First, let me dismiss (again) the idea of Free Merket = religion. I don't support that. You're right, it doesn't always work, but that's not quite my point anyway. I don't think it's fair to say that the idea of a butcher being able to ignore arbitrary price controls created at the whim of a government afraid of political backlash equates to me saying free markets are arbitrarily good, or that Europe is falling apart... but that's neither here nor there. BTW, where's the enforcement end of that? Does the butcher get thrown in jail for overcharging for his lamb chops?
The problem is that's free market is only proven to work on a very restritive set of assumptions. One of them is perfect information, and rationality.
Then the job of government is to educate the people, not to protect them from their ignorance. You'd think that would be the obvious step, right? By that rationale, any population that could be shown to have poor enough math skills could vote to force retailers to price everything in even numbers, and they'd have to do it. Ignorance is not a good foundation for regulation, and certainly not a good place from which to begin governing a people. "Right, we all know many of you can't type in a number and hit that Euro/Franc button, so we're freezing all prices for 3 months, regardless of availability, no matter how much it screws the retailers over the Christmas season. We know plenty of you are stupid, and we're here to protect you from that.".
Or even worse, the people declare they're too confused to understand it all, so the govt. responds not through increasing education and reducing ignorance, but through forcing the retail market to halt price changes so the ignorance doesn't get any worse!
It's the job of the governement to protect the citizen from abuse, or to regulate what is going wrong in a free market here
I agree in the case of abuse, but taking advantage of ignorance is not the same as abuse... if it were, by God the user-car market should be regulated immediately!
And I think you miss the point. When you hand off the job of fair pricing to the govt, you've reduced democracy. The retailer is not a robot with no rights to conduct business in the fashoin he chooses, and it's not *wrong* to charge more if you can get it. Caveat Emptor! The result is more freedom for the individual, less power for the government. Regulation begets LESS democracy, less individual freedom, and more govt. control.
What I'm criticizing (and to be honest, what I'm constantly amazed by) is the willingness of the people to hand off personal responsibility to the govt, and the willingness of the govt. to take whatever powers over the people they can get, regardless of the fact that they are playing the society against itself. Think about this: What has the govt. in France said by freezing prices? They have said that business owners are not to be trusted, and that govt. must protect ordinary work-a-day people from money-hungry capitalist thieves who will screw you however they can. Thank God we were here for you! That's a destructive idea to sow amongst your people, unless you don't care how many of them rely on the govt. for their livelihood.
If I'm buying your bread, you'll damn well do what I say.
So, you not only fail to understand the problem, and the solution, but you also criticize them without a clue. So I'm clear on the real problem, I think the typical European solution is 'out of the frying pan, into the fire', and I'm criticizing the system by which many Europeans tend to dodge personal accountability and responsibility in favor of govt. protection and coddling, which the ministers are more than happy to provide.
This is why 'the dole' in the USA is viewed as a necessary evil, and in Europe as a semi-legitimate lifestyle choice.
Europeans are not behaving like if "FREE market" was a absolute god, or a religion which as to be inconditionnaly followed "no question asked". Ahh, but the 'no questions asked' attitude is exactly the one you're taking by freezing prices. While I don't think a free market solves all problems, it's certainly better than an attitude of "Just make it simple for me, keep me safe, and to hell with whoever it hurts in the process... I don't want to ask questions about pricing." Why does your desire to pay the same thing for milk trump the shopkeep's desire to make a few cents more when he can? In a REAL fair system of government, regulation would be out of the question unless it was clear milk pricing was so far beyond the pale that it couldn't be excused. Even in cases where you need a thing to survive, the US govt. rarely regulates prices directly. When heating oil got unbelievably expensive at the start of winter last year, did the govt. cap oil prices? No, it increased availability, which causes prices to naturally lower. Do they cap the cost of electricity in Chicago in the summer, when the heat can kill folks with no central air? No, they give away free fans and help pay your bills. In fact, if commerce in the US doesn't cross state lines, the Federal govt. can't really regulate it at all... even when they want to!
If something looks wrong or unfair, the governement can attempt to regulate it. It might fail, it might succeed, but we tend to vote for it to regulate in some case.
Unfair to whom? This is one of my points. For large issues, I understand sometimes, but what right have you to force the local shopkeep to charge what you want him to? Why is he less of a citizen than you, because he's selling and you're buying?
It's this kind of situation that makes me believe govt. should stay out of the way. Playing the workers against the middle class is BAD government, even if the workers *want* to use the regulatory stick to beat up on the retail sector. Taking any sort of stand re: who is a more deserving citizen is ultimately destructive to the economy and the society... you condition people not to desire success, because it's better to be on the winning team. In the US, success is where it's at; successful people are not viewed with veiled suspicion, and not treated by their govt. as second-class citizens.
So, on one hand, we don't care about frozen retail price, we take it that three months is short enough not to damage the economy.
You might care if you were the butcher and the price of beef doubled in December... of course, the govt. would prevent that as well. Do you see the kind of snowball effect this meddling creates? When you start mucking around in the economy with the goal of keeping people happy, you end up with... a crappy economy. The extreme examples: East Germany and the USSR. On the other hand, you have the USA extreme, where people do get screwed sometimes... look at the price of CD's. But, if you were to pick, which one would you have? Most European govts lean decidedly more toward the USSR model than the USA one... and this schism between you and the shopkeep perpetuates it. Why do businessmen in Europe feel as though they have to justify their actions to me? I think it's great that they're making money hand over fist! But, again, many Europeans view that kind of success with skepticism and distrust, and the govt. just plays along. In fact, it makes the businessman MORE dishonest! Instead of being honest because he knows screwing his customers a few times costs him YEARS of business, he takes what he can get because the customer half-expects to get cheated already, and there's no chance of trust.
On the other hand, we're happy that buying whatever good in Euro to our traditional shop, there won't be a silent hidden 5%,10 or 20% inflation hidden somewhere on some product.
Regardless of whether or not the shopkeep happens to actually be losing money or getting persecuted by his govt. to keep you happy...right?
So on average, we are happy. What's the problem?
I suppose the problem is that you rely on the govt. to create and safeguard that happiness, at the possible expense of others in your own society. It's not your government's job to make you happy! It's your job. IMHO, you're better off failing on your own than partaking of govt.-mandated happiness.
The other problem is that regulation impacts your economy's ability to create wealth in the populace, which makes people less able to prosper, which requires more govt intervention, which requires more severe taxation of the few who are successful despite earlier regulation, which discourages people from being highly successful in the first place, which creates more govt dependency and less economic potential, which doubly impacts the people's ability to create wealth...
A free market is the best path to a good economy... history consistantly shows that free trade and markets free from govt. intervention produce the best results for the most people.
Certainly, there are a host of things that are more important than a free market. My point here, and one that I think we keep missing, is that there's a deeper concept which Europeans very often miss completely (man, it's really hard to articulate this... I'm trying my best here): the govt. has no place meddling in the private transactions of a retailer, regardless of whether or not the beurocrats believe the people must be protected from them. It's not the job of the govt. to shield one segment of the populace from another, equally law-abiding part... especially when the only real reason must be their own political arses. Who would the people blame if they get screwed on the price of a roast? The govt! Therein lies the entire problem, and that's why it's practically impossible to break the cycle... and why so many people in the USA fight against the beginnings of it.
