On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 12:28:22PM -0700, Robert Donovan wrote: > 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. Good point, but what about when people like RMS give away a valuable product for moral reasons?
> 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. Copyright is very consistent with the idea of capital, of private ownership. Copyleft, on the other hand, leverages the existing system to provide a communal ownership of something. RMS and others of similar ideals could have chosen to use copyright for thier projects and may be a whole lot richer now (in monetary terms) if they had. I'm glad they didn't. > >> 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. And why do they want the best product, if not to maximize profit? And what happens if there is no competing product on the market? The most profitable course of action would not be to release thier best product, but to improve on an existing product, get people to upgrade, and then incorporate another improvement into it. > > 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. For the musician, the music is very important. For the RIAA, the music is incidental. I wasn't comparing thier roles, but thier motives. > 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. You have freedom from restraint; you are free to work those long hours and move up the social ladder. The freedom you don't have is opportunity; you started at the bottom, while others started at the top. How is that fair? > >>> 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. The owner doesn't have to be the person managing the business, that is when the problem is most apparent. What happens to his hourly income as the amount of work he puts in approaches zero? A person can be born into that situation, where by virtue of inheritance, no work of thier own, they have an income (often incredibly large) which could last for generations. As far as property grants power, that makes them royalty compared to everyone else. > > 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. But they don't pay you all that your labor was worth, they keep that for themselves. > 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? You have no say in how much the owners of the place where you work keep for themselves. Going back to the earlier argument, a popular artist can become rich by virtue of her work. An owner can become rich by virtue of the success of his business. The artist is paid directly by the people who like her work. The owner takes his money from the business which provides some product which people want. People are not paying the owner for anything he did; he is taking money by virtue of his position in relation to the business. > 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. Did Phil Hawkins do all that, or did his employees do all that? What loss does Safeway experience if Phil Hawkins suddenly disappears? If they were doing well, new stores are bound to keep being built. In his capacity as 'owner,' he is very replaceable--anyone could hold that title and collect his income. His capacity as 'manager' is distinct from this title. > I got paid for the value of thelabor I performed, If so, then where does the profit come from? Who else is producing value besides the employees, that some of it can be kept without it being kept from the workers? > 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. That is entirely different than saying you were paid the full value of your labor. You had no property which which to live off of, so you put yourself on the market. The 'labor margin,' that percentage of people who are deliberately kept unemployed, creates a surplus supply of employable people, thus reducing the cost of employeeing someone, as well as making those people who are working replaceable and thus glad they have their jobs (they won't fight near as hard over working conditions). > > > 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, If all the employees own a piece of the business, why do you think there is still one business owner? > and their motives will still be to make a profit. One of the goals of anarchy is to shift the motive from profit to the benefits to society. I'll mention the Anarchy Faq (www.infoshop.org/faq/) again as it addresses all these issues and does so far more thoroughly and in depth than I can. > > 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. Are you sure it's not 'sell a great product?' 'Great' meaning profitable? If your statement were true, then we'd probably have electric cars, recycleable/reuseable everything, etc. > 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. 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) If cost were definable as more than just dollars, then we wouldn't need regulations on industry, no need for emissions standards on cars, no talk about pollution credits... > and your income will suddenly become disproportionate to the amount of > work you do to get it. Disproportianate to the value other people in other industries produce for a quanta of time, yes, but not disproportionate to the value you produce. This difference in value comes from your own efforts, so I have no arguement with it. > > 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. Ecological preservation is a great example of an extra cost that does not add any value to the final product. The cost to society (pollution) is inherent in a process by which the poduct is produced. This and similar improvements that can be made are hard to see without a thorough inspection of the business' practices and alternatives. If a corner can be cut without affecting the outcome of the production process, non-monetary considerations recieve only a small consideration. In fact, not cutting that corner could spell the death of the company if a competitor that did now has a cheaper product of the same quality. > > 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. I'd say those were effective bosses. > > 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. All those people you mentioned gained positions of great power over other people. If everyone who would be subjected to thier impositions of authority were to resist them, those people would have no more force with which to accomplish thier ends than anyone else. Essential to this is the right of people in, self-sovereignty, to defend themselves. A tyrant can only come to power if people let him, and a people who have known freedom are loath to give it up. -- Martin Franco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP Key ID: 2B01DD81 Keyserver: pgpkeys.mit.edu -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
