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Re: [ox-en] Manufacturing scarcity (was: Re: [ox] Fwd: Werthaltigkeit von Informationsguetern)



[snip and chop]

Scarcity of cars is a direct result of the physical needs to produce a
car. You need lots of massive means of productions to actually produce
a car from the raw materials. People can screw together a car when
they have pre-produced parts delivered (I think in Britain there once
was a hobby scene in this field - is it still?).

Production of a car from raw materials is something that is at the
"skilled smith" level - a competent metalworking team can produce them
as a cottage industry and expect to do so with available metal and wood
parts. True, the efficiency will not be up to the standards of the
modern car, but it is possible, and the investment in the tooling
necessary is relatively low.

Given you control enough land scarcity of potatoes is a result of
having to little of the means of production time.

In both cases the means of production of know how is needed of course
which in the case of the car is much bigger.

Knappheit of digital music is hard to enforce
(though it is possible),

This is easy - and here the question becomes Oekonuxy - because the
means of (re)production are commonplace.

I'll use this for a short excursion.

Last month (51 days ago) Graham Seaman wrote:
1a. 'softwareproduktion' == writing software, 'hardwareproduktion' ==
designing hardware (see quote from silicore, above). 'produktion' is
immaterial production.

Or:

1b. 'hardwareproduktion' == manufacturing hardware, 'softwareproduktion' 
== 'copying software'. 'produktion' is material produktion.

Thanks for pointing to that difference. I'm having something similiar
in my head for quite some time now - though I do not have it clear
yet.

The point is that pressing a CD or even downloading software from a
FTP server is actually *re*producing software IMHO. Copying ==
reproducing. Or to put in other terms: One of the features of
information goods is that their physical representation is neglectable
(under digital conditions even in a practical sense).

At this point, however, we enter a different world from the world of
light engineering. To produce an FTP server, or a CD recorder, requires
a series of toolchains, and probably is outside the capability of even a
highly-skilled team working for 20 years. So we are already in a
fundamentally different economy to that of 50 years ago - we have now
reached an economic level where it isn't possible to reconstruct it in a
disconnected manner. 




May be this makes sense: The very nature of software is that it there
is no relevant distinction between the design (taking this term
loosely - i.e. for the whole process of software development) and the
resulting product. For material goods, however, this distinction is
very clear. We need to manufacture goods and it does not suffice to
copy the design.

Software has an advantage that it can pretend it has nothing to do with
the hardware toolchain, and this generates the assumption that software
reproduction is "zero-cost"...


This brings me also back to my main point: If the means of reproducing
information goods is commonplace then the means of (re)production for
these goods are commonplace.

But there is still a problem that the means of producing the means of
production are highly-centralised and capitalised...


Also - and this is the case since computers exist - the know how
needed to operate these means of production can be part of these
means. I.e. you don't need to know how the copy process actually works
- - it suffices if the program "knows" that. I think this is another big
difference to previous historical situations: The know how ultimately
*had* to be in the heads of the people using it. Software makes it
possible to put this into the machine to a unprecedented degree.

apt-get install - yes.
"fabricate a hard drive, RAM, CPU, motherboard, ..." - no.


Allow me another excursion.

Last month (37 days ago) Franz Nahrada wrote:
That is where the the end of Capitalism comes from: 
Only with very large capital nowadays it
is possible to successfully produce commodities. 
So more and more people understand that there is a different 
mode of production which needs no capital or almost no capital: ours.

The costs of development shared, the costs of production in small series
becoming affordable again: thats GPL-society.

Maybe GPL society will begin to rise in Africa??

BTW: Franz: I find setting up a Wiki or OT project like you suggested
a good idea for exactly the reasons you gave :-) .

No, I think it will not take place in Africa because the means of
production necessary to produce something are not completely
arbitrary so they can not be transplanted everywhere easily.

The best example I can think of is a steelwork. The Chinese tried to
produce steel on an individual basis and got nothing but both massive
environmental damage and unusable steel.

My point is: Some means of productions must be big - or complicated as
a chip fab - and thus less affordable by the very nature of the
manufacturing process which is to some degree driven by the physical
properties of the desired product. Of course technology comes into
play here - which will make things possible. However, not everything
is possible today and I guess this will stay this way until the
replicator fits under everyones desk.

Assuming that DMCA/WIPO laws allow us to have replicators :->

[snip and chop]

cheers, Rich.

-- 
rich walker | technical person | Shadow Robot Company | rw shadow.org.uk
front-of-tshirt space to let     251 Liverpool Road   |
                                 London  N1 1LX       | +UK 20 7700 2487
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