[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Ryan Lanham]

On 2/4/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Example one,
>
> nature is in many ways naturally abundant, for example through annual
> cycles of growth; biodiversity etc..
>
> if you introduce terminator seeds, you destroy this ability for nature to
> regenerate itself
>


Nature doesn't invest billions in making terminator seeds.  It expects no
return on investment.  R&D doesn't occur out of the goodness of hearts, much
as I wish it would.  Even universities funded by the public sell their ideas
to the highest bidder.  You can disagree with this, but it isn't artificial
scarcity.  It is protection of investment.  That isn't just semantics.  It's
the law.  By all means, dislike the law.  Work to change it.  But let's not
pretend this is not the choice of most people.

Further, it might be protective.  If there is a problem with GMOs, then
terminator seeds might well limit the damage.  I've read a great deal of the
anti-GMO lit.  So far I find little of it compelling in any way.  It again
strikes me as zealotry.  But that is an easy critique of anything where
people express passion.  As a relatively neutral observer, I am so far
underwhelmed by the anti-GMO arguments.  I see nothing wrong at all with
terminator seeds.  I find lots on both sides of the argument.  Just a couple
of days ago...Inhabitat ran a very pro-GMO article on shelf-life of
vegetables...hardly a centrist or right wing organization.  I see these
fairly regularly amongst sites I'd characterize as being open/fair.



> Example two
>
> digital media can be inherently shared and reproduced; and any individual
> has the right to share what he has purchased ... any technology which
> artificially destroys this possibility of sharing destroys this abundance
>


Again, this is the simple issue of taking.  Someone invested in gaining
skills to make a programme, a picture, a book.  Just because it is easy to
steal it doesn't make it right.  Abundance is capacity--the capacity to
share.  It is up to the property owner whether they wish to share.  No one
can be compelled.  I dislike litmus tests as much as the next person, but
there is a simple P2P litmus test: Can someone be compelled to share their
ideas?  If they can, I am against it and would fight it for all I'm worth.
Capacity isn't the right to take.  It is the power to share.  If the item
had no value of creation, people wouldn't want it.  Clearly someone made
value.  It is up to them to share it.  It is not up to the consumer to take
it because they can.  Put any name on it you want.  The politics and the law
are plain.  Do I have a right of ownership of an idea.  If you say no, I am
against you.

>
>
> Example three
>
> Medicines are available which could save millions of live, if they could be
> produced at the price of production plus profit, but they are sold at 1,000
> times this price, thereby condemning people to death
>
>

The question is, how to create incentives for R&D when no one gains.  I
agree that people acting in pro-social ways is a pure good, but it is not
our social model.  Indeed that social model has failed over and over again.
I live less than 150 miles from where it fails miserably every day in Cuba.
Regularly people try to sail away from it to here in little dangerous pieces
of boat and flotsam because they hate it so much.  They must literally be
imprisoned and blocked from what they can say and how they can say it, who
they can vote for, so that authorities may keep them from overthrowing the
whole thing.



> These are three examples of artificial scarcity that have very serious
> negative effects
>

These are negative externalities of markets in my lingo.  They need to be
dealt with just like pollution and other forms of negative
externalities.  It doesn't create the right to take someone's property
unless the states in charge find compelling reason to do so.

Was it an artificial scarcity for communism to block markets from
producing enough food for people in China, Russia...causing deaths of
millions.  What could be more artificial than blocking someone from
profiting on their labour?

VOLUNTARY!  non-coerced.  Commons cannot exist through corcion.  You cannot
be forced to share.  It is the bright line test.

It is fundamental that states have legitimacy--from the Latin lex/legus just
as law is.  That legitimacy comes from the rights of governed.  That the
governed have due processes for changing rules.

I have said here for 2 years that it all comes back to governance.  If you
do not have a theory of governance, then anarchy becomes a real alternative
where Somalia is defended and absurdity is the norm.
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