The Next Social Revolution? 835
Cryofan writes "In a recent interview, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) discussed the possibility of a 'new economic system' born of 'unconscious cooperation' embodied by such technologies as Google links and Amazon lists, Wikipedia, wireless devices using unlicensed spectrum, Web logs, and open-source software. Rheingold speculates that 'the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices...may make some new economic system possible....We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.' However, Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'"
Communism failed? (Score:2, Insightful)
what? (Score:2, Insightful)
'New economy' (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh my, a 'new economy' based on 'unconscious cooperation'. My, that sounds like Capitalism.
How threatining? (Score:2, Insightful)
NEW Economic System?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet? YET? Capitalism is about the wealthy people getting wealthier, or making their kids wealthier. Fairness was never in the equasion.
Socialism is about fairness, but true socialism will always fail because you still have the same power-hungry leaders defining the structure, and they will always define the structure towards their own interests, JUST LIKE CAPITALISM.
Re:Don't worry (Score:2, Insightful)
Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The easy solution? Make the rest of the world quash innovations such as file-sharing too.
(Sadly, this seems to be too common the attitude, and seems to work somewhat...)
building a global brain (Score:3, Insightful)
I like to think a global network mesh could enable something like Orson Scott Card's citizens net; government, and economics would fall squarely in the hands of the people. For this to happen, we need proper education and corporations have done a fine job of turning schools into factories for worker bees and obedient consumers. In the truest form of capitalism, information flows freely.
Of course, we all know too many examples how our modern economic incarnation of "capitalism" works hard to restrict knowledge through "proper" channels and limit competition. It may take a while, but I think as the costs of communication continue to fall, we may see some effort towards creating alternative economies within the superstructure of global capitalism. Just a little rant . . . I'd be happy to clarify any questions you all may have.
And here's another link that contains sentiments similar to nooron: The Bootstrap Institute [bootstrap.org]
Re:Communism failed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:'New economy' (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Howard is a nice guy and has some interesting ideas, but like a lot of lefties he keeps hoping that there is some workable, "non-oppressive" alternative to the free market. Unfortunately, Churchill's statement about democracy as a political system applies here as well: capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
uhm, that's capitalism (Score:1, Insightful)
The free market *is* the endpoint of all economic systems. Even with communism and socialism, it is underneath fighting to get out.. which is why communism and socialism always fail.
Free software *looks* like altruistic cooperation, but it's really just the result of extremely low costs of distribution. The internet and "agents" just lower transaction costs. It all fits fine with capitalism and markets, just like I studied in college.
Someday, people (on all sides of the issue) will figure this out.. the internet and free software and so forth aren't anything *new* they just take a few knobs and crank them toward zero.
Is it me? (Score:3, Insightful)
I also got the distinct feeling he visited Slashdot once and got this idea, without sticking around to see how it doesn't work sometimes. (GNAA, I'm looking in your direction...)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls and you're going to get rightly modded down to oblivion after I'm done writing this, but...
Big companies of today will try to keep the way they do business unchanged, until such time as the consumer will grow tired enough of their attitude that they'll vote with their wallets. When that happens, those companies one of two things:
- They will evolve and adopt the way consumers want them to do business, simply because it's in their best interest, if nothing else to survive.
- If they can't evolve, they will go the way of the dodo.
You can see the latter happening to media companies. They had their hayday, and they used to have a purpose, which is distributing intellectual material (music, movies...) by distributing the media they're stored on. Now that technology allows people to share the intellectual material without exchanging the physical media, media companies find themselves with no business case. They're superfluous and struggling to stay alive, but they won't be able to adapt, simply because they aren't needed anymore.
Now, in your example, nobody will need to build computers from scratch, because computer-making companies will adapt to whatever new way of distributing goods emerges. That's because, as you point out, people have a need for someone to manufacture computers for them.
I don't know what the new way of distributing/selling computers will be, and how it will happen, but rest assured that it will happen. The RIAAs and MPAAs of the world however will not be part of the new world, that's for sure. The only question is, how many victims will they make in their downfalls...
Digital anarchism (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, the next economic system will be the participatory economics of anarchism. Capitalism is unsustainable. Not only are its days are numbered, but billions around the world want something better and more fair.
Chuck0
http://www.infoshop.org
"Real" Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
This interview is especially interesting because it outlines some specifics about HOW this can proceed, using technology as a tool to force social progress. Hopefully governments won't start fucking with things to protect their client corporations and realise that everyone needs to adapt. Otherwise they might as well be full-blown communists.
