On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 7:56 AM, Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 02:19:30PM -0700, DJA wrote: >>> I'm talking about people who release thier music under creative commons >>> on websites like jamendo.com, possibly remixes or otherwise based on >>> other similarly released media. >> >> Those people may or may not be in the business of selling their work >> product. Assuming they are not, then they are not businesses, and so to >> me, outside the context of the discussion. > They may not be selling thier works, but the free product could increase > demand for thier services (live performances). Are all free software > projects to be exempted as well?
If they are giving the work away for free, then they are engaged in a hobby and have nothing to complain about if they fail to make money from those works. If they are giving the works awsay to increase demand for their other works, then they are incurring a cost for advertising equal to the value they might have gotten for similar work they are trying to sell. If their works are not sufficiently popular to make enough money to pay for the cost of procdcution for the work they gave away and the work they sold, this tells them two things, first that the "community"(or, perhaps, just those who bought their product) doesn't consider the benefit gained by those works to be worth the money, and that they must either stop producing that particular product or find something else to do that will make them enough money to continue to engage in there hobby, however beneficial those who produce it might think it is to the comunity. > Of particular interest to me is when something of great value is > produced outside the framework of capitalism. GNU/Linux, for example. > I think that process is relevent when discussing capitalism, if only for > comparison. I'm not sure GNU/GPL is outside the framework of capitalism. It's a cost, pure and simple, which gets no income back if given away for free and gets progressively diminishing income, if sold, after the sale, because the producer has granted others the right to use and modify the product. It may stinulate other demand for other products or services, such as, as somebody has pointed out elsewhere, if GNU/linux enhances the production, delivery, or implementation of another paid product or service, but it's still a cost. >> I guess we need to agree on a definition of "Industry". You really >> can't lump all businesses together (as in all corporations are evil) >> and then cherry pick the members of that group as examples of a >> counter group. > Business != corporation. A corporation is a legal entity, a "person", > with a legal mandate to pursue profit. All businesses are not corporations, but all corporations are businesses, separate legal entity or not, and they are owned and operated by people. That artist is in business if he or she is trying to make enough money to survive and prosper, perhaps not incorporated, but they are still in business. If they can run their business profitably, they can continue to benefit the "comunity" indefinitely, If they run at a loss, any benefit to the community will be lost. Also to consider, if you can't convince others in "the community", "society," or "the village" to buy your product, that's the community saying to you that they don't think your product benefits them as much as you do. That can be a painful blow to one's ego and sense of importance. I know is to mine every time one of by books doesn't become a runaway best seller, or people don't line up to have me migrate them to Linux servers running LDAP rather than Windows. What the heck's the matter with those people anyway?;-) It is however a fact of life. People don't have to buy your product. You need to prersuade them that it's worth the money. > And when I think of a professional artist, I think of an artist who > lives off the money made by practicing his art. I expect most artists > have a day job. If they are living of the the money produced by their art, why would they need a day job? If they are not able to make a living from their art and require a day job, then they are not living off the money made by practiceing their art, not entirely anyway. I offer a quote attributed to Mark Twain when he was asked how he knew a book was good enough to be released to the public. He responed that if he thought it was a great masterpiece, he signed it and sent it in. If, however, he thought it was idle dreck, he signed it and sent it in. Liturature, or any other art form, or any other product survives because people like it or find it useful to them in some way, not because the producer, author, or a critic, declares it good. The buyer is the final arbiter of value, not the producer. This is why it is very common for artists to produce what they consider inferior work because it sells, and, after having established themselves, they produce "art for the sake of art." The artist may consider this far superior work, but it doesn't sell. Arthur Conan doyle hated tha fact that he became rich and famous from his Sherlock Holmes stories, and was not recongnized for what he considered his more "serious" work. However, he frequently remarked that without the success of Holmes and Watson in 221B Baker Street he wouldn't have been able to afford to write his other books, which nobody bought. >> Artists don't compete in the same way as the typical business. They >> strive for the best performance, not the most money or largest share >> of the market. Many businesses strive to produce the best product the fact that you or I might not consider the product to be so not withstanding. Thus, artists compete exactly the same way as businesses do in that regard. > This is probably the goal for most/all artists. A corporation like the > RIAA, however, has a very different set of priorities. Of course they do. The artists are producers of entertainment product, songs, books, concert performances, etc. The RIAA are distributors. Most artists can't distribute thier work as effectively as the RIAA can. This is the value they add. The RIAA can't produce songe people want to listen to. This is the value the artist adds. One can argue how much their take of the artists' income should be, but that's mostly between the artist and the RIAA. One can also argue how they are damaged when somebody copies a song that is not available in stores any longer, but the artist has a right to be paid for those works. >> If society comes out ahead, that's a profit for society. > But how often does that happen? How often does the opposite happen? A > corporation will consider the difference in terms of dollars, so it > could easily go either way. "Good" should be the first priority. How often does that happen? I'd say rather often, in fact just about every time to some degree. I used to be homeless. I went to work for Vons, making $80 per week, hardly a living wage by most standards. I offered to work for people during every holiday, took all the least conveient hours, ate three very small meals per day(best shape I've ever been in) and saved my money. I taght myself to trade commodity futures contracts, still do it occasionally for my own private accounts. Made enough money from that to go to school and get my CCNA and got a job working tas a desktop repair tech and a helpdesk tech. Not glorious jobs, but they paid more than Vons. Started doing consulting on the side and made enough to rent a house. The journey was not easy, nor was it always pleasant, nor did I get ahead as fast as I would have liked. I got kidnapped and robbed at gunpoint going to work one night. Oh well, no whining. None of those businesses gave a damn about me, and didn't employ me out of any desire to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, or create a better community, society, village, or whatever other collectivist term you want to use. I never expected them to. They employed me to make money for themselves. I worked for them to get an income stream. My paycheck was not an act of alms by my employer to me, nor was my labor an act of charity from me to my employer. Yet, they provided a livelihood, however meager, and an opportunity to move up the economic ladder, for me and everyone else working there. Those of us who took advantage of the opportunities or acquired the skills to create our own have prospered. Those who didn't haven't. Furthermore, and this is just one example, you can go up the road and buy a huge variety of food 18 - 24 hours a day thanks to those greed capitalists who run grocery stores to make money, and pay their employees a "slavish pittance." Do you and "the community" not benefit from that? Do you not benefit from the public works their top-bracket taxes pay for? I certainly did. I went to the library to do the research I needed for trading. And lest we forget, though we may not like the fact, I suspect that just about everyone on this list benefits from the fact that Bill Gates and IBM made PCs ubiquitous. I'll be the first to go after them for unfair trade practices, but that doesn't mean we haven't still benfited from those efforts. Is your complaint that they didn't do it beacuse they "cared," but merely to make money? Or is it simply that you want to be able to force people to charge you the price you want for a price that forces them to take a loss, to make them give you something for nothing, or to be able to force others to pay you what YOU think your efforts are worth rather than what THEY think they are worth? I'm not saying you are. I'm just asking, but if you are, you are the one who is being greedy, not the business people who are offering value for value, however prosperous they might be. > I have no problem with making money, its taking money others have made > that I disagree with. Here's an example: > > A farmer owns 100 acres of land, and has 10 slaves that work his fields. > He feeds them, houses them, and lives off thier labor. > > What if those 10 people were not slaves, but free men and women who are > forced by thier economic condition to sell thier labor to the farmer. > These people are paid a wage which allows them to purchase food and > housing, possibly even from the farmer himself. The boss then lives off > the labors of his employees. > > How are these two situations practically different? The same > relationship exists between the farmer (owner/capitalist) and the worker > (everyone else). 'Free' means they could quit if they wanted to, > hopefully to be employed by someone else (under similar working > conditions). It is a freedom from restraint, not a freedom to the > opportunity for equality/success/happiness/whatever. I refer you to my previous remarks. If I had been a slave of the owner of Vons or anyone else, I would not have had the freedom do get where I am today. What you call freedom from restraint, I'd call benevolent, indirect slavery. >>> His income is not proportional to the work he does to get it. Really? So do you run a billion-dollar corporation? I mean, if there's not that much work involved . . . Over-simplification works both ways. Or how about this? I don't think programmers should get paid so much. All they're doing is typing on a keyboard, how much work is that, I mean, really what are they building??? You could say that his income is disproportional to the amount of manual labor he does to get it, but manual lagor is not the only kind of work. I think most people would agree that intellectual work can be far more valuable that certain kinds of manual labor and vise versa. Oh and one more thing, what makes you think that figuring