, does not imply that it has food problems because it is communist. Logic 101.

Re:Jobs instead of efficiency?

[pangian]

It's worth noting that there has never been a famine in a democracy.
[source: Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom]

Correlation or causation? You be the judge, but Sen makes a pretty good case for the latter.

Re:Jobs instead of efficiency?

[johnnyb]

"Economy is a zero sum game when you take natural resources into account."

There _may_ be a limit, but it's likely far beyond what we are at now.

"This means it's impossible for everybody in the world to have the same standard of living as the US because there are not enough trees, water, and oil to accomplish such a thing."

Based on what data? History has shown us that technology can account for a dramatic increase in the usability of existing resources.

Most projections along these lines assume that there is no advancing technology, and everything stays at the same price. For example, the estimates of the supplies of oil usually have the following incorrect assumptions:

1) The current wells won't refill (we've found that many in fact, do)

2) We don't ever find any new reserves (in fact the ocean contains a vast supply, and we continually find new reserves)

3) The price of oil stays the same (there are considerable resources that are available that we simply don't dig up because it's not profitable at the _current price_, but will be if the price would increase)

The same kind of assumptions are in most of these "we're going to drain the planet" type of predictions.

The same thing everybody else should do

[stomv]

Make as much money as you can*, and then use it to do some of:

(a) Buy stuff. Other folks are employed making it or serving it.

(b) Invest. This results in capital for businesses to hire more people employed making or serving stuff.

This method works. Simple, really.

* Within ethical and/or legal standards, of course.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[Bull999999]

After close to 15,000 deaths due to the heat wave in France, the government admitted that their health care system is overly complex and is in need a overhaul. Is this the model we are supposed to follow?

People complain that politicians are evil and corrupt, yet want them to run everything? Only people who'll benefit are the ones with ties to the government officials.

Re:The same thing everybody else should do

[*weasel]

America's privatized health care has created the world's leading health care industry. Why do you think every foreigner who can afford to, comes to US clinics for surgeries or treatments?

Yes, americans don't all have the best insurance, or any at all for that matter - but the care you get uninsured for $40 at the outpatient clinic down the street is vastly better than what most of the world gets.

Competitive privatized industries have -never- been a disaster.

The simplest example, is comparing price/performance and advancement of the rail industry (government sanctioned monopolies) with the airline industry (competitive free market).

the 'disasters' you must be referring to regarding privatized prisons and energy production are not examples of privatized industry at all. They are the examples of a private company operating in a government funded monopoly. Privatized power generation in California hasn't hit a snag since the conversion was completed (which was caused by government imposed limits on power generation which were enacted before sufficient alternative companies had their generation online).

And while the bulk of the military itself has never been privatized (for the same reason the government hasn't - to keep policy decisions out of the hands of private industry and to keep soldier loyalty directly under the decision-makers), you would probably be amazed at how much -has- been privatized. The government hasn't made its own weapons (or commandeered industry to do it) since WWI - and the improvements in weapons and decreases in cost have been astronomical. Compare american military technological advancements to that of any other nation on the planet. These are all due to private industry research and development.
Private industry air and ship capacity is also used to transfer military personnel and equipment overseas in times of high need. Then there's military body armor, telecommunications gear, medecine, reconnaissance, etc.

Contrary to your claim, free-market privatization has proven to be the biggest asset of every American endeavor it has been a part of.

Basic economics

[sql*kitten]

As the wealth of nations increases, those who have lost jobs or had to accept menial ones over the past three years are left with only a wealth of culprits to blame: financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation, etc.

For a start, a 3-year sample isn't big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. We're just in the down phase of the economic cycle, that's all. Smart people salted away some of the high salaries and bonuses that were easy to come by in the recent boom years, when shortness of staff drove up the price of labour. Now, some people look for blame - but it's hard to see how some of these can be blamed. Wars and conflict drive up employment in the engineering and aerospace sectors. Tax cuts can't increase unemployment except amongst government workers, and there have been no reports of government layoffs - if anything, the government is busily hiring.

Let me make this clear: wealth is not created by governments. It's created by risk-taking entrepreneurs. Right now, the markets need to recover from excessive risk-taking in the late 90s. This is perfectly natural. When sufficient capital has become amassed, the cycle will begin again and there will be another boom.

