[p2p-research] Repurposing Profit for User Freedom

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/5/10, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> It is failing, because it can no longer protect its monopolies, because the
> new technology does not really allow the tight control on information flows
> and copying that it could rely on to do this; Buffet said it himself very
> clearly: free competition kills profits, so the game of capital is to create
> temporary monopolies (in theory), and in practice, permanent  or very long
> lasting monopolies, with each industrial sector, through incessant mergers
> and acquisitions, converging on 2-3 dominant players; the concentration of
> capital has been extraordinarily intensive since the 80s

Exactly.  I agree with Ryan that IP is being destroyed by economic
developments, but unlike Ryan I believe the most important economic
development destroying IP is not competition that's formally legal,
but rather competition from technological capabilities that violate
the law or render it unenforceable.

The simple fact of the matter is that, as Cory Doctorow says, a
computer is a machine for copying bits.  And a business model based on
the criminalization of copying bits will fail.

-- 
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