Entropy. (Score:3, Insightful)
So open source and open content and what media companies call "piracy" is actively destroying the distribution systems in paces for software and media. It's inevitable, Agent Smith. It's entropy. The "mob" ain't gonna settle for being controlled.
he misses his own point (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it looks like the only way to do the quashing is through the courts, doesn't that make it a government-managed economy? Only now, instead of "the people's" will, it's "the companies' will". No matter, it's still a club to beat people up with.
Meet the new Communism, [amost the] same as the old Communism.
Not Yet the magic kingdom (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole problem with other alternative systems, respect based, communism, or whatever is the simple fact that they require people to be better than they are. Unfortunately people are rotten in general. The typical person can convince themselves that any and all action they take is of the highest order. The current election where both parties seem to have betrayed every principle they espouse is a good example.
Untill you have a literally unlimited production capacity, there will always be incentive for people to take the other guys. If for nothing else people will take yours just to deprive you of having it. As long as their is shortage of desirable goods it doesn't matter wheather you call the currency the Dollar, ruble or the respect unit, the system will wind up looking rather similar.
If you would like to see society get better figure out how to make people a little less rotten.
Free-market capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Free-market capitalism: What this guy is describing. No corporations, true free trade (meaning the absence of subsidies, tariffs, embargoes, outsourcing bans, and other restrictions, NOT by agreements or organizations, but by lack of laws.) Whether there is intellectual property or not is debatable. I don't think that this has ever been fully put into practice.
Re:'New economy' (Score:5, Insightful)
The free market is well entrenched because it is, as far as I can tell, the most effective economic system for dealing with scarcity. It has its problems under some conditions (such as lack of competition [wikipedia.org] or information asymmetry [wikipedia.org]), but it generally works.
However, in the world of intelectual property, there is no such thing as scarcity, so it makes perfect sense to consider new forms of distribution. The hard part is to provide an incentive to create without limiting distribution.
-jim
Re:what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How about no economy. (Score:2, Insightful)
And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off. And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
This is called anarchism; see http://anarchistfaq.org
nothing ever changes (Score:1, Insightful)
in some regards, i must confess: consumers are the criminals, not the corporates. "we give you only what you demand," is true (as with all things to some extent). witness: english food.
frankly most people are too ignorant to know how crude most of their technological marvels really are under the skin. this holds for most every example, from spectrum usage to google, amazon to "On Demand"/Psuedo-Reality-Tv media blogging. if we knew better we'd demand better. the populous takes the first real network externality handed to them and the captialist process churns on that for as long as it can before its forced to innovate.
the author is trying to propose that somehow these technical marvells will grease the wheels of beurocracy and perhaps promote a more liberal unburdened innovative economy. which is rediculous. patent length, 20 years will be the defining mark of technological progress. someone came along and nailed a paper to the wall that said innovation was good for 20 years, after that, unto the world. that point defines a societal value between the shifting sliding values of innovation/progress, and personal wealth/fame.
Re:So Communism is so fubar it *can't* be implemen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How threatining? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's odd; I find Wikipedia much more convenient than other encyclopaedias. Since I'm usually close to a powered-on computer, it's easy to just go to wikipedia.org and search for something. Dragging out a printed book and looking for something is more of a pain (assuming a printed book is anywhere nearby), and the information is probably more out-of-date. CD encylopedias wouldn't be much better even if I owned any, which I don't. It's a lot easier to open a web browser than to dig through my CDs and put one in, then use the proprietary interface (probably Windows-based, which would be a problem on my Linux system) to find something.
Economic or Social Revolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
What geeks saw in the 80's. College students saw in the early 90s, and what the entire world is waking up to now is that by changing the extent of a single persons ability to communicate, we have a much larger base population for any one society.
It is interesting to note that while large corperations are throwing money at ways to resist economic change, governments and traditional cultures are also trying to resist a "global" society by protecting viewpoints,certain sentimentalities,and cultural identification. Are we seeing a unilateral changes in social-political power structures as well as economic systems?
My $.02, but I think I have change coming.
