Re: [ox-en] Re: herrschaft
- From: Felix Stalder <felix openflows.org>
- Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:10:22 +0100
On Wednesday 14 January 2004 15:54, Graham Seaman wrote:
There is an 'invisible hand' in a free society. It doesn't work
through the medium of money, but directly through need. If I (for large
enough values of I) need some software, but that software doesn't exist
in free form, I will write it. If the software already exists in just the
form I want it, I won't bother. The supply of programmers for particular
types of program is regulated by need: this invisible hand is the hand
that scratches your own itch...
Applying this more generally, if there is no bread available, I (again,
for large enough values of I) will learn how to bake and distribute bread
to people. And if there is no flour for me to use, I will set up a mill.
etc.
I was already itching to write when I read the first paragraph concerning
software. There are plenty of people who need software but it doesn't get
written. Why? Because they don't really need it! This is what the argument
suggests. Applying the same logic to bread should make the non-sense of this
line of thinking so obvious that it feels embarassing to point it out. Why do
peopke starve? Because they don't realize that they need food? No, because
they are structurally unable to gain access to it (and this in the context of
a general overabundance of food worldwide).
Free Software is free because it serves the (self-)interests of the knowledge
elites
(programmers with a reasonably secure economic basis, large service oriented
corporations like IBM) to have it free. This has very nice side-effects,
because everyone can use it, but this is only a side effect, because it would
be more difficult to create/enforce a boundary around the community than to
simply not care. This is the beauty of a public good, once created, everyone
can use it.
There is just no comparable (self)interest of farmers to make grain free,
among others, because it's not a public good. Mind you, self-interest does
not need to be economic, it can be culturally oriented, or towards personal
self-unfolding. Also the farmer can perfer to grow organic food because s/he
likes the idea to protect the environment, rather than following a mindless
profit-maximizing strategy, but still, this won't really help those who
starve.
Felix
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