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Re: [ox-en] Information goods as genuine societal goods

Stefan Meretz wrote:

Hi StefanS, although speaking to StefanMn let me comment on this:

On 2008-04-04 23:18, Stefan Seefeld wrote:

1. Information goods are not exchange goods.

Without wanting to get drawn too much into an ontological discussion
here, I'd like to point out that these things 'are' not anything in
themselves. Rather, they become what we make them. If we choose to
handle them as exchange items, they are exchange items.
No, there can only be exchange items when there is a necessity to be exchanged. Why should anyone exchange something which is already there? Please have in mind, that we are talking about the societal level. 

Yes, understood. (And sorry for the sloppiness of my wording.)
What I meant was that, as evidenced by our current economy, information actually *can* be handled as an exchange good (a commodity). What determines its 'fitness' for this is not intrinsic to the information, but to the economics of the society producing it. I guess this is just a long-winded way to express my concern about the original wording which sounded a little too meta-physical for my taste. 




This is totally unrelated to whether or not the act of exchange
involves 'matter' (no matter what definition of 'matter' you apply
here). And it is also quite independent from whether the exchange
process requires any effort (whether it is frictionless) or not.
The important relationship we should see here is whether a good is appropriate for producing it in a *private* way. Only when produced privately exchange is necessary. When produced societally the question of "exchange" changes to the question of how to distribute the goods. In the case of digitized information goods the problem is small, because production and distribution can use the same infrastructure. 


It is important to realize that whether or not the (re-)production of
goods, intellectual or not, do not intrinsically imply a particular
mode of production / exchange.
On a general level this is true. However, we live in a historically specific situation, where capitalism gets huge problems to squeeze information goods into the social form of commodities (needing exchange). And this has to do with the nature of the goods. But you are right, the goods don't tell us how to organize society. We should not follow a techno-utopian path :-)
Exactly. (I'm not so much worried on this list, where I expect most people to understand that. But I have seen sloppy slogans such as "Information wants to be free" being touted where people really appeared to be confused by what that could mean.) 

Regards,
		Stefan

--

      ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...
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