[p2p-research] labour, capital and p2p

[Ryan Lanham]

Christian:

Thanks for the correction, which I also received from Michel.  Regardless,
the idea of eliminating interest is, to me (and perhaps 99% of the rest of
humanity that might care) quite heterodox (and not in a good way).  To me,
it is like discussing whether we should have agriculture or energy
production.  Interest is the time value of money.  It obviously exists, and
it makes sense to people from many more cultures and belief systems than
those few who continue to view it as against their spiritual grounding.  I
suppose I can find people who are spiritually against surgery too.  As for
me, I'll take the downsides of medicine to have the benefits of surgeons
until the details can be worked out...

I've seen people lifted from poverty by micro-credit.  I've also used and
advocated for LETSI systems, but I've never seen one take a person out of
poverty.  I hope that is a limitation of my own observations.

Regardless, my judgment, such as it is, comes from the millions I have
witnessed debased and marginalized under systems created in Marx's name.

Capitalism (which is a silly term for the modern circumstance) is all but
non-existent unless you frame it as private ownership, markets and the
rights to realize personal gains from economic efforts.  Pretty tepid
concepts that have been going on since the Stone Age, at least.  But history
is as messy as the present, and discussing it seems to me a waste of time
when plenty of crises go wanting for thinkers.

I am amazed at one set of discussions I am in with executives who complain
Obama has made the US "socialist", and this one where all the evils of
mankind can be called "capitalism."

>From my perspective, P2P systems do not require coercion, control of other
humans' moral reasoning, or reduction of competing systems to dust.  It
works just fine today, yesterday and, I suspect, tomorrow.

I will be happily enjoying the false consciousness of trying to lead a moral
life in a complex world with systems and technologies Marx never knew and
Adam Smith could not have dreamed of.

Ryan Lanham



On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Christian Siefkes
<christian at siefkes.net>wrote:

> Hi Ryan,
>
> Ryan Lanham wrote:
> > And, to my mind, spare us the silly Marxian critiques (interest is
> > inherently evil?--just absurd) which are unworthy of further discussion
> > because they will never happen and shouldn't happen.
>
> Marx's point of view, funnily enough, is the opposite of that. It's always
> the non-Marxists who take a special interest (huh) in interest and want to
> abolish or reform it. The Marx-influenced people don't consider interest as
> a special problem, let alone as "evil"--they know that it's a necessary
> element of capitalism and will go when capitalism goes, neigher earlier nor
> later.
>
> Maybe you should study people before you judge them.
>
> Best regards
>        Christian
>
> --
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