I just read this article and it was riddled with errors and muddled thinking. His example "Consider the food business. It used to be quite local. Small companies and local producers competed with each other." doesn't mention that in those days the quantity of food produced would only support a much smaller population -- plus, the quality of the food produced was below what we're used to in 2000, and contributed to the lower life expectancy at the time (54 in 1920). From http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/ popclockest.txt:
US population:
1900: 76,000,000
1940: 132,000,000
1990: 272,000,000
I wonder whether author Peter Wayner would care to place his chips on whether he'd be among the lucky 28% of the population to survive a return to his model pre-centralized agricultural economy?
He brings up cars and guns and somehow thinks that because they were widely used by individuals that a central distribution facility was proven unnecessary. Not only is this untrue as Wayner himself states within the article ("Guns produced in the East..." implies at least a central production AREA, and in fact as I'm sure Wayner knows, both guns and cars were produced in centralized FACTORIES, not handcrafted in basements one by one), but it answers only a bogus objection to Napster: the objection is not that Napster decentralizes music distribution, but that it allows music theft. All of Wayner's examples ignore the crucial point that cars, guns, books, food, etc. were BOUGHT by the individuals using them, not carried away as loot from the manufacturers.
Wayner faults Dyson for implying that "people who think for themselves and do not check with some central host for permission are acting like viruses" and finishes up by saying "It's pretty sad to hear that the free flow of people, capital, and information is something that's scary and bad." Well, very few murderers check with a central authority before committing their particular crime. Are they, too, Wayner's heroes of independent thinking? Maybe so, but I wouldn't care to rationalize murder on that (or any other) basis. I also think it's pretty sad that he equates freedom of speech and movement with theft of intellectual property. I have no doubt that if a way were somehow invented to allow anyone to walk into a car dealership and drive off with a new car with no payment and no consequences, Wayner and his intellectual colleagues would be driving new wheels within days, and be back at their computers composing rationalizations for that theft as well.
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I just read this article and it was riddled with errors and muddled thinking. His example "Consider the food business. It used to be quite local. Small companies and local producers competed with each other." doesn't mention that in those days the quantity of food produced would only support a much smaller population -- plus, the quality of the food produced was below what we're used to in 2000, and contributed to the lower life expectancy at the time (54 in 1920). From http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/ popclockest.txt:
US population:
1900: 76,000,000
1940: 132,000,000
1990: 272,000,000
I wonder whether author Peter Wayner would care to place his chips on whether he'd be among the lucky 28% of the population to survive a return to his model pre-centralized agricultural economy?
He brings up cars and guns and somehow thinks that because they were widely used by individuals that a central distribution facility was proven unnecessary. Not only is this untrue as Wayner himself states within the article ("Guns produced in the East..." implies at least a central production AREA, and in fact as I'm sure Wayner knows, both guns and cars were produced in centralized FACTORIES, not handcrafted in basements one by one), but it answers only a bogus objection to Napster: the objection is not that Napster decentralizes music distribution, but that it allows music theft. All of Wayner's examples ignore the crucial point that cars, guns, books, food, etc. were BOUGHT by the individuals using them, not carried away as loot from the manufacturers.
Wayner faults Dyson for implying that "people who think for themselves and do not check with some central host for permission are acting like viruses" and finishes up by saying "It's pretty sad to hear that the free flow of people, capital, and information is something that's scary and bad." Well, very few murderers check with a central authority before committing their particular crime. Are they, too, Wayner's heroes of independent thinking? Maybe so, but I wouldn't care to rationalize murder on that (or any other) basis. I also think it's pretty sad that he equates freedom of speech and movement with theft of intellectual property. I have no doubt that if a way were somehow invented to allow anyone to walk into a car dealership and drive off with a new car with no payment and no consequences, Wayner and his intellectual colleagues would be driving new wheels within days, and be back at their computers composing rationalizations for that theft as well.
--EOM--