[p2p-research] IP rights as enforcer of scarcity economics

[marc fawzi]

I know this is obvious but there has not been a discussion about the patent
system and the monetary system in the context of scarcity enforcing
economics.

In building a currency that supports sustainable abundance (e.g.: p2p energy
economy <http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy>) I found out that the
conditions for sustainable abundance are:

1. The good or service in question should be producible and deliverable on
continuous (e.g. non-seasonal), scalable, distributed basis (e.g.
decentralized peer production)

2. The supply of of the good or service should be matched to demand at the
median cost of energy it takes to produce and deliver the good or service
(where the latter is calculated based on the average predicted volume of
demand per producer)

The IP rights system, which companies like MS, Apple, Oracle, IBM, etc
enforce, breaks the 1st condition which makes the 2nd condition impossible.

In this case, the existing monetary system is not able to break the 1st
condition because people would rather starve (i.e. artists would rather give
away their music) than continue to subject society to the use of a
[monetary] system that enforces [artificial] scarcity.

That's why major market players (Apple in specific) threatening to sue
everyone who breathes the same air is so detrimental to social progress,
i.e. they promote a world view that is completely against sustainable
abundance (while at the same time trying to ride the Green wave.)
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