The Economist On The Economics of Sharing 345
RCulpepper writes "The Economist, reliably the most insightful English-language news publication, discusses the economics of sharing, from OSS programmers' sharing time, to P2P users' sharing disk space and bandwidth. " True indeed (about The Economist, I have to remember to renew my subscription); one of the main supports for the article comes from Yochai Benkler latest piece, which is excellent.
Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
and
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Folks,
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Funny)
Exactly! Its more like Fox news...
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Funny)
Or what Fox would be like if, instead of being run by right-wingers from top to bottom, they switched positions every fifteen minutes: first have the news as reported by a fascist, then by a communist, then by an anarchist, then by a Randroid, then by a monarchist
Re:Sure... (Score:2)
Hrmmm, let's see Slashdot is an organization and it's primary purpose appears to be reporting news so that the raving hordes have something to gab about. So I don't see why they can't meet minimal standards of conduct and drop the personal notes.
Cognitive dissonance much? (Score:2, Funny)
"News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"
One of those is incorrect. Plz fix, kthx, bye.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true, the editors are not obligated to remove anything. Or for that matter, check for non-dupes, etc.
BUT... One primary reason of slashdot's success is the high signal to noise ratio. Articles are posted that consistently reach a cohesive demographic. Moderation and Meta-Moderation provide methods of locating user comments which have the highest likelyhood of consisting of signal, and not noise.
That being said, I believe the point of the parent post is that we don't care if the editor needs to renew his subscription. We want signal, not noise, and are merely providing feedback to help promote that practice.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have read the Economist and don't realize how important free markets and trade are to them, then there is no hammer big enough to hit you over the head with.
I always think it is a shame that this county (US) doesn't have a party that thinks like the Economist. Bush might like to claim this philosphy, but his strain of Republicanism is to concerned about what you do in the bedroom to fit this model.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fiscal conservitives are sticking with the Republican party out of inertia. They should either kick the bible-thumpers out, or jump ship themselves and start a new party under the banner of fiscal responsibility. Shrub and his borrow-and-spend killed whatever lingering illusion that the Republican party represents fiscal conservitives and smaller government.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sure... (Score:2)
Personally, I like hearing the editor's opinions once in a while.
Thoughts on sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Most open source projects revolve around a core of developers with the odd donation of time and code from users who extend the code to suit their needs. Ditto with most P2P networks, most casual users are happy to leach whilst most of the bandwidth is provided by hardcore users. Perhaps the exception to this is Bittorrent where users are more inclinded to share fairly.
There is a word for this (Score:5, Insightful)
For a lot of open source project's and P2P networks it's not the case that developers and users are really sharing fairly.
Most open source projects revolve around a core of developers with the odd donation of time and code from users who extend the code to suit their needs. Ditto with most P2P networks, most casual users are happy to leach whilst most of the bandwidth is provided by hardcore users. Perhaps the exception to this is Bittorrent where users are more inclinded to share fairly.
It's not greed, since it's about sharing.
I don't know what to call it, fear of leeching or something?
To sum it up: When you share, if you constantly think about if everybody else is sharing as much as you, you'll end up not sharing.
Period.
When you share, you share.
If people leech, don't bother.
If they spam or hog resources, limit the resources with technical solutions, but you still don't bother.
This is the truth of sharing. The more you give, the more you get. Karma is absolute truth, but you don't give a damn about it. If you do, you get in trouble. If you analyse it all, you will stop the process itself.
So what if you share more than the next guy for some times? If you think about it, worrying about who is on top is really capitalism.
Strange thought, huh?
If you happen to have more / willing to share more, for some time, then just think what an opportunity!
Nice Advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
Sharing of information has proven very beneficial in science and there is no mention of this in the article. You'd think that this would be one of the first things that would come to mind when one thinks about innovation in ideas.
Re:Nice Advertisement (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to bash science, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, there's always the potential "loss" of the credit for other discoveries based on that knowledge. Think Rosalind Franklin and the discovery of DNA; "competitors" saw her crucial photograph and some unpublished work, and she's never really gotten some credit she deserved. Even when you're formally releasing whatever information you have, by publishing it, there's a certain loss in that sense -- of control, or something close to it.
The scientific me
Re:Nice Advertisement (Score:4, Interesting)
Only when Science interfaces with Technology, patent laws turn it into a rivalous good...and the sharing stops. I'm not sure, e.g., that the current efforts to coerce the pharmacuetical companies to report all their trials and results will be successful. If it is, it will continuously require force and oversight, and bribery scadals, because that information has been turned into a rivalous good by the legal system.
