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Re: [ox-en] [Upd-discuss] Paper:"Digital property" By Sabine Nuss - Response to Stallman

On Wed, 2005-09-07 at 13:11 [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Tom Chance wrote:


As oil becomes scarce so almost all production will become less profitable, for 
example. Workers are so downtrodden because there is generally no shortage.


That is not very apparent, at least to me. If there is no shortage of
workers, why is there a deliberate effort to reduce the need for
workers? A modern factory that manufactures a product, say automobile,
has, perhaps, ten percent the number of workers that a similar factory
had fifty years ago. I don't see how society benefited from this.
Automation was introduced to reduce the work force (and to keep a
certain number of people jobless) and hence costs. The reduction in
costs has admittedly helped to make the product more affordable, but
often that has led to serious consequences on the environment. But the
loss in jobs and maintaining a larger number of jobless people has
probably only offset that advantage. So workers are downtrodden probably
because there is no shortage, but this situation is deliberately brought
about.

This should be true in the case of other resources too. We see that
developed countries try to keep oil prices as low as possible in
increase profitability of their industries, while oil producing
countries try to increase the price so that their profits are maximised.
However, in the case of oil, a lot of other politics also perhaps
intrudes to make things much more complicated.


I think your claim that (to paraphrase) "free software doesn't oppose the 
capitalist system and so therefore supports it" is therefore inaccurate.


True. There are a lot of people who consider the Free Software movement
as one that could eventually lead to a shift from the capitalist mode of
production. Of course, this list itself is an example.

Regards
-- 
V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsfs gmail.com>

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