Kei
Re:what? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Internet (note my use of the big I [slashdot.org]) is a communications medium that allows anyone to speak to the masses, at least in theory. In reality, sharing popular content requires big pipes, which not everyone has. Peer-to-peer file sharing allows anyone to distribute large files (video, audio) to anyone else. Usually, this technology is used to violate copyright, but sometimes it's used to share original content. Suddenly, anyone can be their own TV or radio station. Sure, a lot of this original content will be junk, but some of it will be good, too.
-jim
Re:...but Hitler called himself a christian. (Score:3, Insightful)
The common thread, however, is that all these zealots justify their horrible acts with their irrational religious beliefs. It's easy to kill people after you dehumanize them with ideas like "they're going to hell anyway because they're not the chosen ones". Without religion, we would have far less barbaric acts.
Sure, sociopaths can do whatever they want without justification, but a simple "let's go kill some people" won't bring you any followers without some twisted justification.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean .. it could all be like an invisible hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Best of all, gussy it up with some techie-speak and no one will ever notice you're repeating one of the best sellers of '76.
1776.
Re:Earth as a Zoo? (Score:2, Insightful)
I would say that it on the right track, but a not quite there. The fattest people are not the richest, nor are they the poorest. They are the middle class. The people who 'get by'.
Have you ever seen a fat Ethiopian?
But the problem is (Score:3, Insightful)
The other side of the problem is people that assume that because there is no marginal cost in copying digital data, it shouldn't cost anything at all. Well, that's a problem. Those that create the data still need to eat, have a house, and so on. PHysical, limited production, needs. Thus they need to earn money, if they wish to ocntinue their persuit in a serious fashion.
So you have two choices. IF you want all IP to be free, that's fine, but then you basically religate it to the realm of spare-time projects. People work on it only if they feel like it, and only in time they have free. The other choice is what we have now, it can and does cost money, but because of that people invest full-time effort in it.
I'm not saying the way in which we currently charge for IP is the correct way, but if you want it to be anything but a hobby, there needs to be money invloved.
Re:But the problem is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:...but Hitler called himself a christian. (Score:5, Insightful)
And Ghengis Khan [hindunet.com]:
Re:So Communism is so fubar it *can't* be implemen (Score:2, Insightful)
That may be true of Marxist Communism, but not all forms of Communism are so. Leninism states that "the proletariat can only achieve revolutionary consciousness through the efforts of a communist party that assumes the role of "revolutionary vanguard", although this view changed during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917."(Leninism [wikipedia.org])
The belief that so many hold that Marxism is the only true Communism is simply wrong. There are and were many forms of Communism and Socialism and all are legitimate.
Re:How about no economy. (Score:2, Insightful)
So did you grow your own computer out in the fields to type this up? And what do you consider "basic essentials," Chemical plants to create chemicals that increase crop yields are essential to sustaining the current population, or would mass starvation be part of the plan? How about drug companies, are they essential or do we get to enjoy mass deaths due to plague, smallpox, polio, etc?
Sorry, I don't mind being a "wage slave" with a house, computer, car, a fridge full of food, and no worries about surviving the next winter. Most people would also not mind "wage slavery" if the alternative is starvation, disease, and death.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is need for concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T's monopoly was dismembered.
Standard Oil's monopoly was dismembered.
The horrific child labor conditions of the Industrial Age were checked by laws.
Labor unions were established.
The weekend was created.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but the point is that business in the United States is not immune to pressure from the population at large. It just takes a lot of hard work and political activism to force change of any kind, and most Americans are for a variety of reasons singularly uninterested in exercising their political power.
I think he is pretty perceptive (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that something like OpenOffice, for example, can be created and distributed without spending millions of dollars, is right out there for everybody to see. If the public eventually recognizes it, our long-held perception of the value of a copy of something might change, to the point where newer business models based on real costs are the only ones that will still work. Why should an industry exist to produce something that for all practical purposes grows on trees. The same goes for the recording industry. If bands can generate fame and get better performance gigs by distributing free copies of their songs, there's no need for them to sign away their rights to a record company.
One obvious way for the old gang to stop this evolution is to outlaw the means that will enable it. Like file sharing.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:'New economy' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But the problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago Stephen King was doing an experiment of an end-run around the publishing industry, and doing it wrong (possibly with the intention of poisoning that well for unknown authors, as a bone thrown to his publishing buddies). What he did wrong was to insist that a minimum percentage of downloaders should contribute. What he should have done was release each chapter in response to a total contribution for the previous one, regardless of the percentage. He required an honesty level that wasn't necessary for his business model, and which caused his experiment to "fail".