If I get overcharged for a steak because of the Euro changeover, it is, IMHO, my own damned fault, not the fault of the Irish parliament for switching to the Euro. But to your average Irishman, it's the govermnemt's fault! They will go right on and curse the Euro, and the shopkeeper will join in even while he's screwing his customer. And this is why European govts act to protect the people, and interfere in markets. You'll never hear the local TD tell a voter that it's their own damned fault for paying too much, and maybe he ought to take his business elsewhere... he'll go on a tirade about the evils of price gouging and how something must be done about it.
IMHO, things like freedom from unwanted intervention by my govt. are more important that prosperity. I think it's the job of govt to create conditions in which I have a reasonable chance of success in whatever I might try, provided I have the skills and put in the effort. It is NOT the job of the govt. to support me indefinitely me if I give up, nor is it the job of govt. to force other, successful people to support me in my decision to just be a long-term failure.
Lastly, and slightly off-topic; if the EU was founded by any other means than a consensus of citizens (NOT officials several steps removed from direct, regular accountability from the populace) who decided to join together to make the continent better, than it's dangerously close to an illegitimate governing body.
Is it really better to create a governing body with no popular accountability which has the power to severely restrict basic freedoms and commerce (like, I think this steak costs £5 today, not £4.50) because it's members decide they know best for the populace? What do you do when you don't like what the EU does? Tell your local official, who tells the minister, who tells the EU rep, who tells the other EU reps, who tell him to piss off. Then he tells the minister "no dice", who tells the local official "Sorry, not this time", who tells the people "What can I do, I'm just the local official!". (of course, if this isn't how it works, I'd love to be corrected.)
As always, I welcome responses... perhaps this wil help get to the meat of the issue here.
Well, first of all, what's wrong with being rich? USA has a larger percentage of rich people per capita than the rest of the world, too, and we whip ass in charitable giving as well.
***SHAMELESS BIAS WARNING***
As for homeless, I suppose you have to decide whether you want to be a society that brutally taxes your successful people so that the failures can have a nice house and a car, or a society that says you get what you work for, and you work for what you get.
And this is why people get arrested in France for working more than the allowed hours/week. With all the import/export issues, price controls, artifically inflating prices to protect piss-poor market performance and inferior products, I don't see the free market. Ask Irish Eircom customers where the free market is.
This is exactly what I mean. It's not a religion... but the govt. shouldn't be ABLE to freeze prices, even if it wants to. It's none of the Republic of Ireland's business what I charge for a widget... all that matters is if my customers think it's a fair price.
The idea that it's possible to force an entire country's retailers to freeze their pricing across Christmas because the govt. is worried that people don't want to use calculators is madness. Caveat Emptor, and if you're worried, then let the govt. buy Euro calculators for everyone.
You'd think, if this were a real collection of Democratic societies, that the same people who voted to change their currency would be able to manage to convert it without having to be patronized and shielded from the market by their own governments.
(But wait... most people didn't vote to change this, did they?)
Do you see what I mean? Your government shouldn't have the ability to dictate anything at all with regards to your pricing, whether they want to or not, whether they think it's better for people or not. You can't retain the ability to arbitrarily manipulate commerce like that and expect a powerful united economy to rival the USA.
That said, I think the US government under Clinton was probably one of the best examples of government seen in the West in many many many years, if not ever. They made few changes to laws, and generally kept their nose out of public business (and especially the Internet).
Whoa... where were you? Clinton started in '92 with the Clipper chip, then went on to CDA and several other laws they proposed and argued for in the Supreme Ct... DMCA for one, but there were many others. Clintons proposed a national health system which was rejected, and they practically went to war against freeing crypto for export. It's only because of Gingritch and the coalition he put together to block net sales tax that it didn't happen.
Clinton's administration spent 8 years trying frantically to drive things to the left with only limited success (because of the GOP congress), and waged war against freedom on the internet the entire time.
Boy is this going to sound like a troll... but since I'm an American living in a Euro country (Ireland) I get to say it anyway:
Until the problem in quotes is resolved, the European continent will never, ever, ever have as strong an economy as the USA:
However, the retailers have been given a little too much leeway in setting their prices, so there is a lot of retail price inflation (already apparent during December). In France, they introduced a price freeze for three months to prevent this.
How many of you Americans had this phrase jump out at you... and how many Europeans missed it altogether?
The retailers have been given too much leeway?!? Do you see the problem here? It's not the job of governments to decide how much a retailer gets to charge for his goods! The retailers should be able to tell their governments to fuck off, and charge what they can get... but they aren't allowed!
But the more fundamental problem is deeper: Many Europeans don't agree with this idea, and they are MUCH more in favor of tightly regulated markets... so much so that they don't think about it. It's an accepted precondition, and so you get comments like the one I quoted.
The truth is, the price inflation happens because the retailers will inflate to whatever level they are allowed by their govermnemts. If it were a real market, they would inflate to whatever the consumers were willing to pay for the goods... but this doesn't occur to many (if not most) Europeans, and it's such a foreign idea that it's hard to even explain. So you get France freezing retail prices for three months! Why do people put up with it?
Because they don't understand, on the fundamental level that Americans do, what a FREE market is, and what it does for the people who succeed in it.
There's no denying that a world where nobody has to starve, or even work for their needs, would be better than the current one. The thing is, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether capitalism will give way to a 'GPL Society' model social system where everybody gives away whatever they like and takes only whatever they need and money disappears because nobody needs it anymore.
To digress for a bit, I'm not willing to help support a third of the population while they sit around picking their asses with a Q-Tip on the off chance that one of them might be a visionary. If he's visionary enough, he'll make it regardless. Here's an exercise for you: name for me some real visionaries who came up with their ideas after a lifetime of free comprehensive support by the government.
My point was, when you have all your needs given to you, they become valueless. Luxuries become the things with value... in fact, the ONLY things with value. When you mass-produce luxuries, then you further limit the number of valuable things (or skills), and you INCREASE their value.
Of course an excellent education isn't as important as regular meals, but when the meals are all free, made by robots, and available in whatever quantities you feel like getting, they become valueless. Eating stops being important at all, and education becomes much more important! Even a garbage man can feed his kids, but when his kids no longer have the option of laboring for currency, and don't need any skill they currently have, education becomes critical!
As regards Europeans, maybe you haven't met the Protestant folks that sit outside a school every morning in Belfast, screaming insults and throwing things at the catholic 3rd grade kids as they walk to class. Or the 'Real IRA' guys, or their Ulster Unionist counterparts. Some of those Unionists shot a random kid in his car the other day, in protest against the slow pace of IRA decomissioning! Did you get that? They shot someone because the IRA isn't getting rid of weapons fast enough! You haven't met the family down the road from me either, whos kids aren't welcome at any of the neighborhood houses (except mine) because the lady next door heard the husband and wife screaming at each other one evening.
Maybe you need to spend some more time in Europe, and some more time meeting Americans. It's never a good idea to generalize about 240 million people, whatever continent they're on.
