[p2p-research] A slashdot post on Bill Gates that struck a nerve

[Paul D. Fernhout]

My post in a story related to Bill Gates:
   http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1316287&cid=28837221
(It has been modded both up to the maximum and down a little again.)

The part that probably annoyed some people the most:

=========

Bill Gates [born with a multi-million dollar trust fund] could have spent
his lifetime writing free software. That being born a multi-millionaire was
not enough for him is a sign of an illness that causes "financial obesity",
not something to be emulated. But, in the end, it is not Bill Gates who has
destroyed our society as much as all the people who want to be the next Bill
Gates and support regressive social policies they hope to benefit from someday.

From:
     "The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe's"
     http://conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47/ [conceptualguerilla.com]
"""
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not
millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal.
That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable,
intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who
"have what it takes" to "make it". They believe that the difference between
those who "make it" and those who don't is being "capable, intelligent and
hardworking". Things like "having rich parents", "getting just plain lucky"
or "being a crook" don't factor into the equation anywhere. No, American
society is a natural hierarchy where the most capable are "rich beyond their
wildest dreams", and the non-rich are chumps that just don't measure up. ...
But here's something I'll bet the dittoheads haven't thought of. Maybe
they're the chumps. Maybe they've been sold a bogus "American dream" that
never existed. Maybe "the rules" they play by were written by the people who
have "made it" - not by the people who haven't. And maybe - just maybe - the
people who have "made it" wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a
dream that's a mirage. Maybe Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Samuel
Adams didn't fight to make the world safe for John D. Rockefeller - or Don
LaPre, either. Maybe the Rolls Royce complete with bimbo was left out of our
inalienable rights for a reason. Maybe the "pursuit of happiness" Thomas
Jefferson wrote about was something a bit more profound than the empty joy
of owning things you don't need so you can look down of down on the lesser
mortals who lack your "ability". Maybe Thomas Jefferson intended the
"pursuit of happiness" to be something attainable not just for anybody - but
for everybody.
"""

=========

I'd suggest the intent of the original US founders (ignoring discrimination
against women, slaves, natives, the poor, etc.) was much closer to a peer
economy than the big companies dominating the global landscape now, even as
many people *think* they are supporting peer production of some sort (small
businesses) when they support the US status quo. In practice, our economy
has many interwoven strong financial hierarchies (even Microsoft is an
example of that, a company with global monopoly powers making deals with
other big companies and the government). There are a lot of small businesses
too, but it is a rough life as one.

It is a sign of how much economic uncertainty there is these days that many
people want to become millionaires just to *survive* economic uncertainty,
not to have luxury in abundance.

I feel that way myself sometimes, even as I try to fight it. :-)  Not that
I'm very religious, but I remember this verse:
   http://bible.cc/luke/12-24.htm
"Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or
barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!"
Though in some ways, this adage keeps me more in check: :-)
   http://bible.cc/matthew/6-19.htm (on to 21)
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust
destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves
do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will
be also."
Although I'd replace the notion of "heaven" with some notion of a global
peer network and gift economy. :-) So, if you want your writings or software
to have a chance at lasting forever, give them to the net. :-) Also, from
something in Readers Digest long ago, there was a story of a very wealthy
couple who gave their house and garden to a college with the provision they
could live in it for their lifetime, and then 1929 came and they lost
everything except the right to live in that house and grow food in that
garden. So, sometimes all you have left is what you give away. :-)
Still, it is not money itself (which is a tool) as much as the love of money
that is supposedly the root of all sorts of evil.
   http://bible.cc/1_timothy/6-10.htm
"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager
for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many
griefs."

I also saw James and Janet Baker (students of my college advisor, and
colleagues of people I knew in the IBM speech group) build up a billion
dollar company around proprietary software and lose it all in one stock deal
(presumably along with the right to continue working on the software):
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking
"Lernout & Hauspie bought Dragon Systems in June of 2000 for stock then
valued at about $600 million. The dictation system bubble burst in 2001, and
Lernout & Hauspie went bankrupt."
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie
"For some time Lernout & Hauspie was dogged by rumours of financial
impropriety, and in early 1999 the Wall Street Journal, ran allegations in
its Heard on the Street column, by Goldman Sachs analyst Robert Smithson,
that earnings had been overstated. Further investigation by Wall Street
Journal staffer Jesse Eisinger led to the revelation on 8 August 2000 of a
major financial scandal involving fictitious transactions in Korea and
improper accounting methodologies elsewhere. In April 2001 founders Jo
Lernout and Pol Hauspie, as well as former CEO Gaston Bastiaens, were
arrested in what is considered one of the largest corporate scandals in
history prior to Enron. Lernout & Hauspie finally went bankrupt on 25
October 2001 after having struggled for a year."

