[p2p-research] Google gets into the DNS business

[Patrick Anderson]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 at 10:43:54AM -0500, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
>
>> This may reflect a deeper shift in our society. For most people, the Google
>> corporation is now effectively the de-facto government that structures
>> their lives online. So, how can we make Google a good government? :-)
>
> You can't. Neither a corporate nor a government entity can be trusted.

Hmm.  That's true for nearly all current corporations and the
governments they control.

But then who is this group called "we" that they are against?  Is it
not the end users?

And why are they against us?  It is because profit requires scarcity,
and so seeking to perpetuate profit incents artificial scarcity and
withholding solutions.

We don't yet have "User Freedom" in the physical realm because we
haven't yet discovered how to incorporate for our own purposes.

...

Here is my rough plan to solve this issue:

1.  We, the users, get together to fund organizations and even
corporations that operate for our own benefit - where the 'return' for
those investments would be "at cost" goods and services which are
under *our* (limited to the co-owners of those physical resources)
full control.

This is good and sufficient for the 'static' case - where the number
of initial investors is equal to the number of current users.

But if an organization is to grow, it must become 'dynamic' - and must
consider the case of the 'new' user that has not yet paid for his
share of physical ownership required for the "at cost" access the
others enjoy.

This lack of ownership causes the new user to be at a disadvantage.
He is at the mercy of the current owners who will most likely charge
him a price above cost (they will collect profit).

The organization cannot grow unless more than costs are paid, since
"at cost" access only covers current operational expenses.  So the
collection of profit is somewhat beneficial, for there could be no
growth without it, but that value is usually 'mistreated' as a reward
for those current owners instead of being considered an investment
from the user who paid it.  Even so-called "non-profit" corporations
keep this value while pretending it is not profit as they pad their
own wages, or they re-invest it into the organization but just like
the for-profits, those new investments become the property of the
*current* owners instead of becoming the real property of the person
who paid it.

2. The 'fix' for the dynamic case is to write a sort of Contract or
Terms of Operation very similar in purpose to the GNU GPL but enforced
by property rights instead of copyright.  The primary (and as far as I
can tell maybe even the only) constraint of this contract is that all
price above cost (all profit) be invested in more physical sources
needed for the growth of that entity, but those new investments are
owned by the user who paid that profit.


Sincerely,
Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://patware.FreeShell.org