Re: What money? [Way off topic] (was Re: Guy Steele interview in

Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> QUESTION: is anybody reading this from c.l.scheme?
> I would like to keep the crossposting down!

I'm both reading and posting this from c.l.scheme. I don't currently
subscribe to c.l.lisp. But you have a point. Suggested solution? That I
temporarily subscribe to cll? That you do the same to cls instead? That
we move the discussion to another public forum?

> No, I drink soda because it tastes good and is ok.  I don't drink it
> much, since it's high in sugar and other things.  I don't smoke, because
> that's my choice.  If I want to do heroin, why should anybody stop me?
>
> Look at the drug policies from the Netherlands (Marihuana is legal) and
> the US; the US aren't really successful in prohibiting everything.  The
> Netherlands have really low drug use (Germans smoke a lot more pot than
> the Dutch).

The legality of drugs is not what I'm discussing here.

My point was that it seems to me that cigarettes are a product that's
disproportionately popular, considering it's usefulness (or lack there of).

> What?  Hm, I think that's not an argument.  We all have free will.

Most of us can be influenced to a certain degree, as well as influence
others.

>  Maybe you got a kick out of the caffeine (I do)?
>
> Anyway, there should be some rules against advertising for kids, since
> they don't have a fully developed perception yet.

Perhaps.
 
>
>
> Well, you would have to market it (in English "show people the benefit
> of the product, what it can do for them").

But what if the benefit was well known, but the supply so large that the
price still would be next to nothing? Example: free software.
 
>
>
> Yes.  If you don't open-source it, you'll see that you can take (maybe
> only a little) bit of money for it.

But in order to gain this increase in market value, you have to both
decrease the use value (if you, like I do, buy the argument that a
non-redistributable program is slightly less useful, and that a
non-modifiable program is a lot less useful), and you have to
artificially decrease the supply (by prohibiting productions of copies).

Personally, I perceive the market value/use value disrepancy as a flaw
in the trade-based market system, and copyright as a very visible patch.

Others disagree - there are copyright-sceptical pro-capitalists,
pointing to the goods/services shift in programming as a possible
solution, one that meshes better with the system. YMMV.
 
>
>
> Neither.  Everybody is free to compete against Firefox and OpenOffice.
> If they can't (costs too high), then we just happily use those.

But if software that's produced on non-capitalist terms supplants
software that's produced on capitalist terms, that's one example of a
trade-based market economy being at least partially "phased out".

I'm not saying that Firefox and OpenOffice.org necessarily are produced
on non-capitalist terms, (both having main developers that get paid for
their work, which of course is fine - but they get paid for their
services, rather than for producing scarce goods) but a lot of free
software is produced just as a labor of love, or on other non-capitalist
terms.

Ah, just giving things away - it's compatible with capitalism, it's
orthogonal to capitalism, it might even be beneficial in a capitalist
society - but it's not capitalism and may one day supplant it.
 
>
>
> So they should be rewarded more, true.

Which is what I'm trying to say when I'm saying that capitalism isn't
necessarily a good arbitrator of how useful something is.

> Well, I would be willing to pay
> more than minimum wage for someone cleaning my hypothetical house or
> company offices, but that's just me.  Again it's individual decisions.
> Hotels might advertise this, "we treat ALL our personnel well".

But remember, there's a good and a bad part to human nature. There's a
part of us, call it egoism or just lazyness, that doesn't always check
that with every hotel, or bother to find the one hotell in a million
that treats all their personnel well. (Perhaps a cooperative,
worker-owned hotel would be a good idea?)

In today's world, tobacco company executives get rich while hotel
cleaners ruin their bodies for pennies.

Is that taking both the good and bad parts of human nature in
consideration? I don't think it is.

Some days I feel that even something as simple as just pooling our
resources and trust that people will try to contribute to the best of
their ability and for the best of society would work better and fairer
than the trade-based market economy. This is, of course, a mostly
unproven hunch.

(Unproven if you think that 30s anarchist Spain was too brief, too
undocumented, or otherwise flawed as an example, and if you think that
the success of the free software movement is irreproducible with
physical goods.)

Even if a simple gift economy would be unworkable, let us allow
ourselves to dream of other, fairer, better protocols than the
trade-based market economy - maybe one day those dreams would bear fruit.

> No, but in that case the government removes some inequality (take from
> the rich, give to the poor).  Because we should acknowledge that even in
> an competitive system everybody should be able to live and eat -- we can
> afford that much!

Yes - taking care of each other is one of the "good" parts human nature.
 
>
>
> You write a poem, so it should be yours.  Plagiarism is not ok IMHO.

I've written plenty of poems, but I think reproduction is something very
different from claiming credit. The latter is fraud and should be
considered as such.

> True, and I though about that, even if inheritance should be illegal.
> OTOH it should really be ok to give you kids what you worked for all
> your life!

It's a difficult question, given capitalist premises.

> To the land issue: Maybe land should be government property and rented
> by everybody?  Well, I'm for ownership I guess.  Also, if you inherit
> land, and you can't make much use of it, you might sell it (I probably
> would).

A lot of people would consider renting it out. This would ensure a
steady profit for essentially no labor, except bureaucracy. I question
the fairness of this.

> You can also buy land from people.

Which is a large investment that not everybody can afford to make. An
example of the rich getting richer?
 
>
>
> Well, if you buy it from them?  Land has powerlines, water supply, etc.
> You buy it, you build houses.  Why shouldn't you rent it to people?

House-building, water supply maintenance, power - these could all be
considered services instead, and treated as such.
Mere "land owning" isn't a service that's useful to society, it's more
of an obstruction.