Oh? Why would I want to do that? If you aren't successful, you don't eat (unless you live in a country where they support you indefinitely on the backs of the successful capitalists).
My definition of successful would be: you make enough money to provide for your needs, in a length of time which leaves some significant section of the day free for non-survival related projects.
First off... screw you, I'm taking your free software and I'm not giving you jack shit.
Chuckle... not really, but:
How does a gift giving society stop this? Okay, nobody gives me anything anymore.
But if I get what I want, why should I care? What if I'm the best teacher around, or the ONLY teacher around, and I have that attitude?
To put it more generally, what if my skills are so highly sought after that I am able to demand whatever I want? So nobody gives me anything unless I demand it... I'm completely without social debt in the gift-giving society AND I have everything I want, whenever I want it. Now, your anti-selfishness stigma is not only useless, but I also stand as an example to others for how to get what you want without owing anyone anything. Since we're talking about an entire society, the gift-giving system you describe places more power in the hands of the highly skilled asshole than he can possibly get now... which creates an incentive for others to follow in his footsteps, and eventually tears apart the whole scheme. You end up saying "The guy's an asshole, he never gives me anything unless I cater to his desires, but if I don't give him whatever he wants, my car stays broken/my kids end up imbeciles/my pipes keep leaking all over the floor."
This idea sounds really great, but it's broken! You have to have a critical mass of nice people who like to give stuff away without expecting anything back. There just aren't enough people like that to change the social and economic systems away from capitalism and and the market. The gift-giving society is designed to make it easier for the nice folks to get screwed by sneaky, greedy people and the freeloaders. It's the Law of Unintended Consequences writ large.
What I think is that Free tech would shift the relative worth of some items, and that in some cases an object would become available at no cost, and thus valueless, while other objects, and many services, would increase significantly in value directly as a result of their non-replicatable nature. While you probably could reduce the overall 'scarcity quotient' (assuming such a thing exists and could be quantified), such a change could not be broad enough to render a capitalist system useless or outmoded. It would merely shift the focus away from immediate survival (until we start running low on natural resources of course, then it's right back to how things are now).
Free Tech reduces scarcity of things than can be created or produced through tech. Whether that matters much or not, and whether that creates a better society is still, IMHO, an open question.
First of all, you can't be certain that everyone will find fullfillment from self-development, and a GPL Society puts more power into the hands of the greedy than a capitalist one.
Second of all, even the most generous of skilled people will expect compensation to use their skills for one project over another. If I'm the best english teacher in the world, and I have my choice of 5000 kids for a class of 30, how do I pick? What if someone offers me a unique piece of artwork in exchange for teaching his kid... is it bad to do that? That's barter, which eventually = capitalism unless you shoot me for bartering, or otherwise punish me. You can't demand that everyone accept the GPL Society unless you plan on enforcing that demand, and now your happy little society is Animal Farm.
And you can be absolutely sure that many people won't accept it.
I completely agree with that! The subject of the interview, however, dodn't seem to grasp that you can't translate Free Tech into Free Everything, and so you can't get a "GPL Society" no matter how much Free Tech you create.
Okay, so I bashing you, that's how I start MY long posts:-)
LOL
It's necessary to trade your work power/knowledge for things that you want/need.
This is what I'm saying! It works VERY well for Free Software, but it just can't work for the 'GPL Society' that the article talked about. Even if you provide everything that everyone wants, you still need some mechanism to trade the things that retain their value after the (heh) GPL Revolution. Trade means capitalism! You can't replace capitalism without Star Trek style replicators or some other mechanism to render EVERYTHING valueless. Even in Star Trek, you had to compete to get to go into space... non-replicatable skills like leadership or mind-reading still have value, and they are traded for space-exploration.
Do I need a huge house? No. Do I need a 100.000 dollar car? No. You have to see these flaws on the human desires, and critize them, to support free software. In a world with 3 billion people suffering from hunger, to discuss our meat is a little selfish.
If we do lower our futile desires for such useless itens, we can begin to see where Free Software can help us.
I completely understand and respect your position on this. Sure, I don't need a $100,000 house... but I might want one. And what's wrong with that? The folks suffering from hunger probably wouldn't mind one either, given the choice between that and a UN tent or a hut in the mountains. The thing is, you can't translate that into an entire social system, because while you're very altruistic, I might not be... and if I have skills that you can't replicate, you'll have to put up with my terms whether you like it or not. A social system needs to be able to allow those generous people to give without being throttled by giving the greedy ones the ability to screw the entire society. A GPL Society as described in the article places MORE power with greedy dishonest people, not less.
Also, you can't always expect a brilliant brain surgeon to take the same compensation for his efforts that an unskilled Somali farmer takes.
I program on PHP for living. I can survive only on this, for a long time. I do not empty my client's wallet for anything I develop. I think that before I even begin to think about how much I want to get from a project, I need to think if it is a reasonable amount.
The thing is, you don't make money from PHP. You make your money by trading your semi-unique skill for some dollar amount. It's good that you charge a reasonable price, because if you didn't you'd starve or change your mind. If, however, you were the very best PHP programmer on the planet, you could charge a lot more. The capitalist system allows you to do that... but don't think you live on Free Software. You live on trading an uncommon skill for currency. You sell your knowledge of Free Software. If everybody knew PHP, then the PHP code would never feed you, nor would your PHP skills... it's not the Free Software that feeds you, and it can't because I'll never pay you for PHP (and neither will anyone else... it's free!).
If you have 2 teachers like this, the need is lowered. If you have 3, 4, 10, 20, 150, 400, 1000, 00, your argument fails completely.
Ahh... but you can't have 100,000 BEST teachers. You can only have one of those, and that one person has a limited amount of time for teaching, and a limited class size. If I want my kids to learn from the ABSOLUTE BEST teacher IN THE WORLD, then I need to offer something as incentive so the teacher will pick my kids and not someone else's.
In the real world, this should fall into tiers... the best teachers make the most money, and so on, down to the crappiest ones, and I trade my skills for the best teacher they will buy me. (of course, the various governments break this system for general knowledge classrooms, and so you rarely get any highly skilled teachers who actually teach anything because their teaching skill has little value)
But if this person realizes that he's got there with the help of others, he will help someone who wants to be like him. If he doesn't want, it's a character flaw.
Maybe it is a character flaw in your worldview, but a social system that demands its members accept a particular attitude must either:
1)Enforce this attitude through constant monitoring and punishment for wrong thinking.
2)give up altogether and find a system that accomodates undesirable people without punishing everyone.
3)suffer a violent revolution as the people get tired of being told how to think.
How does the GPL Society force people to be nice and give of themselves? It requires altruism on the part of the overwhelming majority, which is COMPLETELY unrealistic.
You analized the monetary reward of the free software movement, while I analized from another perspective
I think Free Software is great! I just think that trying to translate that into an entire social system is a cracked idea that can never be anything more, and IMHO should never be anything more.
That's where the robots come in. Quoth Stallman [gnu.org]:
"The waste inherent in owning information will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends much time replicating what the next fellow is doing."