I'm just waiting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pre-emptive strike: when The Economist, which is the leading voice of center-right journalism, speaks favorably of F/OSS, it's time to drop the "communism" line and come up with something else, folks.
Communism != Socialism (Score:2)
The US government slapped such a negative connotation to the word "communist" during the Cold War, a connotation that belongs to "socialist". Not one of the countries we were against during the cold war was e
free software != "good" communism (Score:2)
Are we to take your word for it that communism will work if given the proper setting, when all previous attempts to achieve communism failed? By definition [marxists.org], communism does not allow for capitalism to coexist with it. You can have one, but not the other. To call the Internet "the new communism" is to portray the term "communism" as something other than i
Re:Communism != Socialism (Score:3, Interesting)
First, Communism is a form of Capitalism. The reason this probably sounds strange to the average person is because they have stopped thinking of Free Market Capitalism as a form of Capitalism, and think of it as the ONLY form.
Communism is State Capitalism. An economy of administrators and workers, hierarchical, with central control
Re:I'm just waiting ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Journalism started to die off in great masses of professionals in the early 1990s. Today, I can hardly use the term "journalism" since that thing is essentially dead. Many important stories are simply ignored for purely political reasons by men who should know better. And another fat slice of the population finds itself being spoon-fed intellectual
re: I'm just waiting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm just waiting ... (Score:2)
No, I really don't think I did -- and I say this as a pretty solid leftie myself. The Economist's biases are plain in their writing, but they're more hyper-capitalist than "far right" in the sense I think that term is usually defined. Note that they've written favorably not only of F/OSS but also of other such "liberal" causes as drug legalization, and have (finally) started to look skeptically on Bush's foreign adventurism. Generally, they favor whatever they think will be good f
Re:I'm just waiting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
While, I agree that The Economist is generally 'pro-capitalist', I would not call them pro-business, but rather pro-competition; a distinction most people miss. Most businesses, ironically enough, dislike competition and are therefore anti-capitalists.
PCB
Re:I'm just waiting ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think business (aka capitalist) are pro-competition about the things they have to pay (raw materials, services they use) but dislike competition in the product or service the business provides.
They are different kinds of sharing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying it would be easy, but imagine if...
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:2)
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for security, unless every single thing is bolted down, your office will suddenly need a much larger budget to replace disappearing paper, pens, coffee, computer parts and the like. And considering that a typical PC is completely vulnerable to physical access attacks - would you feel comfortable typing anything secure on a keyboard in an office that is lived in by unknown non-company-employees?
I am not saying that your idea is impossible - however, it will not be easy to implement, especially in a way that office occupants find agreeable.
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes there is extra space, but the cost to get homeless people there, maintain the building, ensure those people do not do things that would disrupt during business hours, is quite high. The same reason there is excess food, yet people starve. The cost to get the food to the starving people becomes prohibitive in some areas.
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:2)
Re:Imagine a different kind of sharing... (Score:2)
Academic Discounts (Score:5, Informative)
WooHoo!
Re:Academic Discounts (Score:2)
How to do it (tm) (Score:4, Insightful)
The Economist is more time-draining than Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a very interesting magazine though if you can find the time to commit to it.
I wish! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I wish! (Score:2)
Sorry, I can't shed tears for ya.
The True Economics of OSS (Score:5, Interesting)
The analogy runs as follows. Suppose that a street has a bunch of bun vendors and a bunch of people who sell sausages to put in the buns (wow, talk about decoupled designs). People might be willing to spend $1.50 for a bun plus a sausage - nominally $1 for the sausage and $0.50 for the bun.
Now, suppose that someone in the sausage industry comes up with a way of "open-sourcing" buns - now buns are free! This happening, you've got a bunch of customers wandering around buying sausages with an extra $0.50 in their pockets. They were clearly willing to spend more on the sausage+bun combination, so maybe you can jack up your price to $1.10 or $1.20 (very unlikely you'll be able to go to $1.50).
Of course, like all simplistic analogies, this depends on a lot of assumptions. For instance, we
expect that the customer won't go off and buy something new (a 50 cent Coke, maybe).
Now, think about companies that have major OSS support. The best example is IBM - which makes its money of hardware and services. Are they the sausage vendors in this case?
I don't know if this is nonsense, but it's an interesting theory. If anyone has a good counter-argument, let's hear it. If anyone has a silly pun about "open-saucing" hot dogs, well, remember that I'm a computer scientist and can generate an enormous static charge from your keyboard to Get You.
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
OSS can artificially manufacture more wealth in the long-term, much like the stock-market does.
