Re: [ox-en] New economic model for free technology?
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 09:07:01 +0200
Hi Michel and all!
6 days ago Michael Bouwens wrote:
To preserve 'peer production' as such, the basic
income is the only solution I see to create the
independence of the producers, but it will probably
never cover the full needs.
Why? People have lots of hobbies and creation of Free Software is
surely among the cheapest. I can not understand why people constantly
say that you can only be useful to Free Projects if you are paid for
it. Any reason?
Also there is already a big share of people with basic income: the
unemployed. Wouldn't it make sense to activate this potential? Or: Why
is this potential not realizing itself?
Therefore, following Fiske's fourfold intersubjective
typology,
What is the missing sphere?
i.e. the modes that have always existed
across time and space, we still need solutions for the
other 3 spheres:
- for reciprocity-based relations, we need
complementary currencies
Two questions: Why is human society thinkable only with
reciprocity-based relations? Why must they resolved by something like
money?
To me reciprocity-based relations are mainly a mean to distribute
pain. If it would not mean pain to do / produce something but pleasure
I hardly would make it subject to reciprocity. Free Software is a good
example where pleasure / Selbstentfaltung is a key motivation for
producing - and look, people share freely.
IMHO human history is a struggle for reducing pain in production by
inventing technology. Today we are in a situation where using this
technology to be productive means pleasure to many people - if only
allowed to produce under non-alienated conditions. Shouldn't we strive
for a world where pain is reduced to zero and thus reciprocity is made
superfluous? And - and this is the good news - is this option not more
likely today than any time before in human history?
- for market pricing, I think that a form of
'distributed capitalism', where producers are not
dependent on scarce money managed by monopolies, such
a scheme will still be useful
Is this different from alternative money systems?
For peer production to succeed or expand, I think we
need:
1) the basic income for pure P2P in the immaterial
sphere
Well, so far Free Software worked without it. Why do you think it is
necessary in other areas?
2) to split immaterial design from material production
through funding by the state or distributed capital
I don't understand what you mean by splitting immaterial design from
material production and how this needs special funding. Could you
explain?
Don't misunderstand me, we do need a sphere for pure
non-reciprocal production to exist, through the
universal basic income (or what are the other
alternatives?), but if we want to expand cooperative
production generally (not necessarily non-reciprocal),
the other schemes will be necessary.
Any reasoning for this? Why was Free Software possible without such
schemes?
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
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