The idea that everything you could need could be created by a robot is different than the idea that everything you could want is created by one. You seem to have missed that concept... luxury becomes paramount when survival is handled, and since you can't always make (or convince someone else to make) what you want, you must have some way to trade for it... barter rapidly evolves into capitalism.
Perhaps you should live in Lake Woebegone where the children are all above average. What is it that makes you think you couldn't find a good teacher in a society not based on money? What about all the people who would like to teach but end up working for corporations because teacher's pay is so shitty? What about the reduced overhead for the creation and distribution of textbooks in a copyright-free economy?
Ahh... but for me, a good teacher isn't adequate. My daughter is absolutely brilliant, and I want the BEST teacher. Merely 'good' isn't good enough for my daughter. And since I might live in the middle of nowhere, there's an excellent chance that all the skilled people around me don't want to spend time teaching 6yr old prodigies without some sort of compensation... highly skilled people expect (and deserve) more compensation for their work than less-skilled people. Unless you can give everyone everything they can come up with, you're right back to capitalism. No replicators, no GPL Society.
We don't have the natural resources to give everyone everything for free. Things that are scarce always have more value, and that makes people desire them more... once again, the GPL Society falls apart into plain old capitalism.
And, hey, don't forget, reduced overhead is irrelevant, since all the books are made by robots and everything is digital. You haven't gained anything. The solution to the teacher quality problem is to allow schools to compete in a market economy, free of unions which protect ignorant teachers and free of govt. control which prevents teachers from marketing their skills.
The GPL society as described can handle freeloaders, what it has a hard time with is exlusivity.
No society can handle freeloaders when a commodity is scarce, like education, or medicine, or caviar and a 200yr old bottle of Dom. The GPL society (as I said before) works fine when you talk about things that can be replicated for free, but falls apart when you apply it to tangible, unconvertable skills and objects.
Hence the flood of immigrants away from the relatively wealthy US to the relatively poor Mexico to avoid the exploitation, right?. I thought you were a capitalist?!
That makes no sense at all. People come into the US because their work has more value here. If All work was valueless, and all commodities were valueless (which is what happens if you can automate the process and provide it all for free) then the things with value become MORE scarce, and MORE valuable. I suppose I should have said 'price gouge', not 'exploit'.
GPL accomadates greed and demands an end to information-envy. It is the conrol, rather than the hoarding, of information that makes the GPL society difficult to realize.
HA! The GPL Society accomodates information-greed, not "I want 40 times more than you because I jump in front of bullets to protect the President and you don't" greed, or "I'm the best dance instructor for 500 miles, so either give me something I can't make or you can piss off" greed. The GPL Society demands an end to information-envy, but doesn't do anything about "hey, you've got the smartest dog I've ever seen!" envy, or "wow, you make really cool sculpture... can I have one?" envy. It's my experience that people place much more value on the things they make for themselves than they do on the things they make in the factory. How does the GPL Society deal with that?
The difficulty in realizing the GPL Society has absolutely nothing at all to do with information hoarding or control, and everything to do with basic logistical concepts of supply/demand, relative worth, unique tangible items, and personal non-replicatable services. Not to mention good old-fashioned greed and ill-temper.
Here's the thing I don't get: (and since I don't get it, I must be a closed-minded jingoist...sheesh)
This vision, this 'rethought Marxism', doesn't have any real meat to it. Now, I'd love to join the mailing list and see if anyone has come up with any substance to back these ideas. The thing is, I don't believe there can be any substance to them.
The idea of a "GPL Society", where everyone takes what they need and contributes what they want, is fundamentally flawed. It's possible, perhaps, to get some distance towards this within a capitalist system because of the ability to convert quite a lot of labor into information transfer while also adding value. The thing is, Free software is a poor example... it exists because those people who are contributing to it do not rely on their creation for survival. Modelling an overall social system, where objects and services often cannot be translated into a digital form, on a system which ONLY exists as perfectly reproducible digital information, is a mistake of the highest order; this is where the "GPL Society" falls over. There are three big reasons why...
First, you cannot expect a 'self-unfolding' project to provide food for you, or heat for your house, or schooling for your kids. You can only dedicate time to these projects when your basic needs have been met... not only has Free Software grown up inside a capitalist system, it is completely dependant on that system to sustain the creators of Free Software. Only succesful capitalists have time to create things which do not contribute to their survival. The only way for the GPL society to work is to ensure that every person has, for free, everything they could need, in a manner that doesn't involve labor on the part of some other individual.
Second, even if we could completely automate every layer of food production (and every other industry and commodity) it still wouldn't work because of this sort of scenario: I want my kids to go to a good school, so I check out all the local freely offered schooling (because I live in the GPL Society, all the schooling is provided by people who want to do that sort of thing as a self-unfolding project that makes them feel good, and they get to do this because they don't need anything at all) and I decide that nobody around me can provide what I think is a brilliant education. So, I go out and find a teacher who's REALLY REALLY good... the thing is, this teacher also has 6000 other parents clamoring for her time, so she gets to choose who she picks. The only way I can have a better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher; I have to figure out how I can give her something she WANTS (she's already got everything she needs). Guess what... we're right back to capitalism. Maybe she wants a bigger house and a bunch of handcarved art-nuveau accent work, and the only way I can give it to her is to get a bunch of house-building hand-carving type guys together to build it for her... but some of those guys want some incentive to drop their own architectural self-unfolding projects and come help me instead... how can I compensate these guys for their time? What if I don't have anything they want? Well, I guess I need to give them something they can use to trade for things they want... like money. Until we invent replicators, it's impossible to give everyone all the things they WANT; capitalism, and the market economy, is the only way to deal with this VERY common scenario. It's so common, most people don't even think about it anymore. It's second nature for a reason, folks, and not because you've been trained by capitalist bugaboos to think like that.
Third, there will always bee a huge horde of people who ONLY take, or who exploit the desires of others for their own gain. When exclusively taking becomes not just possible, but easy and socially acceptable, then even more people won't contribute anything back. If all needs are provided for, luxuries become paramount and exploitation is EASIER, not harder. Greed automatically breaks the "GPL Society" and any other idea that follows the same path.
Like Marx, this is a nice idea when it's kicked around by a bunch of homogenous thinkers on a mailing list, but when you try to apply it to the rest of the non-intelligencia it abruptly falls to bits.
Slashdot Mirror
Ye Gods, a reasoned response! I love those.
First, let me dismiss (again) the idea of Free Merket = religion. I don't support that. You're right, it doesn't always work, but that's not quite my point anyway. I don't think it's fair to say that the idea of a butcher being able to ignore arbitrary price controls created at the whim of a government afraid of political backlash equates to me saying free markets are arbitrarily good, or that Europe is falling apart... but that's neither here nor there. BTW, where's the enforcement end of that? Does the butcher get thrown in jail for overcharging for his lamb chops?
The problem is that's free market is only proven to work on a very restritive set of assumptions. One of them is perfect information, and rationality.
Then the job of government is to educate the people, not to protect them from their ignorance. You'd think that would be the obvious step, right? By that rationale, any population that could be shown to have poor enough math skills could vote to force retailers to price everything in even numbers, and they'd have to do it. Ignorance is not a good foundation for regulation, and certainly not a good place from which to begin governing a people. "Right, we all know many of you can't type in a number and hit that Euro/Franc button, so we're freezing all prices for 3 months, regardless of availability, no matter how much it screws the retailers over the Christmas season. We know plenty of you are stupid, and we're here to protect you from that.".
