On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 10:10:36PM -0500, Todd Walton wrote: > 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. Fundamental, defining charactoristic,
> > 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. I should have said 'own the means of production.' > >> 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: So I over-simplified a little. I didn't mean for it to be taken literally and nit-picked. I'm not writing a dictionary, after all. > 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. That is a pretty general definition. What would the definition be if you were to only consider capitalism? Would non-economic incentives have any place in a purely economic theory? -- 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
