[p2p-research] Revisiting The Replicator Analogy: How Infinite Goods Create More Jobs

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Ryan wrote:
>  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Revisiting The Replicator
> Analogy: How Infinite Goods Create More Jobs via Techdirt by Michael
> Masnick on 9/11/09
> Recently, in writing about a DRM scheme, I used the analogy of the Star
> Trek food replicator to explain why it made no sense to turn infinite
> goods, like content, into artificially scarce goods. There was a lot of
> back and forth in the comments about the appropriateness of the
> analogy, though I still think the basic point stands: it makes no sense
> to artificially limit an infinitely available resource. In fact, it
> only leads to bad things. However, one of our readers has written up a
> fantastic blog post where he tries to present a similar, but much, much
> better analogy: A better analogy would be if the replicator only made
> tomatoes. You could have as many tomatoes as you wanted, they'd always
> be perfect and delicious, and they'd always be free. This would put
> tomato farmers out of business. But these tomato farmers could likely
> start growing something else instead. And what happens to the rest of
> the economy? Pizza and pasta restaurants suddenly find that a major
> ingredient in many of their dishes just became free. Now, for the same
> dish, they can charge less, or buy higher quality ingredients, or make
> more profit. And if you're a really talented cook specializing in
> tomatoes? Your skills are now in very high demand.

Well, even in this one example, it fails. If I had an infinite supply of 
free tomatoes, I could burn them to produce power really cheaply (assuming 
no net environmental effects). With cheap power, everything else gets cheap 
(or at least much cheaper) too.

Besides, why posit something so absurd. If tomatoes are free, one might 
expect every other biological item to be free. So, you could grow trees in 
the shape of furniture like chairs and tables. Or you could produce most 
medicines for free.

So, it's a bad analogy in the long term, even if in the short term there is 
some truth to it.

The deeper issue is that tomatoes have a lot of "rents" built in to them. 
There is the rent for the land to grow them on. There is the rent for the 
hybrid seeds. The rent for the land for the oil to transport them. And so 
on. Basically, all costs are either rent or labor. When you start 
eliminating the rents, then you eventually create a system where people can 
choose how to use their own labor to their own ends, rather than being 
forced to work for others serving them because everything is so expensive 
because so much goes to rent and gets concentrated in 1% or less of society 
who "owns" the properties or other capital that claims the rent.

 > This is what's happening in the music industry, and starting to happen
 > in the publishing industry. Some parts of the industries are finding
 > their functions obsolete. Instead of looking at the money they could
 > save with electronic distribution, and what good use they could put
 > that money to, the industry is seeking new laws and regulations to
 > limit the infinite supply so business can continue as usual.
 >
 > Even if every single song, book, and movie was distributed digitally
 > for free, there would still be a need for the music, publishing, and
 > movie industries. There would still be demand for editors, producers,
 > marketers, and all sorts of other services that these industries have
 > always provided.

How does this person explain the success of Youtube or blogs? Or Debian 
GNU/Linux.

The fact is, once technology as an amplifier has gotten to the point where 
one person can maintain the content or infrastructure for millions of 
people, then one can find that one person out of a million who likes to do 
that for some reason.

Now, I'm not saying that one person out of a million does not need an income 
in our society to survive; they may well need an income. But we need to 
distinguish between an income that *enables* a person to do what they love, 
and an income that *rewards* a person for doing something they'd rather not 
be doing. So, we need to move beyond a society that needs to *bribe* someone 
to do things they don't want to do when they'd like to be doing something 
else, like taking care of their young child, sitting with a dying parent, 
growing tomatoes in their garden, contemplating nature or the infinite, 
playing the piano, or whatever -- all activities that in other ways are 
valuable, if frequently not valued directly by the marketplace.

What the media industry is doing is riding down the history of dominating 
the media channels. If they did not have that history of domination, people 
would be mostly ignoring them even now.

 > Reasonable people aren't calling for the abolition of the music,
 > publishing, and movie industries.

Sure they are. :-) Or at least, many are for abolishing copyrights longer 
than a few years, which is much the same thing, eliminating those industries 
as we know them, even if people will always make music, writings, and 
movies. Besides, much of those industries as far as money are about control 
of distribution rights, not about making stuff. Almost all musicians, 
writers, and visual artists do not get paid anything significant for their 
work in those fields -- probably less that 1% of people who do any of that 
make a living at it. Why organize a society around the needs of 1% of people 
who do an activity? 99% of creative people would benefit by the end of 
strong copyrights in terms of having more material to draw from and mixup 
and mash together and build on.

 > They're just asking these industries
 > to look to the future, and stop trying to limit supply to protect
 > obsolete business models.

Again, no, they are asking to end artificial scarcity and rent seeking.

 > Read that over a few times. It's about the
 > best description/analogy of what we've been trying to say here that
 > I've ever heard.

Doesn't work for me. :-)

As Kevin said, jobs are a means to an end. A basic income makes more sense 
if people are (rightfully) worried they will starve if the market (and rent 
seeking) leaves them behind. Hmmm... I wonder if another approach to a basic 
income would be to say that one-half of all rent should go to taxes then 
redistributed as a basic income?

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