[plug] Linux Enthusiasm - Are we over the top?

[The Thought Assassin]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, sol wrote:
> Technology is not benign. It is the driving force behind social change.
> (For a good read on this concept get "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared
> Diamond)

Great book.

> Capitalism and Socialism were ideologies both based on
> industrialism which came about largely due to the internal combustion
> engine and later the generation of electricity. Many would argue that
> computer technology - and significantly networking technology - are
> transforming the nature of work and recreation and leading to new ways
> of conceiving the world.

The parallels here are startling, let me delineate them:

A) Scarcity of Land <-> Slavery

Once apon a time, the only assets that one could use to produce goods and
services were land and human labour. (also animal labour, but keeping
animals basically came down to land) Everyone had human labour, and it
couldn't, as a rule, be taken away from them. There was only so much land,
and more could not be created. This scarcity of land meant that only
landowners had the means for efficient production, and those who only had
their labour to offer had to basically indenture themselves to those who
had. Slavery and the feudal system were the custom of the day.

Then more land was discovered, (apologies for the Eurocentrism of this
analogy, I know too little of other political histories) and land was no
longer so scarce. Initially, all this new land was owned by the ruling
class, but by and large, they had enough land, and didn't really use the
new land effectively. Eventually, it was realised that the slaves, the
serfs, the peasants had the motivation to work and innovate so as to get
the best possible use out of the land. Freeholders were endowed with land
in the New World(s) and created thriving economies through their hard
graft, spurred on by their desire for self-determination.

B) Scarcity of Machines <-> Socialism

Eventually, forms of capital (in the means-of-production sense) were
invented that could be _created_ and _built_ rather than found. Naturally,
the only people in a position to create these forms of capital were those
who were already wealthy. As before, the scarcity (read cost of
production) of these items made them a lever that the strong could use to
increase the gap between themselves and the weak. (who, in order to work
efficiently/competitively, must leash themselves to their masters'
machines, having no machines of their own) This led to serious inequity in
society, and so to the devising of socialism, an economic theory where the
ownership of capital is centralised so that no single man holds much power
or influence, thereby spreading the wealth more fairly amongst citizens.

Socialism worked with varying degrees of success until once again, capital
became a whole lot scarce than before. Technology has improved to the
point where the ownership of capital is within reach of just about
everyone, and a centralised system is no longer able to act efficiently at
the local level. Socialism has become obselescent, and we have discovered
that capitalism - letting people own their own capital and decide what to
do with it to maximise their own productivity - works much better in the
absence of such severe scarcity.

C) Scarcity of Information <-> Copyright

Another form of capital is information. Its worth has increased
continuously since the dawn of humanity. The initial production of
information can be done by anyone, generally with no need for capital
resources. Most information, however, only becomes valuable when it is
communicated/duplicated. Originally, the duplication/communication (call
it copying) of ideas was very labour-intensive, so information was scarce,
but could be copied by anyone. Then the printing press arrived. This
allowed information to be copied very easily and inexpensively, but only
by those who could afford tremendously expensive machinery. This meant
that information was no longer so scarce, so the people _creating_ the
information/ideas were no longer rewarded as much for it. The rewards
started flowing to those who had the capital to _copy_ the information.
Because we still needed ideas to be created, but those creating ideas
could no longer profit from them as they did before, a form of socialism
called copyright was invented to give control over the printing presses to
the "workers" whose labour created the ideas.

Now copying is no longer difficult or expensive. In fact, the cost of
copying is fast approaching zero. Copyright, a system devised to manage
the equity problems of scarce copying, (by preventing those who could from
just doing so however they wished) is now the only thing making copying
expensive/scarce. Copyright has become an inefficient millstone impeding
progress, just like feudalism/slavery and socialism before it. In fact, it
has become a means by which the publishers (who've built businesses around
working with the restrictions of copyright) can prevent competition from
those new to the game. Computing and information technology is where we
notice the problems with copyright the most, because it is where copying
is the easiest, (the reason d'etre for the entire industry, in fact) and
the most essential. (for reasons of compatibility) That's why Free
Software has popped up as a solution, while other information industries
(patents, literature, music, film, etc) are still struggling to find ways
to let the capital-poor use the newfound lack of scarcity to compete with
the established capital-rich players.

It seems fairly certain that eventually, copyright will go the same way as
it predecessors, slavery and socialism, but we are in the exciting
position of being the people through which the change will brought about,
and we can have a strong influence on how and when it comes.

-Greg