clockworkfish

Presumably community/collaboration also allows for economies of scale. For example, a website shared... ;)

And the sharing of accumulated knowledge means that we can all focus on the bits we're interested in and help each other out.

You say "there are some significant difficulties in being generous with what you produce". What do you think these are?

I like your brain.

Why don't most right wing economists see the logic in this? After three and a half years working with them you'd think I'd understand how otherwise bright people have a hole in their heads where this kind of thought falls out.

The hole probably explains golf.

nice, well-written, good thoughts, and all that, but:

what exactly are you advocating for reality? I mean, we live here, and its not how it should be, how do you suggest we get to that sharing place?

I have some nasty forebodings about the collaborative society, becuase i believe, unforunately, that you will never eliminate the vandal/competitor element. that's why open source hasn't won yet, well-paid, well-copyrighted people are still having good ideas faster than generous sharing people can get them out. a gardener will one day spill his dog's boiled urine on his carrot patch and notice a greater yield; then he will perfect the technique and tell his neighbour 'hey, i will show you how to make your carrots grow twice as big, if you just give me a bag of mandarins.' and that's only a step away from 'hey, i will give you this unmarked bottle to put on your carrots every year, in exchange for a mandarin each week'.

tell me how to achieve your obviously-ideal society

You should all read "Goodstuff" by Mike Paterson (if you haven't already). It has the beginnings of a collaborative society in it, and it's also an excellent and freakish novel.

Richard, I'm trying to imagine a scenario where someone accidentally spills boiled dog urine on their carrots, but... [brain go crunch]

;-)

Aaaargh! Another geeky blog! ;)

Hmmm… I wonder why it is that people would much rather be better off than everyone else, rather than wanting the best for everyone. I mean, it sort of makes sense… except that a lot of valuable aspects of life are *not* zero-sum. If one person has more, it doesn’t necessarily mean that other people have less. (I want to say something here but I can’t find the words for it...)

Richard - Sheesh, well, if you put it like that I’m going to go and join the lemmings.

Ceri - Oh yes, it’s her brain you like, is it? ;)

Hey, like the grey and orange thang you’ve got goin on.

I think what I was trying to say was that often things seem to be zero sum if you believe they are. It’s kind of like Power Politics. If you see power as zero sum, then it is, because you “grab” lots of it by buying lots of big mean weapons, and then you have a kind of power over people, and they have a kind of powerlessness. But it’s only one kind of power, and so in other ways the power dynamic might be the reverse. Does that make sense? Like, if you see something as competitive, then you fight over it, and it becomes competitive even if it didn’t have to be.

Richard: The collaborative society can work on a small scale – so why not on a large scale? I think the thing is that we have to work out *why* the vandal/competitor element arises, and then deal with the underlying problems rather than the symptoms, and all sorts of stuff that is probably much more focused on the long term than the short term games and so no one will ever bother. *sigh.*

I was trying to say the total utility would be greater, not that it would be any more likely to happen. There isn't anything in the systems I've described that would prompt people to choose one or the other. I would get the same utility as an individual from being nasty as I would from being nice. I might notice that being nice meant it was easier to get utility (cause I'd have more control over it), but I might not want to unless I knew I was giving stuff to someone else who was being generous.

Which is a reasonable description of cynicism and religion.

My point isn't necessarily that there is a way of changing the balance that we now have. The pointy bit is more that it may be helpful to watch out for opportunities to be collaborative. There is a tendancy in current policy thinking, to use competition as a way of solving problems.

Sometimes this has proved helpful, sometimes it has large hidden (or not so hidden costs). You are completely correct, the challenge is definitely to find ways of bringing collaborative and voluntary approaches into the real world. A good start is to recognise and support the places where those approaches appear to be naturally occurring.
In your standard resource-limited system markets will naturally appear and work pretty darn well. However, I'm getting the impression that the internet is not a standard market, and consequently it may not respond in the ways that classical economics would suggest.

In the case of open source, the invisible hand may work off completely different drivers. Some of them would include:

* people wanting to make things better (neater, faster, more featureful, more stable, occassionally prettier)

* people wanting to increase their standing in the coding community ("I get the girls because I did critical work on the multi threading code for the 2.5 Linux kernel!")

* people being politically passionate about open source and wanting to make the project succeed (which is the one most likely to die in the next decade)

* people who like sticking it to the man or who like the idea of working on an anarchic project (similar to above)

* people who like coding and want to join 'clubs' so they find an open source project and jump on board

can anyone else think of others?

Basically, because the distribution of the product is so cheap, you only need enough motivation to bother doing the work. Which is a much lower tipping point than the standard system.

.carla

can anyone think of a historical analogy to the open-source phenomena? like some widget factory that went completely bust becuase everyone made their own widgets? i can think of things happening the other way a plenty (home-based seamstress replaced by steam powered factories in the industrial rev).

I'm sure the only way open source can replace software factories is for it to be endorsed by big business, or government, initially. I read a list somewhere, of governments who went open-source; there were dozens. And not just wanky little ones either, theres countries like Italy and stuff, i think. this is due to another incentive for open-source: security. Do the FBI store their info on MS Secret Keeper 2.0? No you cannot have ANY confindence in closed-source security, because you have no way of knowing: a) whether the program is as good as you've been told, and b) whether the program's designer has included code that allows him unrestricted access.

If you can see the code that makes your information secret, you can tell exactly how secure it is.

ps. why do all the idealogical open source lovers like myself continue to use MS? Karl Marx would have a thing or two to say about that hmmmn.

euw! security products you can't find the code for. mind you, if the code makes no sense to you, it may not matter.

I'm starting a new post on this (as it has got rediculously far from fullstop commentary ...)

.carla

**baaa!** to commas and fullstops! hah!

http://www.microsoft.com/nz/windowsxp/pro/bliss/nzbliss_download.mspx

(it's genuine, apparently someone from oamaru sent this to m'soft)

Dear Gates,
I think you really lost your minds.
There are still so many things You can get a patent for. Ex. the alphabet, breathing - in and ex halation, blinking, shitting and not, the days of the week, the hours of the day, day and night ... giving birth and death, ... and, well of course, GOD itself....... How about that?

I request an answer, only if You don't have to pay someone for the right do it.