[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Kevin Carson]

> I think it is high time to separate the term artificial scarcity from
> abundance.  Abundance is about capacity.  Artificial scarcity isn't.  I
> think there is no coherent view of what artificial scarcity is or what it
> would look like in practice in a modern society.  Increasingly I am of a
> mind that "artificial scarcity" is a nonsensical term.  It sounds like it
> means someone is blocking abundance.  That isn't what it means.  It means
> someone is taking abundance.  Those are two very different ideas.

Artificial scarcity is a way of controlling the *use* of capacity and
determining who profits from it.  In that sense, it is directly (and
inversely) related to abundance:  it is a secondary constraint on the
ability to take advantage of abundance.  It enables the owners of
artificial property rights to capitalize the efficiency gains and cost
savings from abundance and collect them as rents for themselves,
rather than allowing the market to pass them on to consumers.  It
imposes artificial costs where they would not otherwise exist, and
thereby neutralizes the competitive advantages resulting from
abundance.

Blocking abundance and taking abundance are two sides of  the same
coin:  blocking or controlling access to the benefits of abundance is
prerequisite to taking rents from it.  By way of analogy, artificial
appropriation of vacant land is necessary to *block* independent
access to it, before privileged landlords can *take* rents from those
forced to access it on their terms.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html