Most writers obviously don't have the creds of Stephen King. So suppose it's a few years ago and you're Cory Doctorow - you're a very good writer but you're not widely known (now watch as I get told that I was the only person on Earth not following his work for the last 20 years). You have a great idea for a wonderful book about immortality and Disneyland. I forget how many chapters it is, let's say twenty. You put the first four in the public domain and post them on your website. You announce you will post the next chapter when you've gotten contributions totalling some amount of money. If you're good, the contributions will roll in pretty quickly. Maybe you put a thermometer picture on your website to let readers know how close they are to seeing the next chapter.
If this works, the creator gets his money even though the entire work ends up in the public domain. It would be really interesting to see somebody try this.
Re:...but Hitler called himself a christian. (Score:2, Insightful)
You will always have religion, spiritual or civic. Right now the US is in Iraq, killing for it's own civic religion, whether you feel it's currently based on oil or civil liberty. I prefer to think we're basing this war on the protection of our civil rights and our constitution (which i still don't agree with fighting over), but the argument of a war over an oil-based, mass-consumptive lifestyle seems more valid every day. In anycase, civic religion [wikipedia.org] is a major idea in Religious Studies - replace God with a piece of paper called a constitution, and Jesus on the cross with the blood and bandages of every military man from the revolution until now. Patriotism seems more and more like just another arrogant dogma.
Not to say my point of view is correct, it's just another one.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why a government needs to exist to keep such a thing from happening. The economy needs to be nurtured. Capitalism hasn't existed in it's pure form for a while.
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Superfluous? Presumably you have some alternative plan for how those movies are going to be funded - and therefore created - then?
Who, in your plan, will be creating these movies to be distributed for free?
Wishful thinking, matey... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Without religion, we would have far less barbaric acts."
The entire 20th century was secular. A secular century, but probably one of our most violent in recorded history. 2 world wars, a cold war where we nearly burnt ourselves to a cold crisp, a Gulf War (and a follow-up in the next century), Vietnam.... just to name a few. A few. All secular.
Secu-freakin'-lar.
If it isn't for God, damn right it'll be for "national interests."
We'll kill each other no matter what.
Cheery, innit?
Re:How about no economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how 'great' a working anarchy is. People think it sucks so much they'd rather have a brutal dictatorship than continue to suffer the 'delights' of anarchy.
Max
Re:There is need for concern... (Score:3, Insightful)
In Western countries.
Re:Wishful thinking, matey... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if one side deemed the other as infidels and by killing them no matter what they would end up in paradise, well, I think you might want to delete that nearly from your point.
The point is not *how* many people died, but how much of a population died and how long did such conflicts last. The religious/ethnic type of conflicts last for generations, not years.
Re:Digital anarchism (Score:2, Insightful)
Billions around the world want to eat on a regular basis, and as history has shown us time and time again, anarchism isn't up to the job of putting food on the table.
Max
Re:How about no economy. (Score:3, Insightful)
a) Ridding of desire.
b) Termination of suffering of others.
c) Deals heavily in overcoming/coping fear of death and suffering.
This must have been set up.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:3, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia man exploits man.
In capitalist America it is exactly the opposite.
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps there will remain a niche for the blockbuster but hell these days a few thousand bucks will put on your desk the equipment you once needed a studio and production crew to do.
Music passed the point where a home studio can produce a quality production recording a while back.
Movies are not that far behind.
Before you say people will not do something for nothing you need to think about it. Open source is all about people doing something that they want to do without any immediate reward in place.
granted the signal to noise ratio will be worse with general people producing but with something like moderation communities the good stuff will get noticed, recognised and spread around.
Production companies perhaps have life left. Finding and promoting talent... real talent... could be a money making proposition. However they can't remain based on income from physical based media distribution, it is absurd... absolutly absurd in an age that becomes more digital with each passing day.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:3, Insightful)
In no way did communism fail.
Now you're just being pedantic. OK, how's this: almost every implementation of communism has failed to produce a lasting, prosperous nation. Wikipedia's list of 20th century communist states reads like a list of places not to live: "The Soviet Union (and its satellite states Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Mongolia), the People's Republic of China, Albania, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Cuba, Vietnam (and previously North Vietnam), Kampuchea (Cambodia), Laos and North Korea. For brief periods communist regimes existed in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique and in other developing countries." Granted, China's doing alright now, but only by adopting a capitalist economic structure, and I still wouldn't want to live there.
