[p2p-research] User Freedom and the Purpose of Profit

[Patrick Anderson]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> It is not necessarily a good thing for people to invest.  The first
> question is, what sort of investments make the world better, and which
> make it worse?
> 

Traditional investors are paid the difference between what the end-user 
pays, and the real costs of that production.

Treating profit in this way incents the extremely dangerous behavior we 
see corporations exhibit as they try to destroy all competitors and even 
limit the functionality of their own devices to increase scarcity - for 
profit *requires* scarcity, and cannot withstand abundance.



A better kind of investor is paid in product when he, as a future 
end-user, invests for the purpose of "at cost" product.

We can organize users this way to "pre pay" for the goods and services 
they need, but in this case they, the users become full property owners 
of the physical sources of that production.

One strange side-effect of users being the full property owners of the 
physical sources required for the production they need is that they no 
longer pay profit!

But any new user that does not yet have sufficient ownership will be 
left to the mercy of those current owners.

So, in order to perpetuate the freedom that comes from ownership the 
physical sources your body requires, we must treat that overpayment 
(profit) as though that new user were making an investment.

We will handle price above cost as the plea for growth that it is - and 
so invest it *for* the one who paid it, the user.

By doing so, we turn profit against excessive accumulation for the few, 
and toward sufficient accumulation for the each.


Patrick Anderson
Social Sufficiency Coalition
http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com