Think of using (and in turn contributing back to) OSS tools like getting free hammers and nails so long as you help improve the design of hammers, nails, and other industry standard tools you use for free. Within the context of using those tools to build things, general practitioners are going to come up with gripes and improvements. I thin
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:2)
I think the analogy isn't quite accurate. First, the wealth creation is "natural" (ie, by this I mean that wealth is created by improving the real value of stuff). Ie, many OSS groups are building tools that people use and increasing the value of those peoples' labor and services. Stock markets provide a more efficient means of matching people with available capital to those who need that capital to build stuff
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:2)
Poor choice of the word "artificial" on my part.
I believe OSS can manufacture wealth in the manner you describe - by making the delivery of services and products a more productive activity through smarter/better/more effective tools.
I guess why I used artificial is it seems counter-intuitive until you realize the gains possible. You're giving your employees' productivity away, but in the end, if everyone is doing that, all projects start off closer to completion because of the va
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:4, Funny)
Are you saying you're a real hot-dog programmer?
Re:The True Economics of OSS (Score:3, Funny)
1) Communist Solution.
The government owns all bun and all the sausages, so you use it as a bribe officials to escape black-marketing charges.
2) Socialist Solution.
The government take it off you by way of increased taxation to pay social security to the unemployed bun vendors.
3) Capitalist Solution
The now unemployed bun vendors become sausage vendors, thereby increasing the supply so that you now get 2 for the price of 1 and die an early death from obesity related di
Problem of cost/return (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop editorializing article summaries, please. (Score:2, Insightful)
Gee, what an unbiased way to present an article for discussion.
True indeed
Coming to a conclusion in an article summary stifles discussion. Stop doing that.
Don't worry (Score:3, Funny)
This would only be a problem if everyone RTFA. However, as that is rarely a problem, there is nothing to worry about.
Name-dropping for fun and profit (and showing off) (Score:2)
Different motivations for sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
It should also be noted that not all sharing is good. [go.com]
That works until.... (Score:5, Funny)
This works untiol SCO shows up and claims ownership of the lentils found in every bowl served, and demands that each soup-eater pay them $699.
Re:Different motivations for sharing (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea behind that story was that everyone had enough to survive, but nobody had enough variety to make anything good. When they all threw it into the same pot, they still had plenty of food, but now it tasted better. No more food, no less food, just better food.
Fortunately for Linux, there's plenty of "soup" to go around. Our bowl can be indefinitely reple
Historical note (Score:3, Interesting)
In the days before canning armies would starve when on the move, unless they could steal food from villages that they passed. If they did, the villagers would starve.
So, three soldiers show up in a village... of course the villagers don't know that there are only three, and they don't know that they CAN'T just steal all their food. So they pretend that they've already been robbed, and don't have any left. The stone soup is a con game to allow people to safely contribute without being
Re:Different motivations for sharing (Score:2)
Have to agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Article about nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, here are my 0.02:
Why is sharing important:
It breaks down traditional corporate moloch, it teaches that anarchy-like goal-driven structures are perfectly viable and can outperform hierarchical companies.
It teaches that inforamation must be free (both as beer and as freedom), if it isnt, there will always be ways to free it.
It practicaly demonstrates that acting selfish is not way to go (try throttling bt upload to 1kb/s, see results
All in all, its kind of hippie like philosophy crossed with viable economy (thats not based around money, but around ideas).
Re:Article about nothing (Score:3, Informative)
If you read the article it describes that people are acting their own self interest. Donation of time and intellectual resources are not purely charitable, people do them for personal gain (fame and recognition by peers, experience that increases their value in paying jobs, and enjoyment)
"The reason often seems to be that writing ope
Re:Article about nothing (Score:2)
Well if an empoyer asks "Can you do X," not only can you explain how to do it, you have an actual implementation of that skill to point to source code and all. It's not necessarily just what comes up in a job application, its the new skills developed overall.
Plus it does not explain why people share THAT much - it not about tangible resources (average filesharer uses most of his bw fo
The economies of sharing V1.0 (Score:5, Funny)
V1.0 - I have axe, you have club, therefore you share everything with me.
V2.0 - I am the government, therefore you share part of everything with me and I decide who to share with.
V3.0 - I have fileserver, you have connection, therefore I share everyone else's stuff with you whether they gave me permission or not.
V4.0 - I have everything you have. You have everything I have. Everyone has shared everything. Life is meaningless.
Just let me know... (Score:4, Funny)
Here, you can borrow mine...
Article Quote.... (Score:2)
Step carefull around the ravenous wolves.