Do you think the kind of couple who spend their time developing the best
speech recognition software in the world are going to also be the most
financially savvy people in the world? What a loss.

But this is a core tension to resistance to peer production ideas -- if you
have the desire to be a millionaire through the global marketplace, even
against all odds, then you will tend to support a system that promises the
chance of that, even if the chance is one in a million (and even if the odds
of keeping the wealth are even lower). It's the same reason poor people play
the lottery with the money that otherwise they might use to improve their
lives (perhaps pooled as microcredit or to do some social project). So,
instead of voting for taxes on the wealthy to support better social services
or a basic income, they vote to lower taxes for what they want to be. Rather
than vote for shorter copyright, the vote for longer copyright. Rather than
vote for local libraries or workshops, they vote against them and buy from
Amazon.
   "21,000 Flexible Public Fabrication Facilities across the USA"
   http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/8412-4049
And so on.

There are other reasons people vote how they do (including misleading
economists) but I think that issue of being a millionaire wannabee is a
stronger one than is obvious at first.

This is one book that helped me see beyond that mirage:
   "The Seven Laws of Money"
   http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Money-Shambhala-Pocket-Classics/dp/1570622779
When I was a teenager, I went to the library and collected books on how to
be a millionaire. All the rest told me how to do it (start a small business,
work hard, and get lucky),
http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip-offs/10-things-millionaires-wont-tell-you-23697/?page=all
but one of the books, by Michael Phillips, who helped create MasterCard, was
the only one that asked me, "Why do you want to be a millionaire?"

And that is a very good question to think about.

A short list of the laws, though there is so much more to the book:
  http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Commerce/RATNA/june2.html

The same guy also has a book with more practical advice on running a small
business:
   "Honest Business" by Michael Phillips
http://www.amazon.com/Honest-Business-Shambhala-Pocket-Editions/dp/1570621799

Still, I won't say all the critical comments in that thread are unfair.
There are things markets can do well under some circumstances. Many people
enjoy running small honest businesses (when they are reasonably profitable
or they don't need money from them). We have a lot more stuff in the USA
than we ever did. It is fair to ask for some sort of proof that alternatives
will be better than what we have now before making major changes. It is fair
to point out that many people are motivated to do disagreeable tasks (or
find innovative solutions) by long term self-interest or wanting to support
their family. It is fair to see Bill Gates as a very smart and hard working
person with some aspirations to make great products (even as he is a
monopolist and so a supporter of regressive social policies), in the same
way it is fair to say Christopher Columbus was a brave and talented and
persuasive guy (even if he essentially started a genocidal process is the
Americas for interwoven commercial and religious reasons).

It's a complex set of issues to argue in the USA, both accepting markets
have some value and showing their limits (externalities, inequities,
systemic risks, etc.). And of course, overall there is a trend towards
exponentially increasing automation and better design breaking the link
between direct human labor and total industrial productivity, which reduces
the need for human labor even if demand rises, which in turn drives down
wages and working conditions, in a vicious negative spiral we are seeing the
beginning of now. Agriculture went from most of the workforce to 2% in the
USA in two hundred years. Manufacturing went from 30% of the workforce to
12% in fifty years and is still falling. Services are likely next, in part
from James and Janet Baker's excellent speech recognition work (although
also from work by people at IBM and elsewhere) as well as robotics work done
at lots of places (including Willow Garage).
"Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man" (Guess women are safe? :-)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/07/26/1140254/Scientists-Worry-Machines-May-Outsmart-Man?from=rss

One thing to consider is that "past performance does not guarantee future
gains" as far as human happiness from a free market. Especially, one like
that of the USA, where from about 1950 to 1970 the USA was the only major
economy on the planet not destroyed by WWII and so had a big advantage.
Since the 1970s, real wages for most people in the USA have been stagnant
(although quality of some products have gone up, while others have gone
down). Other countries have done better since, but the riots in Greece
mainly over jobs for people in their 20s seem to me like the beginnings of
things to come (even given Europe has had higher unemployment in the past).

So, I find myself talking about how there is a structural failure in the
current system as quantitative changes become qualitative changes.

Still, that ignores the issue of whom the market has harmed. For example,
Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute in his book "The Age of Abundance" talks
about how US Americans must be better off due to the free market because
poor people have dishwashers and TVs now. But that ignores how maybe a lot
of Africans or Middle Easterners may feel worse off being in nations that
transformed from autonomous countries to US supply regions. But the process
is so complex that it is hard to make simple conclusions (for example,
populations went up in some places in Africa, and some people are much
better off, even as others may be worse off in some ways but might not have
been born, etc.).

Anyway, I just wanted to share this notion that Millionaire Wannabees are
one reason there is substantial resistance to alternative economic ideas.
I'm not sure how best to address that issue. Maybe more alternative examples 
  defining success differently than being a billionaire in a world with lots 
of poverty?

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/