Re: [ox-en] What if the designs of everything were free?
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 21:14:28 +0200
Hi list!
3 weeks (23 days) ago johan soderberg wrote:
I just read about a studie from the sixties, in which the authors
concluded that in that time, 30% of the cost of a car was inbedded
in the costs of designing new models. That proportion is likely to
have skyrocked in the last 40 years. A long-shot guess could be
50-80 % of a car today is made up of design cost? That would imply
that if design was free, then material goods would be down with
50-80% too.
At the 2. Oekonux conference Christof Beaupoil estimated 90%. Please
all interested in this issue check out
http://zweite.oekonux-konferenz.de/dokumentation/texte/BeaupoilSeaman.html
and contact Christof.
2 weeks (20 days) ago Vicente J Ruiz Jurado wrote:
Following your example, I know somebody who works in an well known
tires company. He told me that exists a noncommercial design of
tires with a very, very low wear. But this is not attractive also to
capitalism.
At the 1. Oekonux conference Markus Merz from the (now sleeping) OSCar
project said that the car industry has the problem that there would be
some demand for a small, cheap car but none of the big players could
develop one because it doesn't fit into their product line. Because of
that they had *hoped* the OpenSourceCar would be a success.
Some days ago I read an article about the next generation of computer
chips which should be based on Extreme Ultraviolet light (because of
the low wave length). However, this technology is so extremely
difficult that no single company can afford its development. Thus they
work together. I think this is similar to the problem with cars.
To me all this points in a single direction: The scientific (Marx)
part of the production increases and increases. Today in important
areas it has reached a level where it is hard to get an return of
investion by selling the products resulting from the research. The
state is more and more unable to finance the enormous costs of this
research. IMHO this is a hint that information is more and more
important. And the production of information works on totally
different grounds than the production of material goods.
The nice thing about this is that these grounds need Selbstentfaltung
to work. This is my reason why I hope the society based on the
production of information is interesting for people thinking about
emancipation.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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