Re:'New economy' (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? Is there a vast army of top-notch zombie programmers that you have stashed away on a small island somewhere? Do you happen to have a cloning machine that makes fully formed nobel-prize winning biochemists? There is most definitely scarcity in the world of intellectual property...it's called: The Labor Market.
Intellectual property has to be created by someone with talent. Lots of talent, that takes years of training and (as some would argue) a particular kind of mindset. Not everyone can perform these tasks, which means we have a limited resource that needs to be efficently allocated in the marketplace. To think that the rules of the free market do not apply just because you can copy software with little or no cost is missing the point. The scarcity isn't the software...it's the people. Software that's been well understood, and copied over and over, (open-sourced even) is a commodity, sure. But you can run an economy soley based on commodities!
Any sucessful economic system needs to grow...it needs to generate value. To do that, you need smart people making new software (and books, and movies, and graphic art, etc...). As long as the talent needed to create these things is in limited supply, Capitalism will apply to the IP market just as surely as it applies to everything else.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:2, Insightful)
So by your definition, if everyone's a slave then everyone is being treated fairly? Here's hoping to god you never have any real power over other human beings, ever.
Max
Re:How about no economy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
The ones that get to do nothing but acting and buy huge mansions in Beverly hills are the exception. Not the rule. And there is no assurance that these are even the best actors. I'd say your assurance these day is that they are the best looking people that have some acting ability. Not the same as saying they are the best actors.
As for how companies can make money promoting the best actors. Simple. They have to provide a service that the public wants and is willing to pay to have provided better than it can do for itself. Some of what they do will still be viable. Set up a web site as a major source of new material with a stamp of approval with a good image rep for having good stuff. Get the hits and make your money from ads, or perhaps people paying you to host your stuff. Hell google essentially gives away gargantuan amounts of bandwidth and makes money doing it. Why couldn't a movie house?
Are you suggesting the only way for them to make money is the way they do it now?
Ethnography he recommends is already commonplace (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies do this all the time. Everyone from Pepsi to Motorola to vacuum cleaner companies to newspapers (to name a few of the projects I've worked on since the mid-90s: in the early 90s I experienced it in Japan with high school girls, the all-powerful force driving product development and marketing in Japan).
As is usual, the "gurus" are either behind the times, clueless, or purposefully making suggestions that are already in action so that they look good once the existence of these things become more commonly known by the population: "hey, that Rheingold guy suggested that..." Yeah, right.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
Small companies who are successful selling computers, become big companies or go out of business.
Why does it have to be like this though? Why is it that the stock market must go up, corporate profits must increase, and small companies must become large ones to survive?
Central Banks, that's why. They are so entrenched that just getting rid of them (Federal Reserve buy back) would cause much suffering for most of us.
I haven't heard anyone "pipe up" with a sensible plan to get ourselves out of this hole we've (our grandfathers) dug, but maybe this is it.
An alternative system evolves slowly and quietly alongside the old one, eventually replacing it. The final step would maybe not be a revolution but a collective decision to ignore the old system.
"Free Markets" exist. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense, no one has ever managed to conner a market for long, though they can cause great harm in the short term with government help. All of that restrictive cross licensing nightmare is a government creation. Without dead stupid IP laws, the markets would quickly correct problems like Microsoft. It's happening anyway, and M$ is running like a baby to Uncle Sam for DMCA and other help. There's a sucker market for shares in such greedy schemes, but it's always a loser and smart money goes with the flow.
good (Score:3, Insightful)
That message is worth repeating every twenty years. The sad part is when people have heard it, don't know how it works and think they can legislate and government spend themselves into prosperity. As Alan Greenspan once said, "the laws of supply and demand are not to be conned." The invisible hand slaps people who think they are smarter than it is.
There are real issues, but these aren't them (Score:5, Insightful)
Some real trends worth following:
This isn't a new phenomenon. There are many tangible products where the manufacturing cost is a tiny fraction of the retail price. Soft drinks, for example. Bottled water. Jeans. Batteries. Printer ink. There are successful business strategies for pushing the price up, ranging from heavy brand promotion to lock-in. Just because it could be cheap doesn't mean it will be.
We're starting to see these strategies applied to the Internet. "SBC Yahoo DSL", and "AOL for Broadband" are examples.