out how to run a competitive business is any less a creative endaevor than picture art, writing, or music? It's a differnt kicreativity, not meant as entertainment, but requires the same brain centers as many other activities commonly associated with art. > And the people who are paying the capitalists are the employees (and the > capitalist himself, to a lesser degree the more people work under > him/her), and they don't have a choice in the matter. They aren't > paying the capitalist so much as the capitalist is taking money from > them. With all due respect, you're talking nonsense. When I go to work for Vons, or anyplace eles, they pay me for my labor. I can choose to spend some of that money in the store at which I work or at some other store that sell similar items. I often opted for cheaper food prices at Walmart, for example. When I went to Walmart, I was paying Walmart, but that doesn't mean I'm their employee. Where is my lack of choice? Did I make as much money as Phil Hawkins, the owner of Vons at the time or the owner of Safeway who later acquired them? No, but I didn't provide a chain of stores to people at which they could conveniently buy food day or night, without having to hunt, farm, or gather it for themselves either. All I did was put the goods on the shelves and keep the place clean. True, I didn't get paid based on the total income the company made, but I wasn't an owner or shareholder and didn't want to be. Vons stock was a lousy performer for most of the ime I worked there. Therefore, I was not entitled to a share in the earnings. I got paid for the value of thelabor I performed, which I agreed to when I agreed to go to work for them. That's all your employer owes you, the value you agree to when you say yes to working for them, nothing more. Sorry if that disturbs utopia, but it's business, not a social club or charity. > I meant to imply that there should be no business owner, that the > business should be owned by its employees, not by a single/few > individuals. Whether owned by a singe/few individuals or by all the empolyees, there is still a business owner, and their motives will still be to make a profit. It is unlikely that all will have an equal share, and some may not want to be part owners, depending on things like how taxes are levied or whether they want to be paid in cash for the value of their share in the company and spend the money elsewhere. I used my money to buy stocks for my own account and trade futures contracts, both of which were more profitable(there's that profit motive again) - a lot more - than Vons or Safeway stock turned out to be. > People have a wide range of motives, but the criteria for success under > capitalism includes the pursuit of profit, and... that's pretty much it. Again nonsense, the first rule of capitalism is make a great product. You are free to define greatness any way you want. If you think your version of great is better than microsoft's or Sun's or anybody else's, make your product and try to sell it. You may find that incorporating is to your advantage in this or you may not. Others may, or may not, for a variety of reasons, agree that your product is better to point of being worth the cost of switching to it. That's the part none of us like about capitalism. The final decision as to how great your product is is not yours. It's your customer's. If your customers agree that your product is worth the cost of switching to it(cost is not defined here as just dollars) and your income will suddenly become disproportionate to the amount of work you do to get it. Um, This assumes that you don't spend decades in product development, marketing, research and other costs without getting paid anything first, in which case your income is suddenly going to become proportional to the amount of work you've done to get it, though not the way you meant it, I think. I would heartily wish that outcome upon you in either case, because you would be in a position to provide jobs and livelihoods to total strangers whom you didn't even know, and enable them to get ahead too. I and many others may not think that Windows is a great product, but I'll bet Bill gates and Steve Balmer do. I'm sure they appreciate the virtues of GPL/Linux as well or they wouldn't consider it a threat. But that doesn't mean they think there product is worse. > If people can pursue profit and thier other ideals at the same time, > great. It's the rest of the time that worries me. So if somebody wanted to destroy the planet by overpopulation and chose to do it by selling a cheap way of curing all disease and making everyone live to be three hundred(diabolical ;-)) would you try to stop him? You may still derive benefit from businesses that don't fit your vision of community benefactors. > Leaders != bosses. A leader gives people good reasons to consider his > decisions, but cannot throw them out on the street if they disagree with > him. Some of the best leaders I've ever met were when I was in the Navy, and they, ultimately, had exactly that power and worse. > A key attribute of the state is that its decisions are backed with > threat of violence. Are humans so bad that they cannot have > organization without doing so at gun-point? As history has sadly proven, in many cases, yes. Hitler and the Nazis, Mao, Sadam Husein and his sons, whether you agree with the way it was don or not, anyone in the RUF, Meyer Lansky, and Al Capone, to name a few, all had to "organized at gunpoint." And if those who don't need to be organized at gun-point want to survive those who need to be organized at gunpoint, the threat of violence on their behalf is necessary, either from their potential victims(my preference) or from the state. Sorry if utopia just fell, again. Robert Donovan -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