Or even worse, the people declare they're too confused to understand it all, so the govt. responds not through increasing education and reducing ignorance, but through forcing the retail market to halt price changes so the ignorance doesn't get any worse!
It's the job of the governement to protect the citizen from abuse, or to regulate what is going wrong in a free market here
I agree in the case of abuse, but taking advantage of ignorance is not the same as abuse... if it were, by God the user-car market should be regulated immediately!
And I think you miss the point. When you hand off the job of fair pricing to the govt, you've reduced democracy. The retailer is not a robot with no rights to conduct business in the fashoin he chooses, and it's not *wrong* to charge more if you can get it. Caveat Emptor! The result is more freedom for the individual, less power for the government. Regulation begets LESS democracy, less individual freedom, and more govt. control.
What I'm criticizing (and to be honest, what I'm constantly amazed by) is the willingness of the people to hand off personal responsibility to the govt, and the willingness of the govt. to take whatever powers over the people they can get, regardless of the fact that they are playing the society against itself. Think about this: What has the govt. in France said by freezing prices? They have said that business owners are not to be trusted, and that govt. must protect ordinary work-a-day people from money-hungry capitalist thieves who will screw you however they can. Thank God we were here for you! That's a destructive idea to sow amongst your people, unless you don't care how many of them rely on the govt. for their livelihood.
If I'm buying your bread, you'll damn well do what I say.
So, you not only fail to understand the problem, and the solution, but you also criticize them without a clue.
So I'm clear on the real problem, I think the typical European solution is 'out of the frying pan, into the fire', and I'm criticizing the system by which many Europeans tend to dodge personal accountability and responsibility in favor of govt. protection and coddling, which the ministers are more than happy to provide.
This is why 'the dole' in the USA is viewed as a necessary evil, and in Europe as a semi-legitimate lifestyle choice.
Europeans are not behaving like if "FREE market" was a absolute god, or a religion which as to be inconditionnaly followed "no question asked".
Ahh, but the 'no questions asked' attitude is exactly the one you're taking by freezing prices. While I don't think a free market solves all problems, it's certainly better than an attitude of "Just make it simple for me, keep me safe, and to hell with whoever it hurts in the process... I don't want to ask questions about pricing." Why does your desire to pay the same thing for milk trump the shopkeep's desire to make a few cents more when he can? In a REAL fair system of government, regulation would be out of the question unless it was clear milk pricing was so far beyond the pale that it couldn't be excused. Even in cases where you need a thing to survive, the US govt. rarely regulates prices directly. When heating oil got unbelievably expensive at the start of winter last year, did the govt. cap oil prices? No, it increased availability, which causes prices to naturally lower. Do they cap the cost of electricity in Chicago in the summer, when the heat can kill folks with no central air? No, they give away free fans and help pay your bills. In fact, if commerce in the US doesn't cross state lines, the Federal govt. can't really regulate it at all... even when they want to!
If something looks wrong or unfair, the governement can attempt to regulate it. It might fail, it might succeed, but we tend to vote for it to regulate in some case.
Unfair to whom? This is one of my points. For large issues, I understand sometimes, but what right have you to force the local shopkeep to charge what you want him to? Why is he less of a citizen than you, because he's selling and you're buying?
It's this kind of situation that makes me believe govt. should stay out of the way. Playing the workers against the middle class is BAD government, even if the workers *want* to use the regulatory stick to beat up on the retail sector. Taking any sort of stand re: who is a more deserving citizen is ultimately destructive to the economy and the society... you condition people not to desire success, because it's better to be on the winning team. In the US, success is where it's at; successful people are not viewed with veiled suspicion, and not treated by their govt. as second-class citizens.
So, on one hand, we don't care about frozen retail price, we take it that three months is short enough not to damage the economy.
You might care if you were the butcher and the price of beef doubled in December... of course, the govt. would prevent that as well. Do you see the kind of snowball effect this meddling creates? When you start mucking around in the economy with the goal of keeping people happy, you end up with... a crappy economy. The extreme examples: East Germany and the USSR. On the other hand, you have the USA extreme, where people do get screwed sometimes... look at the price of CD's. But, if you were to pick, which one would you have? Most European govts lean decidedly more toward the USSR model than the USA one... and this schism between you and the shopkeep perpetuates it. Why do businessmen in Europe feel as though they have to justify their actions to me? I think it's great that they're making money hand over fist! But, again, many Europeans view that kind of success with skepticism and distrust, and the govt. just plays along. In fact, it makes the businessman MORE dishonest! Instead of being honest because he knows screwing his customers a few times costs him YEARS of business, he takes what he can get because the customer half-expects to get cheated already, and there's no chance of trust.
On the other hand, we're happy that buying whatever good in Euro to our traditional shop, there won't be a silent hidden 5%,10 or 20% inflation hidden somewhere on some product.
Regardless of whether or not the shopkeep happens to actually be losing money or getting persecuted by his govt. to keep you happy...right?
So on average, we are happy. What's the problem?
I suppose the problem is that you rely on the govt. to create and safeguard that happiness, at the possible expense of others in your own society. It's not your government's job to make you happy! It's your job. IMHO, you're better off failing on your own than partaking of govt.-mandated happiness.
The other problem is that regulation impacts your economy's ability to create wealth in the populace, which makes people less able to prosper, which requires more govt intervention, which requires more severe taxation of the few who are successful despite earlier regulation, which discourages people from being highly successful in the first place, which creates more govt dependency and less economic potential, which doubly impacts the people's ability to create wealth...
A free market is the best path to a good economy... history consistantly shows that free trade and markets free from govt. intervention produce the best results for the most people.
Certainly, there are a host of things that are more important than a free market. My point here, and one that I think we keep missing, is that there's a deeper concept which Europeans very often miss completely (man, it's really hard to articulate this... I'm trying my best here): the govt. has no place meddling in the private transactions of a retailer, regardless of whether or not the beurocrats believe the people must be protected from them. It's not the job of the govt. to shield one segment of the populace from another, equally law-abiding part... especially when the only real reason must be their own political arses. Who would the people blame if they get screwed on the price of a roast? The govt! Therein lies the entire problem, and that's why it's practically impossible to break the cycle... and why so many people in the USA fight against the beginnings of it.
If I get overcharged for a steak because of the Euro changeover, it is, IMHO, my own damned fault, not the fault of the Irish parliament for switching to the Euro. But to your average Irishman, it's the govermnemt's fault! They will go right on and curse the Euro, and the shopkeeper will join in even while he's screwing his customer. And this is why European govts act to protect the people, and interfere in markets. You'll never hear the local TD tell a voter that it's their own damned fault for paying too much, and maybe he ought to take his business elsewhere... he'll go on a tirade about the evils of price gouging and how something must be done about it.
IMHO, things like freedom from unwanted intervention by my govt. are more important that prosperity. I think it's the job of govt to create conditions in which I have a reasonable chance of success in whatever I might try, provided I have the skills and put in the effort. It is NOT the job of the govt. to support me indefinitely me if I give up, nor is it the job of govt. to force other, successful people to support me in my decision to just be a long-term failure.