But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation

I was in a store the other day, I saw a 3-megapixel digital camera for GBP 99, a DVD players for GBP 49. 5 years ago, these products cost hundreds of pounds. That's what capitalism delivers: more and better for everyone. The "poor" in a capitalist society are far better off than the "poor" in any other system - and capitalism generates the surpluses that fund the entire welfare system.

Each labor-saving device means the idling of thousands of people, wasting their years of experience, rigorous training, and practical insights.

Yawn, they said exactly the same things when the car started to replace the horse drawn carriage, when mechanical looms replaced hand-operated looms, when automation was introduced to farming, in fact whenever any technology has revolutionized an industry. Getting laid off is always a little disconcerting (yes, it has happened to me so I know what I'm talking about) but unemployment is what you make of it.

And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?),

Ah, now we see the author's real agenda - I should have realized when I saw the words "tax cuts". I will merely point out that the dotcom bubble economy was created under a Democrat president and began declining in mid 2000 - there is nothing Bush or Greenspan could have done to prevent it bursting.

Complete rubbish

[pubjames]

It is just me, or is that article rubbish?

It is not my goal to place restrictions on investment or innovation; it is only to present a new way of thinking that some people may find stimulating.

Here's looking forward to some creative new thinking...

Write free software for individual industries

What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?

Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?

This article scares me...

[malakai]

This article scares me...

It's a plea to socialize the software industry. Don't work on what you want to work on, work on what society NEEDS you to work on. But do it for SOCIETY, that is, do it for FREE. This will allegedly help a struggling 'cutting-edge' business grow. Give them free software, and all will work out.

This is hogwash. And the article goes all over the place. It starts off with blaming "financial scandals, wars, tax cuts, stagnation" on why people have lost jobs "or had to accept menial ones". But then concludes "there is little doubt that a large contributor to rising unemployment is rising productivity". We see this every new age. This guy is bordering on a Luddite. He's also overly dramatic which makes me dislike him even more "I can no longer avert my eyes from the consequences of the field I have chosen" so noble. "... and no one else who programs, administers, or promotes the use of computers can morally avert their eyes either" oh jeez.

It gets worse, "The gigantic combine of capitalism has always obsessively pursued effiencey..." yeah, that's the point. That's why it works.

"Capitalism has succeeded in sowing a cornucopia of innovation up and down society. But capitalism is atrocious at distributing the fruits of innovation"

No, Capitalism is atrocious at GIVING AWAY the fruits of innovation. It doesn't reward people who don't partake in it. That is why it's so efficient. Add _YOUR_ efficiency to the overall efficiency and you will be paid for its value.

This really frightens me:

"People who work with computers remain fixated on efficiency. Every week I hear the debates over whether businesses should use Linux or Windows, the commentators always wrangling over which systems will save the most money. I find this battle increasingly tiresome. I'm more interested in finding the systems that will put more people to work."

Great, lets all make inefficient processes and software to run those processes so that costs will skyrockets, and we'll be beat by someone with a more efficient process. You can't do that in a free market. It's the whole point of the free market. The market balances between efficiency, cost, and quality. If you artificially try to create more jobs by making it take 5x as many more people to assemble a car, you will collapse that business.

"I have a sinking feeling that we can't wait for the next upturn in the employment cycle, as optimists would have us do"

gut instinct huh? Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure we can all base decisions on your gut instincts.

So his solution boils down to three ideas:
1. Write free software for individual industries (ie, give custom built small business software away for free). His thinking is this will help the small business get started and they will in turn hire more people. But damn the person who wrote the software, he's SOL. But it was for the 'good' of the 'people'.
2. "Make devices more responsive and easy to customize", he request: "I would like a computer to plan ahead for me, track things that are too much trouble for me to remember, and combine inputs to suggest efficient courses of action" OK so he wants smart agents. What this has to do with this article is beyond me. I think he just threw it in there because he wanted to.
3. "Create a truly public key infrastructure" I don't understand why he feels the need for a 'truly PKI is so important. It seems to go along with his socialist viewpoint. I guess it would make on line filing of unemployment that much easier when he plans leads to the failing of a nations economy.

