Re: [ox-en] Free market and the Internet

• From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
• Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 17:57:01 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Stefan Meretz wrote:

On Saturday 01 February 2003 21:27, Russell McOrmond wrote:

  The fact is, however, that if I eat an apple, you can't also eat that
same apple.  We need to arbitrate this rivalry -- sharing (or simply
not hoarding) is one method, and the method I believe in, but the fact
I believe in sharing doesn't change the rivalrous nature of physical
things and the non-rivalrous nature of information.

Humans are continously producing their lifes, they cannot live in other 
ways (like animals which just "find" food and others means). Producing 
lives is as non-rivalrous as information is. The apple is not found, it 
is produced. It is not necessary to share if we can produce another one.

Only if you do production in form of commodities, then you produce 
"rivalrousness" (rivalry) - a property not by nature but of society we 
live in (yes: free market). The nature of physical things only make it 
simpler to keep them scarce compared to information, however, being not 
scarce in the sense of always being produced is common.

Stefan's answer conflates scarcity and rivalry; I think the two ideas
overlap but are not the same, and the difference between rivalrous and
nonrivalrous goods would continue even if there were no scarcity. Stefan
earlier made a distinction between (social) scarcity and (natural)
limitations. Natural limitations (eg. the amount of oil in the earth) will
continue whatever the social arrangements.  Non-rivalrous goods (ideas,
software, etc) will never run into natural limitations of this sort in any
society; rivalrous goods may.

But I also think that the way in which rivalry/non-rivalry are assumed to
be either/or properties is wrong, and they are extremes of a continuum.
According to Samuelson my computer would be rivalrous; in fact, like a lot
of things, it can be used by many people simultaneously and degrades only
gradually as more are added. It's somewhere in the middle of the
continuum. So is the apple tree that produced Russell's rivalrous apple
:-). Only things that are destructively consumed (eg food) are purely
rivalrous.
 
That implies there is also a continuum between private and public goods;
or at least that the point where the boundary comes is dependent on the
society.

IIRC that also ties in with Stefan Mn's interest in personal property? The
'Eigentum' paper (which I haven't read)?

Graham




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  • Re: [ox-en] Free market and the Internet
    • From: Stefan Meretz

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