[p2p-research] open-source gadgets have the best chance in markets where the technology has matured to the point that it is commonplace.

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/18/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yep.  Been saying that on this list more than a couple of years.  Exactly.
> The problem with capitalism right now is that there are no expectations of
> long term cash flows.  That dries up credit.  When credit dries up, the
> system stops. We are slowing again right now...you can watch it in the
> financial pages.  Capitalism is dying.  It won't "die" for decades, but the
> changes are not far too obvious to be reversed unless some unforeseen
> prospect of huge technology innovation (equivalent to the age of
> microcomputers) is around the corner.  It isn't.  Stem cells and nanotech
> are huge, but they aren't game changing.

In any case, such a new technology could only save capitalism if it
were possible to capitalize the increased productivity as a source of
rents.  The whole idea of cognitive capitalism was to capitalize
"intellect" as a source of rent, but that's hit the wall of the
growing unenforceability of "intellectual property."

Never mind Linux; Windows' real competitor is web-based and
browser-based software.  And although Google has been able to
capitalize on that as a source of revenue stream, it will probably be
far smaller than the revenue stream it's destroying.  Traditional
encyclopedias had their revenues decimated by Encarta, which in turn
was destroyed by Wikipedia.  File-sharing is seriously hurting
recording industry profit margins, and ditto aggregators the dead tree
newspapers.

It's plausible that the much smaller pie might still be sufficient to
support actual reporters, recording artists, etc., if it were all
equitably distributed among the producers and none of it went to the
record companies or media conglomerates.  But that's not exactly
capitalism, is it?

I think the most exciting forms of new physical production, like
micromanufacturing, will have a similar effect on revenue streams.
Patents are a lot more costly and unprofitable to enforce, the smaller
the batch size and market become.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html