Lastly, and slightly off-topic; if the EU was founded by any other means than a consensus of citizens (NOT officials several steps removed from direct, regular accountability from the populace) who decided to join together to make the continent better, than it's dangerously close to an illegitimate governing body.
Is it really better to create a governing body with no popular accountability which has the power to severely restrict basic freedoms and commerce (like, I think this steak costs £5 today, not £4.50) because it's members decide they know best for the populace? What do you do when you don't like what the EU does? Tell your local official, who tells the minister, who tells the EU rep, who tells the other EU reps, who tell him to piss off. Then he tells the minister "no dice", who tells the local official "Sorry, not this time", who tells the people "What can I do, I'm just the local official!". (of course, if this isn't how it works, I'd love to be corrected.)
As always, I welcome responses... perhaps this wil help get to the meat of the issue here.
LOL
Well, first of all, what's wrong with being rich? USA has a larger percentage of rich people per capita than the rest of the world, too, and we whip ass in charitable giving as well.
***SHAMELESS BIAS WARNING***
As for homeless, I suppose you have to decide whether you want to be a society that brutally taxes your successful people so that the failures can have a nice house and a car, or a society that says you get what you work for, and you work for what you get.
And this is why people get arrested in France for working more than the allowed hours/week. With all the import/export issues, price controls, artifically inflating prices to protect piss-poor market performance and inferior products, I don't see the free market. Ask Irish Eircom customers where the free market is.
This is exactly what I mean. It's not a religion... but the govt. shouldn't be ABLE to freeze prices, even if it wants to. It's none of the Republic of Ireland's business what I charge for a widget... all that matters is if my customers think it's a fair price.
The idea that it's possible to force an entire country's retailers to freeze their pricing across Christmas because the govt. is worried that people don't want to use calculators is madness. Caveat Emptor, and if you're worried, then let the govt. buy Euro calculators for everyone.
You'd think, if this were a real collection of Democratic societies, that the same people who voted to change their currency would be able to manage to convert it without having to be patronized and shielded from the market by their own governments.
(But wait... most people didn't vote to change this, did they?)
Do you see what I mean? Your government shouldn't have the ability to dictate anything at all with regards to your pricing, whether they want to or not, whether they think it's better for people or not. You can't retain the ability to arbitrarily manipulate commerce like that and expect a powerful united economy to rival the USA.
That said, I think the US government under Clinton was probably one of the best examples of government seen in the West in many many many years, if not ever. They made few changes to laws, and generally kept their nose out of public business (and especially the Internet).
Whoa... where were you? Clinton started in '92 with the Clipper chip, then went on to CDA and several other laws they proposed and argued for in the Supreme Ct... DMCA for one, but there were many others. Clintons proposed a national health system which was rejected, and they practically went to war against freeing crypto for export. It's only because of Gingritch and the coalition he put together to block net sales tax that it didn't happen.
Clinton's administration spent 8 years trying frantically to drive things to the left with only limited success (because of the GOP congress), and waged war against freedom on the internet the entire time.
Boy is this going to sound like a troll... but since I'm an American living in a Euro country (Ireland) I get to say it anyway:
Until the problem in quotes is resolved, the European continent will never, ever, ever have as strong an economy as the USA:
However, the retailers have been given a little too much leeway in setting their prices, so there is a lot of retail price inflation (already apparent during December). In France, they introduced a price freeze for three months to prevent this.
How many of you Americans had this phrase jump out at you... and how many Europeans missed it altogether?
The retailers have been given too much leeway?!? Do you see the problem here? It's not the job of governments to decide how much a retailer gets to charge for his goods! The retailers should be able to tell their governments to fuck off, and charge what they can get... but they aren't allowed!
But the more fundamental problem is deeper: Many Europeans don't agree with this idea, and they are MUCH more in favor of tightly regulated markets... so much so that they don't think about it. It's an accepted precondition, and so you get comments like the one I quoted.
The truth is, the price inflation happens because the retailers will inflate to whatever level they are allowed by their govermnemts. If it were a real market, they would inflate to whatever the consumers were willing to pay for the goods... but this doesn't occur to many (if not most) Europeans, and it's such a foreign idea that it's hard to even explain. So you get France freezing retail prices for three months! Why do people put up with it?
Because they don't understand, on the fundamental level that Americans do, what a FREE market is, and what it does for the people who succeed in it.
Having not seen it yet, I may be talking out of my ass here, but:
Frodo can't stab a wraith on the hilltop, because normal weapons don't work and they never got the ones from the barrow wights.
Am I right about this? I think they had to cut that part.
Sigh
Who convinced you that you don't have power?
Answer the following questions to see whether you have more power than a political lobbyist:
Where does the official get the power to vote for something?
What happens to all his perks if he loses an election?
Vote, silly. Get everyone you know to do it, too. Your Rep. voting the party line and not what you think? Fire his ass.
Lobbyists have money, but YOU have his career.
There's no denying that a world where nobody has to starve, or even work for their needs, would be better than the current one. The thing is, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether capitalism will give way to a 'GPL Society' model social system where everybody gives away whatever they like and takes only whatever they need and money disappears because nobody needs it anymore.
To digress for a bit, I'm not willing to help support a third of the population while they sit around picking their asses with a Q-Tip on the off chance that one of them might be a visionary. If he's visionary enough, he'll make it regardless. Here's an exercise for you: name for me some real visionaries who came up with their ideas after a lifetime of free comprehensive support by the government.
My point was, when you have all your needs given to you, they become valueless. Luxuries become the things with value... in fact, the ONLY things with value. When you mass-produce luxuries, then you further limit the number of valuable things (or skills), and you INCREASE their value.
Of course an excellent education isn't as important as regular meals, but when the meals are all free, made by robots, and available in whatever quantities you feel like getting, they become valueless. Eating stops being important at all, and education becomes much more important! Even a garbage man can feed his kids, but when his kids no longer have the option of laboring for currency, and don't need any skill they currently have, education becomes critical!
As regards Europeans, maybe you haven't met the Protestant folks that sit outside a school every morning in Belfast, screaming insults and throwing things at the catholic 3rd grade kids as they walk to class. Or the 'Real IRA' guys, or their Ulster Unionist counterparts. Some of those Unionists shot a random kid in his car the other day, in protest against the slow pace of IRA decomissioning! Did you get that? They shot someone because the IRA isn't getting rid of weapons fast enough! You haven't met the family down the road from me either, whos kids aren't welcome at any of the neighborhood houses (except mine) because the lady next door heard the husband and wife screaming at each other one evening.
Maybe you need to spend some more time in Europe, and some more time meeting Americans. It's never a good idea to generalize about 240 million people, whatever continent they're on.
Oh? Why would I want to do that? If you aren't successful, you don't eat (unless you live in a country where they support you indefinitely on the backs of the successful capitalists).
My definition of successful would be: you make enough money to provide for your needs, in a length of time which leaves some significant section of the day free for non-survival related projects.
You want to elaborate?
First off... screw you, I'm taking your free software and I'm not giving you jack shit.
