[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Ryan Lanham]

On 2/3/10, Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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.



It is a good discussion point and I think an important one.  In law, there
is great importance given to precident.  Precident is a social rule we can
follow.  They can certainly change--there was a precident for states to have
the capacity to punish with death.  Some nations have made that impossible
as a fundamental rights issue.  Times can indeed change.

But there is precident in most societies for the right to own property.
There are also precidents for organized "takings" usually in real property
law but also in intellectual property law...vaccines or medical discoveries
are the classic example in IP.  If you owned the way to cure cancer and
would not share, it would be appropriate for society to take it from
you.  However, takings assumes property rights.

Artificial scarcity seems to deny property rights to ideas.   CC3 and Lessig
have always been clear that they want to preserve and protect rights.
Artificial scarcity suggests that anything blocking the right of access is
"artificial."  If so, bike locks are "artificial" too.

In my view, the best system from where we sit is one where more and more
rights are entered into a commons.

There are several entities I have not seen:

1. An organization that raises money to buy property rights of ideas and put
them into a commons much like a land trust can do.  A manufacturing system
that builds open items should own a commons trust of patterns for the
distributed foundry "members" of the commons.

2. A commons that solicits donations from those who hold IP just as a
college or charity solicits the gift of estates from affiliates.  For
example, where is the P2P commons entity that offers someone a license
annuity for their IP while they grow old on the basis that the underlying IP
becomes part of the commons when they die?  That's a no brainer.  It has
been part of civil society management for a generation or more.  I see it
nowhere in commons entities...or nowhere prominent.

My preferred model is Wikipedia raising money to buy Britannica and then
giving it away.  To my mind, Google comes close to this by selling
advertising.  Bill Gates is effectively doing it by converting Microsoft
wealth into vaccine discoveries.  Others do it by giving stock to Harvard or
Johns Hopkins for medical discoveries.  Sure, they get intangible benefits,
but so what?  There is precident for those and there is no compelling reason
to take them away.

We can go round and round whether the little old lady gets her soap operas
for free on the television.  She thinks she does.  She is compelled by the
deal.  To here, the airways are a commons accessible by the purchase of a
set of rabbit ears and a set.  So much so that when the "free" airways were
about to go away with digital broadcast, there was a huge groundswell that
forced protection.  People are similarly motivated for land trusts.  Commons
ought to be international trusts.  It isn't rocket science to get people to
think a new way.  To theorize about taking their property rights away
is simply going to antagonize interests and make P2P a fringe force.
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