He ends it with more FUD: "We don't have all the time in the world. And meanwhile governments, businesses, venture capitalists (what are you doing with all that money your pets in Congress and the White House brought you, tails all awagging?), universities, and NGOs seem paralyzed in the face of this economic disaster"

"Investing" rarely is

[ThosLives]

Investing doesn't really give money to companies unless you:
a) Participate in the IPO
b) Buy bonds directly from the company during its offering

Trading stocks with other stockholders doesn't give any money to the company. It's like trading baseball cards. Sure there are some side effects of having stock prices go up for a company, but usually a high stock price doesn't give any financial benefit to a company (except for subsequent stock issues, which don't happen that often).

If you really want to invest in a company, buy bonds when they are issued (don't trade bonds, because trading them just gives money to the bond holder - not the company whose bond it is!).

That said, the best form of investing in a company is to purchase their product.

Rubbish

[DOsinga]

The article is typical example of the lump of labour fallacy, which usually goes something like this: we produce all this stuff to make society run. Now, if we find a way to make the same amount of stuff with less people (using computers), we'll end up with less employment.

If this was true, almost everybody would have been out of work by now. 2000 years ago the work of almost everybody was needed just to grow enough food for everybody. The truth is, that there is no limit to the amount of possible work. What matters is total production of society and how we divide it. Computes will raise total production of society, so it could make us all richer. If we succeed in distributing the wealth in any kind of just way, employment could rise. Or we could choose for a society where the rich have a lot and the poor are unemployed. But that choice does not have anything to do with the amount of efficiency improving computers do.

- - - - towards a lawyer free interent

Re:wealth creation

[B'Trey]

Actually, printing money is the only way that the suggestions in the article are going to work. Given that you accept all of the premises, the suggested solutions are likely to prove counter-productive:

Write free software for individual industries

The increased productivity caused by computers is one of the reasons cited for rising unemployment rates. Isn't this new software likely to replace efforts now being done by hand and make the situation worse, not better?

Create a truly public key infrastructure ... People have been trying to get corporate communications and negotiations online for years, and probably the biggest beneficiaries of such a move would be small businesses and individual contractors. After all, who finds it hardest to pay travel costs and conference room fees for expensive legal help?

Assuming that we did manage to get corporate communications online, what happens to the current infrastructure that grew up to support widespread business travel? Airlines, hotels, etc.

The argument is that increased productivity causes unemployment, therefore we need to increase productivity so that small businesses can function more efficiently and cut costs, thus paving the way for more small businesses. I don't think you can have it both ways. Increased productivity can't be both our bane and our salvation.

...what planet is he from?

[Artful Codger]

wealth does not equal jobs, and good jobs is what the world lacks.

There's alot of wealth, but at present the western system is optimised to cause wealth to drift up and get locked-up in the economic upper-crust.

There's tons of work that needs to be done! Examples - teaching arts and music, daycare, senior care, cleaning and renovating neighbourhoods, rehabilitation of ecological damage... but the powers refuse to see these as priorities or raise the minimum wage so that a person can actually make a living at one of these jobs.

The author first slams us for being clever and writing efficient stuff, then tells us the answer is to just run out and program more/ charge less. Oh, and let's run everything on scripting languages too. That'll help...

Re:...what planet is he from?

[smack.addict]

Your assessment is ignorant. Capitalism is the most efficient economic system for creating new wealth. You should think of capitalism like an accelerating train. As the train accelerates, the front car becomes increasingly distant from the back car. Nevertheless, the entire train manages to move forward.

In other words, under capitalism, the rich get richer faster than the poor get less poor. But it does enable the poor to escape poverty much quicker than any other economic system. Thus, your choices are to: a) Be really poor just like everyone else b) Be not so poor bu significantly disadvantaged compared to some others.

As a poor person, I would certainly pick B. As a rich person, of course, I would most definitely pick B.

+5: Socialism Advocate

[goldspider]

Not surprised to see this one modded up, given the prevailing sentiments here...

How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?

Why beat around the bush and just come out and suggest that everyone forks their paycheck over to the government so that they can give everyone an equal share (minus whatever government believes it is entitled to)? That's really what you're advocating, so why not come out and say it?

Re:Anyone who writes programs or plans system ..

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

As if you don't live in an economic ecology. It is unfortunely a product of the ME generation, I belive,
that you only need to think of yourself. That you make money in a vacumn. That is the central problem with the current conservative movement. You can see how they are taking the money and running. From the head of the New York Stock Exchange to World Com, to Enron. Its all part of the same irresponsible attitude. And its killing us.

