On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 03:56:14PM -0500, Todd Walton wrote: >> Capitalism != Consumerism > No, but they are intrinsically related. That is, however, besides the > point. The fundamental rule of capitalism is competition.
No, the fundamental rule of capitalism is that the means of production are in private hands. Competition has been the historical modus operandi of the capitalist and it's served us very well while production truly was in the hands of private property owners. But it is not fundamental. > When people become producers, whether free software hackers, independent > musicians, > or whatever, their golden rule is often cooporation. People *are* producers in a capitalist civilization. >> Community is profit. > Care to elaborate? Profit is the difference between what the employees > of a company are paid and the value they produce. If there were no other cost than employee time, you'd have a company that produced nothing. Profit is the benefit a thing brings. m-w.com says profit is: noun 1: a valuable return : gain 2: the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions; especially : the excess of the selling price of goods over their cost 3: net income usually for a given period of time 4: the ratio of profit for a given year to the amount of capital invested or to the value of sales 5: the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent verb 1: to be of service or advantage : avail 2: to derive benefit : gain 3: to make a profit There's a lot more than money there and I, for one, consider community a benefit in a great many cases. It's why I'm here. -todd -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