Chuckle... not really, but:
How does a gift giving society stop this? Okay, nobody gives me anything anymore.
But if I get what I want, why should I care? What if I'm the best teacher around, or the ONLY teacher around, and I have that attitude?
To put it more generally, what if my skills are so highly sought after that I am able to demand whatever I want? So nobody gives me anything unless I demand it... I'm completely without social debt in the gift-giving society AND I have everything I want, whenever I want it. Now, your anti-selfishness stigma is not only useless, but I also stand as an example to others for how to get what you want without owing anyone anything. Since we're talking about an entire society, the gift-giving system you describe places more power in the hands of the highly skilled asshole than he can possibly get now... which creates an incentive for others to follow in his footsteps, and eventually tears apart the whole scheme. You end up saying "The guy's an asshole, he never gives me anything unless I cater to his desires, but if I don't give him whatever he wants, my car stays broken/my kids end up imbeciles/my pipes keep leaking all over the floor."
This idea sounds really great, but it's broken! You have to have a critical mass of nice people who like to give stuff away without expecting anything back. There just aren't enough people like that to change the social and economic systems away from capitalism and and the market. The gift-giving society is designed to make it easier for the nice folks to get screwed by sneaky, greedy people and the freeloaders. It's the Law of Unintended Consequences writ large.
What I think is that Free tech would shift the relative worth of some items, and that in some cases an object would become available at no cost, and thus valueless, while other objects, and many services, would increase significantly in value directly as a result of their non-replicatable nature. While you probably could reduce the overall 'scarcity quotient' (assuming such a thing exists and could be quantified), such a change could not be broad enough to render a capitalist system useless or outmoded. It would merely shift the focus away from immediate survival (until we start running low on natural resources of course, then it's right back to how things are now).
Free Tech reduces scarcity of things than can be created or produced through tech. Whether that matters much or not, and whether that creates a better society is still, IMHO, an open question.
LOL
First of all, you can't be certain that everyone will find fullfillment from self-development, and a GPL Society puts more power into the hands of the greedy than a capitalist one.
Second of all, even the most generous of skilled people will expect compensation to use their skills for one project over another. If I'm the best english teacher in the world, and I have my choice of 5000 kids for a class of 30, how do I pick? What if someone offers me a unique piece of artwork in exchange for teaching his kid... is it bad to do that? That's barter, which eventually = capitalism unless you shoot me for bartering, or otherwise punish me. You can't demand that everyone accept the GPL Society unless you plan on enforcing that demand, and now your happy little society is Animal Farm.
And you can be absolutely sure that many people won't accept it.
I completely agree with that! The subject of the interview, however, dodn't seem to grasp that you can't translate Free Tech into Free Everything, and so you can't get a "GPL Society" no matter how much Free Tech you create.
Assuming you're talking about the guy who submitted the original article, you're absolutely right!
Okay, so I bashing you, that's how I start MY long posts :-)
LOL
It's necessary to trade your work power/knowledge for things that you want/need.
This is what I'm saying! It works VERY well for Free Software, but it just can't work for the 'GPL Society' that the article talked about. Even if you provide everything that everyone wants, you still need some mechanism to trade the things that retain their value after the (heh) GPL Revolution. Trade means capitalism! You can't replace capitalism without Star Trek style replicators or some other mechanism to render EVERYTHING valueless. Even in Star Trek, you had to compete to get to go into space... non-replicatable skills like leadership or mind-reading still have value, and they are traded for space-exploration.
Do I need a huge house? No. Do I need a 100.000 dollar car? No. You have to see these flaws on the human desires, and critize them, to support free software. In a world with 3 billion people suffering from hunger, to discuss our meat is a little selfish.
If we do lower our futile desires for such useless itens, we can begin to see where Free Software can help us.
I completely understand and respect your position on this. Sure, I don't need a $100,000 house... but I might want one. And what's wrong with that? The folks suffering from hunger probably wouldn't mind one either, given the choice between that and a UN tent or a hut in the mountains. The thing is, you can't translate that into an entire social system, because while you're very altruistic, I might not be... and if I have skills that you can't replicate, you'll have to put up with my terms whether you like it or not. A social system needs to be able to allow those generous people to give without being throttled by giving the greedy ones the ability to screw the entire society. A GPL Society as described in the article places MORE power with greedy dishonest people, not less.
Also, you can't always expect a brilliant brain surgeon to take the same compensation for his efforts that an unskilled Somali farmer takes.
I program on PHP for living. I can survive only on this, for a long time. I do not empty my client's wallet for anything I develop. I think that before I even begin to think about how much I want to get from a project, I need to think if it is a reasonable amount.
The thing is, you don't make money from PHP. You make your money by trading your semi-unique skill for some dollar amount. It's good that you charge a reasonable price, because if you didn't you'd starve or change your mind. If, however, you were the very best PHP programmer on the planet, you could charge a lot more. The capitalist system allows you to do that... but don't think you live on Free Software. You live on trading an uncommon skill for currency. You sell your knowledge of Free Software. If everybody knew PHP, then the PHP code would never feed you, nor would your PHP skills... it's not the Free Software that feeds you, and it can't because I'll never pay you for PHP (and neither will anyone else... it's free!).
If you have 2 teachers like this, the need is lowered. If you have 3, 4, 10, 20, 150, 400, 1000, 00, your argument fails completely.
Ahh... but you can't have 100,000 BEST teachers. You can only have one of those, and that one person has a limited amount of time for teaching, and a limited class size. If I want my kids to learn from the ABSOLUTE BEST teacher IN THE WORLD, then I need to offer something as incentive so the teacher will pick my kids and not someone else's.
In the real world, this should fall into tiers... the best teachers make the most money, and so on, down to the crappiest ones, and I trade my skills for the best teacher they will buy me. (of course, the various governments break this system for general knowledge classrooms, and so you rarely get any highly skilled teachers who actually teach anything because their teaching skill has little value)
But if this person realizes that he's got there with the help of others, he will help someone who wants to be like him. If he doesn't want, it's a character flaw.
Maybe it is a character flaw in your worldview, but a social system that demands its members accept a particular attitude must either:
1)Enforce this attitude through constant monitoring and punishment for wrong thinking.
2)give up altogether and find a system that accomodates undesirable people without punishing everyone.
3)suffer a violent revolution as the people get tired of being told how to think.
How does the GPL Society force people to be nice and give of themselves? It requires altruism on the part of the overwhelming majority, which is COMPLETELY unrealistic.
You analized the monetary reward of the free software movement, while I analized from another perspective
I think Free Software is great! I just think that trying to translate that into an entire social system is a cracked idea that can never be anything more, and IMHO should never be anything more.
That's where the robots come in. Quoth Stallman [gnu.org]:
"The waste inherent in owning information will become more and more important and will ultimately make the difference between the utopia in which nobody really has to work for a living because it's all done by robots and a world just like ours where everyone spends much time replicating what the next fellow is doing."
The idea that everything you could need could be created by a robot is different than the idea that everything you could want is created by one. You seem to have missed that concept... luxury becomes paramount when survival is handled, and since you can't always make (or convince someone else to make) what you want, you must have some way to trade for it... barter rapidly evolves into capitalism.