The latest, I'll take my money and run" trend is to move all the jobs offshore. Good for them but not good for us. Where are those Republican patriots? I guess they figure why not ME why can't I just pull the plug on all the jobs in a town. Let them find another job somewhere else, I'm going to make a bundle shipping computer work to India. So what if you worked for me for 20 years, and have a house and children to take care of. So what if you can't find a job because all my other CEO buddies at the country club are doing the same thing. We laugh about how much we are making over golf. So what if you end up on welfare and homeless. And Oh Yes I'm going to work real hard to market the idea to you that we should get rid of welfare and social security. Why should I pay for that. Thats your problem.

exhale...

Having worked for several family run business I know there is another way to run a company. Another way to make money with a community of people working together. This cras objectifiction of business has got to stop before our whole economy colapses under the weight of the weathy company owners. Let start teaching real ethics and morality in the schools again. We may have to start it in the kindegartens and work forward, because I think most of those comming out of business school today are a lost cause when it comes to community responsibility. (some notable exceptions)

Re:Or....

[Doom Ihl' Varia]

The carrying capacity of the Earth changes with technology. However, I remeber a few years back reading that based on the technology then the world could support 25 billion people. Anybody who says we are going to run out of room in the US needs to leave the city for a weekend and go for a long drive.

Cut taxes on labor

[urbazewski]

To encourage more employment in the US we should cut our extremely high payroll taxes (taxes that employers pay when they hire/pay someone) and replace them with taxes on resource use, for example, petroleum and other raw materials. This would not only help correct the "negative externality" of pollution, it would encourage the development and use of labor intensive rather than capital intensive technologies.

Nope...

[Newer Guy]

Problem is, they don't replace you. Instead, they give your job to someone else who now has two jobs to do. I saw the prefect example this weekend. A friend of mine works as an engineer for Clear Channel. Three months ago, his assistant quit. He was forbidden to replace him, even though he's already doing two jobs (He's doing his regular job and being project engineer for a big build out). Now he has three jobs to do. Last weekend he visited a transmitter site for the first time in a month and found some equipment badly damaged. The pattern of the AM radio station was far out of FCC tolerances. Problem is, his logging system broke last month and he hasn't had the time to fix it yet. He doesn't even know how long ago this happened. He planned to hire a contractor to help, but his bookkeeper told him NO CONTRACTORS. So, he struggles to do three jobs, none of them well. At the same time, his bosses get HUGE bonuses for cutting expenses so well. THIS is the rebublican economy at work! It ain't 'trickle down' it's TINKLE DOWN...and we all know what they're tinkling...all over us!

Rinse, Repeat

[soloport]

In the last recession, we had high unemployment, yadda, yadda, yadda...

What no one seems to remember was that very quickly there was a surge in self-employment (duh, what else are you gonna do with all that spare time?). Naturally, all those fledgeling companies grew and started hiring (well, some did and some died). The unemployment rate slowly fell and people stopped complaining.

My pet theory is that this is all a normal swing of the economic pendulum. High employment leads to low productivity (how many cumulative hours did you spend doing watering-hole-like things at the office, last time you were employed?). High unemployment just wakes people up and starts getting them motivated and productive again ("Oh, that's why I needed that 'paycheck' thingie [that was auto-deposited, out of sight and out of mind] to pay these 'bill' thingies [also auto-withdrawn].")

Bottom line: Get a job! Can't *get* a job? Make one up! We did, and we haven't missed a financial beat, yet. My spouse is also "unemployed", but works FT for our startup business. Recently we started outsourcing work to a couple of out-of-state freelance developers, part time. Soon we'll have more work for them than they can handle. If you're still employed, start a business anyway. You're just fooling yourself if you think it's "permanent" employment.

When I lost my cushy day job, three months ago, we had no spare cash reserve, either, no nest-egg (how completely American employee is that). What we did was just to scramble as fast as we could to get business. You really would be shocked at how much business there is in the SMB sector. Just dress up a bit business-like, read a good book on how to sell things (e.g. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daley comes to mind) and get out there and do what you used to do for "The Man", just do it for yourself, now.

