Re: [ox-en] Re: Open Money?
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 17:54:28 -0500 (EST)
Hi Ernie,
On Mon, 21 Jan 2002, ernie yacub wrote:
At 11:04 AM 1/20/2002 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Stefan Merten wrote:
This is of course a question which reaches (far?) into the future. And
I guess for people grown up in money-based societies this is really
difficult to imagine.
No, not difficult to imagine a mythical land of "if" where everyone grows
their own food and no-one needs software anymore and there are no cities
and the population is a minuscule fraction of what it is now spread
throughout the warm fertile regions after the great dieoff.
Wrong utopia - this is a techno-utopia, not a rural one. Think Ian Banks
and nanotech, not 70s hippies or survivalists. You can easily dismiss it
as unrealistic, but it has the advantage over the one you describe that
it doesn't require a mass dieoff, nuclear war or anything else - it's an
attempt to extrapolate from what's happening now rather than revert to a
mythical past. So I would assume cities, a population not too different
from now, probably a lot MORE software (as one of the main drivers for
automation). I don't know about farming, I don't know what people into
that want/foresee, but I would think it unlikely that everyone could grow
their own food in sufficient quantities.
But for me the point of oekonux isn't to draw up blueprints for a utopia,
but to look at things that are happening now and try to extrapolate from
them in a way that's testable/doable. Which I don't think is
so different from extrapolating from existing LETs to future open money.
The testing comes first in looking at whether the ideas are logically
coherent (and whether where they might lead is desirable), then in trying
to apply/expand them.
You wrote in an earlier mail:
If fs developers give their work away and receive nothing in exchange,
how
are they to live? How will we all live without the means to buy the
necessities of life?
I think this is the key difference between the two sets of ideas: if I
understand you correctly, for you there are not enough of the necessities
to go round, so they have to be rationed somehow. Rationing through
conventional money is unfair; rationing through open money could be
fairer.
For me rationing is inherently unfair, and attempts to carry it out with
any type of money are structurally similar and will eventually end up
recreating the same system. Attempts to carry it out without money result
instead in dictatorship. So the key is to look for ways in which rationing
can be completely avoided - where 'means to buy the necessities of life'
are simply unneeded, because they can be taken without payment.
But there are also issues about survival NOW, rather than future systems:
could open money be used to help fs writers survive now? RMS is also
trying to create a micro-payment system, but I believe that's with
conventional money? On the other hand, there is a LETS system in the area
where I live - based entirely on local exchange between people who know
one another physically. And the openmoney.org website also uses local
communities in its examples. Suppose I (in the UK) write a program which
becomes widely used by secretaries in China (unlikely but possible). In
this case there is no sense in which the word 'community' applies. How
could open money operate in cases like that?
Free Software shows us one example where this is already happening:
You simply take what you need and make available what you like.
It seems there is considerable disagreement that what you describe is
actually what is happening.B
I'm almost entirely a free software user rather than developer, and I have
never been compelled to return anything for it. On the other hand, I spend
some of most days running a website which some people find useful, and
never expect anything back from its users either.
The only place I see Stefan's statement above not applying is for
companies that want to survive by selling software and would like to
modify gpl-ed software and sell it in binary form. But this is an issue
at the boundary where the two systems (capitalism and fs)
meet, rather like issues in the UK over whether LETs should be taxed.
Graham
ernie
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