Insubstantial (Score:2, Insightful)
The author barely even mentions what Open Source is, does not analyse the reasons for Open Source, and gives two-three obvious explanations. Then he attempts to compare Open Source programming with file sharing and SETI@Home. It is wrong to compare these two examples since they're based on unused resources. Spare time is not an unused resource.
They're only just now getting it? (Score:3, Funny)
In Reference to Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, the "shareable good" involved is
the time, education, and effort of the users who participate. It is combined
with a public good--existing information--to form what is also itself a
public good--a topical news and commentary source.
The question tho' is whether the employers of many
I am not opposed to the OSS model but I would like to see more analysis of its true economic cost as I was always taught "there is no such thing as a free lunch." The fact that it does seem to produce a superior product is all the more reason to better understand its true costs.
Professor Benkler's 10/22/2004 article is a good read. Thanks for posting a reference to it.
Hopefully this was worth more than $.02
Free Open Source is Programmers "best interest" (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of programmers and open source, it is easy to explain. By taking control of the programming environment (i.e. by developing open source operating systems), the software community is organizing to expand their productivity in a way that the corporate environment has always refused to do.
Companies have always routinely forced programmers to adopt the tools and software language that the companies aquire at the least cost. The efficency of the programmer's skills has always been a secondary consideration.
For example, a programmer spends five years mastering C++. Then the company they work for goes bankrupt. In the next job, that company uses Z-- as the development language. The new company judges the programmer to be second rate until they have mastered this new language.
After forty years of having to learn arbitrary new software development systems and tools, the software development community has said, "Enough!". "Now, we will develop the software envirnment, languages, and OS. And you will use it. And it will be free so you can't use the argument that it would cost too much to implement".
They have had to do this in their own best self interest because companies will always be changing the software development environment when this environment is bought and sold as a product.
Everyone originally went to Microsoft because they promised standardization at an acceptable cost. But that is no longer the case in a global network.
For The Economist to claim that the software developers of open source are not acting in their best lnng-run interest is naive of them.
OSS is in our best interest (Score:3, Interesting)
In the case of programmers and open source, it is easy to explain. By taking control of the programming environment (i.e. by developing open source operating systems), the software community is organizing to expand their productivity in a way that the corporate environment has always refused to do.
Companies have always routinely forced programmers to adopt the tools and software language that the companies acquire at the least cost. The efficiency of the programmer's skills has always been a secondary consideration.
For example, a programmer spends five years mastering C++. Then the company they work for goes bankrupt. In the next job, that company uses Z-- as the development language. The new company judges the programmer to be second rate until they have mastered this new language.
After forty years of having to learn arbitrary new software development systems and tools, the software development community has said, "Enough!". "Now, we will develop the software environment, languages, and OS. And you will use it. And it will be free so you can't use the argument that it would cost too much to implement".
They have had to do this in their own best self interest because companies will always be changing the software development environment when this environment is bought and sold as a product.
Everyone originally went to Microsoft because they promised standardization at an acceptable cost. But that is no longer the case in a global network.
For The Economist to claim that the software developers of open source are not acting in their best long-run interest is naive of them.
Economist is better than the rest... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the only language is English, and you have any ability at all to filter editorial statements out of news stories, you should subscribe to the economist -- and I say this even though I am a registered pinko commie bastard.
Re:Economist is better than the rest... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Economist is better than the rest... (Score:2, Funny)
Ah, an open source developer
Re:The rest are just worse. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The rest are just worse. (Score:2)
Re:The rest are just worse. (Score:4, Insightful)
For most of the people doing reviewing, the Economist is really very fair and reasonable in its reporting.
Is it possible you are just politically marginalized, and that your views differ significantly from the rest of ours?
Is there a publication you recommend? That isn't filled with lunatic fringe ravings? Seriously, I would like to try it.
Re:The rest are just worse. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:in-crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in-crowd (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:in-crowd (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that you probably haven't really read too much of it.
Re:in-crowd (Score:2, Insightful)
Liberal, actually (Score:5, Insightful)
After many years of reading the Economist, I agree with their self-assessment.
Having said that, I've never been comfortable with the 1-dimensional right/left political categorizations. People and politics are far more complicated than that.
Re:Liberal, actually (Score:2)
Liberals and freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
Later, that became associated with fighting for other sorts of freedom, such as civil rights for minority groups.
The association of "liberal" with "poor and minority groups" has led the term somewhat away from its original meaning. Over time, it's become associated with improving the lot of poor people even where they're not activily being oppressed but merely poor: welfare, medical care, affirmative action, etc.