Oh, and find the best attorney and accountant your money can buy, first! And by all means write those miles down (I still have a hard time with that, but they do add up so fast).

Re:It's easy, become a conservative.

[Un pobre guey]

Become a good conservative and fight the liberals who put big government over freedom.

Under the tutelage of presumably "good conservatives," we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the "defense" industry and using it to conquer a major Third World petroleum producer. The latter not only also a multi-hundred billion dollar subsidy for the energy trading industry, but also one of blood. Nearly 200 American soldiers dead, and over 1500 wounded, to say nothing of the thousands of dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of wounded. How you see this as being against big government eludes me completely.

...the more you realize that the tax code is designed to enslave the middle and lower classes

You are right, but for the wrong reasons. You, like most, have fallen into the trap. It is not about liberals or conservatives, Republicans vs. Democrats, Hawks vs. Doves, Right to Life vs. Freedom of Choice, etc. It is about the actual day to day mechanisms of political action. Who do politicians pay attention to? To whom are they beholden? What segment of society drives political action in our country? Do they represent your interests, or do they consider you an expendable "Human Resource"? Is your employment status of any significance to them, or is it at best figured into some large-scale economic indicator? Wake up, my friend, we are all in the same boat.

Today's stolen sig:
The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging.

Re:wealth creation

[B'Trey]

If there was a software package that helped restaurants with inventory, ordering, advertising, etc. that helped them get the business end right...

There are. A great many of them. And yes, they're somewhat expensive but they aren't a significant percentage of the start-up cost of a restaurant - the real estate, the appliances and the supplies cost much more. Restaurants are high turn-over businesses. Most of them will fail, and no amount of software will change that.

Constructive Ideas

[avdi]

Having pointed out that Oram's economics are faulty, let me make a suggestion for fighting the REAL problem, which is not the loss of jobs, but the movement of jobs into new sectors.

If you want to help people cope with the fact that advances in technology have rendered them redundant, either supply or support education. If you have a valuable technical skill, look into opportunities for teaching it to others. If you're not the teacher type, find ways to support local technical education programs, especially those that target people who might not have the means to pay for a college education. The goal here is not to maintain the number jobs in any given field, but to make the transition from an old field to a new field as easy as possible.

Dad goes to Mexico for dental work

[swb]

My dad got a quote from our family dentist for a couple of crowns and it was like $4000. Many of his friends had been to Mexico for dental work and urged him to do the same. He went there, and the same work ended up costing like $1500 or something -- a dramatic price difference. Other than the relatively cramped offices, Dad said it was just like the dentist in the US -- same level of infection control, the treatments were the same, etc.

I think reality of medical care in the US is that outside of the realm of exotic disease treatment (oncology, hemotology, rheumatology, immunology, cardiology), your run of the mill medical care in most developed and many developing countries is about as good as it is here.

Also, I think that US doctors (dentists and other oral pros included) run the largest, best-financed protection scheme anywhere. You can't get most lab tests or medicines without seeing a doctor, who often has nothing to do with the lab work or the medicine.

Most of this could be done by a nurse or even self-done with the use of intelligent computer diagnoses, but these cost-saving advances are routinely blocked by doctors when they're not busy blocking liability or taking kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry.

Re:It's a zero-sum game.

[thrillseeker]

Creating your own wealth means taking someone else's ... it's a zero-sum game

A remarkably blindered view. Wealth is only zero-sum at a given instant.

Wealth is properly measured by value - what is the value of a great medical system, a great transportation system, varied and efficient communications systems? What is the value of having the time to attend your daughter's soccer games? What is the value of a multitude of research efforts into extending life and making it healthier, or of a US infant mortality rate of 6 per 1000 compared to say Angola's 200 per 1000? Did the US somehow "steal" Angola's ability to produce healthy babies or did the people of the US slowly build their wealth to one that allowed the "purchase" of a society that could provide the lower rate?

Wealth is (to some degree) exponential and viral - it is used to create more wealth for others if applied in a free market system - one in which those who offer a service or product are free to charge what they can and the buyer is free to choose WWWWW to buy. When wealth is stolen by those-that-know-how-to-spend-your-money-better (that is, tax used for social purposes) then it takes longer for wealth to grow and spread - those who had wealth now have less of it to spread through their own acquisition of products and services, and there is tremendous waste and fraud because of a lack of personal interest in seeing that value is obtained for the expenditure.

