Martin Franco wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 03:56:14PM -0500, Todd Walton wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The whole picture, as I see it, is that an unintended side affect of the
availability of home computers is that people are gaining the means to
produce content of all kinds.
It wasn't unintended.
The internet was designed this way, but the designers were probably
thinking of universities and government applications. Technology
advanced, pcs and workstations won over mainframes, common people got
computers, and the internet grew. The designers of the internet are not
the same people who sell computers and internet service, and the battle
over net neutrality proves that the internet as it is today is not the
internet that the corporations would like it to be.
It's not the Internet that /most/ people would like it to be.
Corporations have no exclusive claim to dissatisfaction there.
That is why I think
the internet, in the public sector, at least, can be said to be an
unintented development.
As were many of the most important inventions and innovations in Human
history. Why would one expect the Internet to have turned out differently?
Capitalism != Consumerism
No, but they are intrinsically related. That is, however, besides the
point. The fundamental rule of capitalism is competition.
Consumerism works best for the producer (usually != consumer) in an
environment where competition is minimal or non-existent.
When people
become producers, whether free software hackers, independent musicians,
or whatever, their golden rule is often cooporation. They collaborate
on thier works and release thier products under terms that allow future
ideas to be built off thier efforts.
Ideally. But, for example, in practice at the present, allowing future
works to be built upon current work is the /last/ thing the music
industry (most professional musicians included) wants. Competition is
certainly very, very ill in the entertainment industry.
And I personally get tired of hearing the implied argument that Artists
produce art only for money. Artists produce art for art's sake, by
definition. They'd scrawl on the wall with their own blood or perform in
rags in the streets if they had to. It's not a profession, it's not a
calling, it's an obsession whose only cure is death.
The two are polar opposites, and
its not surprising that its often hard to integrate the smaller
cooporative communities into the competitive framework of our economic
system, to make money with GPL'ed code, for example.
Sure, if you have very narrow definitions of success. If a
freely-produced, freely-given product or service (e.g. GPL-licensed
software or creative commons-licensed literature) improves that state of
its respective industry or inspires similar work (Free or proprietary),
then I'd call that both cooperative, successful, and profitable. If it
improves some aspect of society as a whole, then where's the rub?
As I'm fond of saying, we don't live in a black-and-white, binary
universe. There need not be, and indeed are not only two exclusive paths
to be taken, only one of which leads to progress and enlightenment.
Community is profit.
Care to elaborate? Profit is the difference between what the employees
of a company are paid and the value they produce. This difference goes
to the 'owners' of the corporation to which the employees belong, people
who, because of thier legal position, did not have to do any work to
recieve that surplus value. These owners are, in a sense, robbing the
community.
That's certainly not a definition of profit that's recognized in any
conventional circles. By that definition, the barber down the street is
a crook because he has money left over after expenses. At the least,
that's definition that's anti-business in general. Your basic definition
is based on the false assumption that the owner of a business
necessarily contributes nothing to that business. I think the barber
would take issue with that as well.
Even if that value was not taken from the people who produced it, the
objective of the corporation is not the benefit of the community, the
sustainable production of its goods and ecological preservation, or any
other lofty objective.
Says who? All corporations, or just some? That's a pretty broad brush.
All of us could name at least several for which that is true. But those
examples don't make such a sweeping generalization any truer. Especially
when it's based on flawed "facts". See above.
The objective is money, and any benefit to the
community that arises from its pursuit is unintended, incidental. A
corporation would just as easily destroy the world as save it,
deliberating by means of a cost-benefit analysis.
So, what is your antidote? What is your remedy? I haven't heard such
illogical nonsense since the '60's (when I was spouting the same thing
as I was being conscripted into fighting another irrationally-justified,
corporate-sponsored war).
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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