Liberals argue that the causes of poverty are side-effects of less obvious rights violations by rich people and companies. They'd argue that a company which employs many people in a town has an obligation to those people to continue to employ them, even when that factory is no longer profitable. That obligation by the company is the right of the people.
I wouldn't say that the Economist is "all for" corporate tyranny. They'd say that a factory which isn't profitable cannot employ those workers because there simply is no money to pay them. That strikes them as simple level-headedness: you cannot pay workers from nonexistent money.
But they do hold the company responsible for its non-economic externalities. If the company is dumping cadmium into the water and poisoning those workers, even if it's proftable for the company it is wrong to do so. Simple economics will not prevent that, so they recommend well-chosen and well-enforced government regulation.
I often find myself disagreeing with them. Their notion of free-market capitalism often assumes frictionless changes that are untrue. If a company moves a factory from Flint, Michigan to Bangladesh, yes, I suppose it does improve the US economy by allowing Americans to purchase the goods more cheaply, thus freeing up their capital for investment in other things.
But the people of Flint, Michigan don't realize those improvements directly; they don't immediately acquire programming skills and move to San Francisco to get better jobs. Nor do they disappear. Even if the simple "invisble hand" argument works for the good of the country as a whole, it can cause vicious harm in microeconomic terms, and those are externalities which shouldn't be ignored.
Re:Liberals and freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
"[Liberals would] argue that a company which employs many people in a town has an obligation to those people to continue to employ them, even when that factory is no longer profitable."
Some "liberals" might, especially communistic/collectivists at the far end of the "liberal" spectrum, who have wrapped around to some kind of "national socialism" or something. But most "liberals" base the requirements of a corporation's obligation to its community on the exchange of value between them, and explicit agreements. Places like Flint, Michigan were built on government subsidies to create factories, from police security to education to tax breaks to actual handouts. In fact, the people who usually complain most about a company "taking their jobs away" are usually found voting for Republicans, calling themselves "conservatives" because of issues like abortion, homosexuality and evolution (AKA minding someone else's business). That kind of "right to work" at the expense of actual business is rarely heard from liberals, though lawyers, doctors, and other rich people still think of it as their right.
Re:in-crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they're pretty moderate and reasonable with their analyses, they advocate market solutions for problems that a market can solve i.e. most things.
They go with the least-worst economic system (free-market with a small dash of government regulation to stop the worse excesses of capitalism) since that appears to have won the argument so far. So they obsess about what Greenspan says, but isn't that their job? That's the "Economist" bit in "The Economist".
And hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nobody else was worrying about the Taliban at the time, either.
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:in-crowd (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, gee, with the collusion of apathy and cheerleading amongst news sources, it becomes difficult for the common man to become educated enough about things like future Talibans in order to become concerned.
The American CIA is similarly insulated from public worry. People commonly go about their lives utterly unconcerned about the documented offenses of this agency. In part, that's because of the press blackout.
The old sentiments are quite correct on this matter: Without a free (or diverse) press, our democracies simply cannot function.
My favorite Economist article (Score:2)
I remember an Economist article which, essentially, attacked parents for the drain on productivity that they caused: time off work, annoyances to more productive non-parents, etc. The article's argument was that highly productive single people shouldn't in any way have to share the costs of society's need to raise children, right down to not having to put up with children in public spaces.
I came away with the impression that the article's author would love it if all new children were banned, and we had
Re:My favorite Economist article (Score:2)
I ask since they've had numerious articles talking about the demographic catastrophies coming for many first-world economies as the workforce ages and fewer and fewer workers need to pay for more and more retirees, so this article seems really out of sync.
Independant (Score:5, Interesting)
As to the "right wing propagandistic tool of international corporatism". Wow, good line if it's some sort of attempt at ironic hip retro-sixties radical leftism, but it doesn't have much to do with...well, reality.
The Economist supported Kerry, after all, in the US elections. They have been quite positive about Linux for a long time. They are being sued by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's right wing leader, because of their scathing attacks on his corruptness. This is hardly the sort of independant thoughts and writing that one would expect from a "propogandistic tool".
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:in-crowd (Score:3, Insightful)
[In response to an anonymous reporter's question [banking.com] "Why do you rob banks?"]:
"Because that's where the money is." - Willie Sutton
[from the bottom of the current Slashdot page in which I'm submitting this post]:
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem. -- Ashleigh Brilliant"
What's wrong with the Economist.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:in-crowd (Score:2)
Re:Don't agree with me? Fascists! Nyah nyah nyah (Score:2)
Re:British WSJ (Score:3, Funny)