The kid next door charges more every year to cut my grass - I could look for another grasscutter or I could make some lawnmower manufacturer happy by buying their product and using it instead of allowing this young fellow to practice capitalism, but I've chosen how I want to spend my wealth (my cash) and the kid's chosen how he want's to spend his (his time). I have the luxury and wealth (and gray hair) to be lazy, and the kid trades his time and effort for my cash. This is not a zero-sum game - the world had to invent the lawnmower for the kid and the plasma TV with Angelina Jolie on screen to interest me for this transaction to have occured - else I'd have more inclination to cut my own damn grass.

This kid is using his saved wealth to buy a car, so that he can get to "a real job", so that he can save money and go to school, so that he can invent bigger plasma screens or extend the average lifespan even more or eventually bring sanitation and sane government and decent health care to Angola, or free-market education to the masses, etc.

The ability to pursue happiness mean the number of people enjoying longer, healthier lives with more free-time increases continuously, as it has. That is not zero-sum - it is the growth of wealth.

Fascinating

[Chris Johnson]

Reading Andy's article was a great surprise, for the following simple reason: I have never, in my life, seen anyone who used the term 'wealth creation' AND was seeing the real world.

I'm impressed. I'm not surprised that he doesn't have a bunch of pat answers- they don't exist within that context. But I'm impressed that he's asking the right questions, even if there aren't convenient answers.

There's no such thing as 'feed the world' under capitalism, or any social benefit from efficiency or technology: if you could generate a world-day of foodstuffs for 29 cents with a wonderful machine, capitalism is about seeing who gets to hoard as much money as possible from that situation, and politics is about controlling as many people as possible by exerting power over that cornucopia. The bounty won't feed anyone if you don't let them have it. If you have enough power to withhold that bounty, you can control the people you're depriving. That gives you more power, and you win.

This is not really very complicated or mysterious.

I guess it IS pretty cynical, but open your eyes.

The whole concept of making people better competers by giving them free software or whatever is within the context of raw capitalism- the idea is that they are then to beat up on the others who don't take advantage of these things. That's fine for the vicious and the tough and scrappy, but they would have won anyway with or without the tools- in capitalism it's not about the tools or even about the standard of living and least of all about 'wealth', it's about WHO you are as a personality. It's a structure decreeing certain social behavior. The idea is that it's less prone to being abused than a more nurturing social structure, because people will take advantage of anything nurturing. That may be true. People seem to take advantage of capitalism too, though. Pick your poison.

My own experience speaks to this whole situation. So you should make software to empower people? Andy, I've been doing that, in my field. I write CD mastering software- in some areas it is genuinely cutting-edge. I have a revolutionary approach to wordlength reduction and the redistribution of quantization error. I have various tone shaping adjustments that don't appear anywhere else. I've been GPLing this stuff for years now, for just the motivations you describe.

I'm starving and poor and have started dating a woman I cherish who has a 3-year-old kid and you know what, I'm sick of flushing my work. I'm sick of trying to be benevolent and being taken as useless because of my lack of greed. Nothing is going to make me a hardcore capitalist, but as far as this audio-domain program, I'm less and less motivated to help people have it for nothing. I'm not spending my own money to port it to more recent architectures, I'm not spending time and effort setting it up with a help system- by now I'm of a mind to still put it out, GPLed, make no fuss about that, but use this tool for ME and try to, basically, compete against anyone who might have picked it up but doesn't have the expertise with it. That, or not put it out at all- or put out only the source, maybe?

Capitalism means even I get beat down to the point where I can't stand trying to be benevolent or altruistic anymore. I'm unusually capable of being that, but it seems to be not even helping. The last time I talked with a GPLed audio project, they didn't even know what dither was or how it worked. We're sitting around trying to make tractors out of cabbage. It gets old.

I think as long as the context is free-market capitalism, society will be hopeless. There's no answer within the system. I'd prefer to ditch the raw capitalism. Something more like partly-cooked capitalism would suit me. Somehow manage some system where somebody does a reasonably okay job of finding people and projects that do benefit society and quality of life, and bankroll the buggers.

What's so wrong with that? That's just what happens right now, except it's Ken Lay of Enron who gets bankrolled and rew