Perhaps you should live in Lake Woebegone where the children are all above average. What is it that makes you think you couldn't find a good teacher in a society not based on money? What about all the people who would like to teach but end up working for corporations because teacher's pay is so shitty? What about the reduced overhead for the creation and distribution of textbooks in a copyright-free economy?
Ahh... but for me, a good teacher isn't adequate. My daughter is absolutely brilliant, and I want the BEST teacher. Merely 'good' isn't good enough for my daughter. And since I might live in the middle of nowhere, there's an excellent chance that all the skilled people around me don't want to spend time teaching 6yr old prodigies without some sort of compensation... highly skilled people expect (and deserve) more compensation for their work than less-skilled people. Unless you can give everyone everything they can come up with, you're right back to capitalism. No replicators, no GPL Society.
We don't have the natural resources to give everyone everything for free. Things that are scarce always have more value, and that makes people desire them more... once again, the GPL Society falls apart into plain old capitalism.
And, hey, don't forget, reduced overhead is irrelevant, since all the books are made by robots and everything is digital. You haven't gained anything. The solution to the teacher quality problem is to allow schools to compete in a market economy, free of unions which protect ignorant teachers and free of govt. control which prevents teachers from marketing their skills.
The GPL society as described can handle freeloaders, what it has a hard time with is exlusivity.
No society can handle freeloaders when a commodity is scarce, like education, or medicine, or caviar and a 200yr old bottle of Dom. The GPL society (as I said before) works fine when you talk about things that can be replicated for free, but falls apart when you apply it to tangible, unconvertable skills and objects.
Hence the flood of immigrants away from the relatively wealthy US to the relatively poor Mexico to avoid the exploitation, right?. I thought you were a capitalist?!
That makes no sense at all. People come into the US because their work has more value here. If All work was valueless, and all commodities were valueless (which is what happens if you can automate the process and provide it all for free) then the things with value become MORE scarce, and MORE valuable. I suppose I should have said 'price gouge', not 'exploit'.
GPL accomadates greed and demands an end to information-envy. It is the conrol, rather than the hoarding, of information that makes the GPL society difficult to realize.
HA! The GPL Society accomodates information-greed, not "I want 40 times more than you because I jump in front of bullets to protect the President and you don't" greed, or "I'm the best dance instructor for 500 miles, so either give me something I can't make or you can piss off" greed. The GPL Society demands an end to information-envy, but doesn't do anything about "hey, you've got the smartest dog I've ever seen!" envy, or "wow, you make really cool sculpture... can I have one?" envy. It's my experience that people place much more value on the things they make for themselves than they do on the things they make in the factory. How does the GPL Society deal with that?
The difficulty in realizing the GPL Society has absolutely nothing at all to do with information hoarding or control, and everything to do with basic logistical concepts of supply/demand, relative worth, unique tangible items, and personal non-replicatable services. Not to mention good old-fashioned greed and ill-temper.
Here's the thing I don't get: (and since I don't get it, I must be a closed-minded jingoist...sheesh)
This vision, this 'rethought Marxism', doesn't have any real meat to it. Now, I'd love to join the mailing list and see if anyone has come up with any substance to back these ideas. The thing is, I don't believe there can be any substance to them.
The idea of a "GPL Society", where everyone takes what they need and contributes what they want, is fundamentally flawed. It's possible, perhaps, to get some distance towards this within a capitalist system because of the ability to convert quite a lot of labor into information transfer while also adding value. The thing is, Free software is a poor example... it exists because those people who are contributing to it do not rely on their creation for survival. Modelling an overall social system, where objects and services often cannot be translated into a digital form, on a system which ONLY exists as perfectly reproducible digital information, is a mistake of the highest order; this is where the "GPL Society" falls over. There are three big reasons why...
First, you cannot expect a 'self-unfolding' project to provide food for you, or heat for your house, or schooling for your kids. You can only dedicate time to these projects when your basic needs have been met... not only has Free Software grown up inside a capitalist system, it is completely dependant on that system to sustain the creators of Free Software. Only succesful capitalists have time to create things which do not contribute to their survival. The only way for the GPL society to work is to ensure that every person has, for free, everything they could need, in a manner that doesn't involve labor on the part of some other individual.
Second, even if we could completely automate every layer of food production (and every other industry and commodity) it still wouldn't work because of this sort of scenario: I want my kids to go to a good school, so I check out all the local freely offered schooling (because I live in the GPL Society, all the schooling is provided by people who want to do that sort of thing as a self-unfolding project that makes them feel good, and they get to do this because they don't need anything at all) and I decide that nobody around me can provide what I think is a brilliant education. So, I go out and find a teacher who's REALLY REALLY good... the thing is, this teacher also has 6000 other parents clamoring for her time, so she gets to choose who she picks. The only way I can have a better chance is if I can offer some incentive to the teacher; I have to figure out how I can give her something she WANTS (she's already got everything she needs). Guess what... we're right back to capitalism. Maybe she wants a bigger house and a bunch of handcarved art-nuveau accent work, and the only way I can give it to her is to get a bunch of house-building hand-carving type guys together to build it for her... but some of those guys want some incentive to drop their own architectural self-unfolding projects and come help me instead... how can I compensate these guys for their time? What if I don't have anything they want? Well, I guess I need to give them something they can use to trade for things they want... like money. Until we invent replicators, it's impossible to give everyone all the things they WANT; capitalism, and the market economy, is the only way to deal with this VERY common scenario. It's so common, most people don't even think about it anymore. It's second nature for a reason, folks, and not because you've been trained by capitalist bugaboos to think like that.
Third, there will always bee a huge horde of people who ONLY take, or who exploit the desires of others for their own gain. When exclusively taking becomes not just possible, but easy and socially acceptable, then even more people won't contribute anything back. If all needs are provided for, luxuries become paramount and exploitation is EASIER, not harder. Greed automatically breaks the "GPL Society" and any other idea that follows the same path.
Like Marx, this is a nice idea when it's kicked around by a bunch of homogenous thinkers on a mailing list, but when you try to apply it to the rest of the non-intelligencia it abruptly falls to bits.
with 600+ comments, I don't know if these have been mentioned yet, but:
"Snow Crash", for a pre-internet vision of the 'net'. Also predicts the sort of cult-icon hipness attached to programmers that happens nowadays.
"Islands in the Net", which relies on the fax machine for much of its plot, before those objects existed.
"Ender's Game", which presents the interesting idea of fighting a war remotely, in a format that mimics a computer game.
That's AWFUL journalism. Comparing MS sales staff to Nazi Brownshirts?
I never was that impressed by The Register...
Broward was one of the other counties that played a big part in the last election. There were two others besides those that were in play, IIRC.
Several European national carriers are bankrput or on the edge of it.
They'd have to be... the only quick response teams left are the ones who lived through WTC.
You guys are up no matter what... thanks for some consise info.
For you europeans out there, sky.co.uk is MIA now, as is the BBC's site.
Good luck getting info... maybe try IRC.openprojects.org #worldtradecenter. That's where I am.
-spool32
Damnit, wrong slashes... I hate it when I forget to preview!
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