Electric power is a striking example of an unstable market. There's no inventory. Demand is relatively inelastic. Producers have high fixed costs. The result is prices that change by three orders of magnitude within a single day. This huge volatility can be exploited by traders, which makes things worse.
There's much economic theology around this issue, and not enough theory with predictive power. This area needs more simulation and less pontification.
Now these are the real issues in postmodern capitalism. Not peer to peer networking.
Re:...but Hitler called himself a christian. (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats the point. The justification can be ANYTHING. Replace religion with culture, ideaology ('lets take away your rights in the name of patriotism') or anything else that people feel strongly about and you got your cause that can be twisted. Religion has just been one of the victims of this twisting.
Twisting (Corruption) is really the root cause, not religion.
Do you suggest then we should abolish irrationality? And do you know what sort of order would be removed from the world if that went away?
Re:There is need for concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
What we're seeing now is interesting in that outmoded businesses are now receiving strong legal protection (with no popular support) in the form of bizarre laws that allow them to do very anticompetitive/anticapitalist things. From what I know of American history, we used to be very eager to embrace new technologies - indeed, technology has been the backbone of the USA since the industrial age, and that tradition is what's being threatened here.
The good news is, the USA has a remarkable "healing" ability and after a few years, once everybody sees what's going on, we usually correct our mistakes pretty quickly and move on to the next battle.
Re:'New economy' (Score:4, Insightful)
True, if a thing doesn't exist, it's scarce. But once intelectual property is created, it is no longer scarce (except through artificial control of the supply). This is totally unlike tangible goods. Normally, a loaf of bread can't feed an infinite number of people, but what if it could [wikisource.org]? Should we pretend all our old rules still apply?
Maybe not, but the things that are commoditized are no longer scarce. Operating system kernels, C compilers, web browsers, and word processors are no longer scarce because we have linux, gcc, mozilla, and open office.
Not everything will be commoditized, and not everything should be free. Some special purpose software will still require money to get someone to write it, just like dealerships aren't about to start handing out free cars. There's no reason why free markets can't coexist with free software.
-jim
Re:perhaps (Score:4, Insightful)
We desire cold drinks because it is part of our culture. I have been around the world myself and few places enjoy as cold drinks as we do -- hot or cold. Hell, I just came back from two years in Turkmenistan and they don't put ice in their drinks.
I am a white American but was raised in China. I can't stand having ice in my drink. It is because I was raised in a culture that thinks that cold drinks mess up your system. And I genuinely feel less refreshed when I have half a cup of ice in my drink.
more reasons for US decline (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a corrosive, nasty idea that contradicts the lessons of our history. The late victorian culture here was largely one of cooperation, self regulated kindness towards others, and a concept of justice. Sure, it was deeply flawed in many ways, what with its exceptions for black people, and a lingering tradition of hierarchy, but if you focus in on the actions of individuals and how they treated each other, there was a fundamental difference from the mainstream one today.
Unfortunately, immigration from places that did not practise the same cooperative traditions brought in plenty of people to take advantage and much up the existing system. Today, take for example the way people act in Oklahoma or Minnesota and compare it with New York, LA, Houston, or Chicago.
Once I was driving through Oklahoma and pulled over to the side of the freeway. People kept stopping every few minutes to see if I was ok or needed help! I had to leave so they'd quit stopping! Sorry guys, but this really busts the theory that all people are always selfish. What could they possibly gain by pulling over?
Tasmania in Australia is another example of a somewhat intact Victorian-Enlightenment reformed society. You ask for directions there and people offer to drive you where you're going. Nice.
Why do we complicate things by oversimplifying? People aren't selfish, they're needful. If their basic needs are met, they'll probably end up being mean to get what they need. However, if their needs are pretty much met, they can and will start to look after the needs of others.
(I know what I said above is simplified too, but I believe quite accurate since it describes the average)
Ultimately, we need to do what the enlightenment and their followers tried to do- pull together enough people to establish a consensus view that cooperation is important, and then band together to ruthlessly work against those who refuse to cooperate. Such a system need not be fragile. If someone is clearly an asshole, don't help them out. If someone is clearly treating others with concern, do the same towards them. Easy.
Re:Don't worry (Score:5, Insightful)
The nature of free markets (truly free markets) is that people will do what is possible. Once indy movies are possible at a reasonable quality (something that is subjective) they will find ways to be distribued. As technology for distribution increases (high speed web access, for instance) you will see interesting ways to distribute them.
In a truly free market the profit margin is always very thin -- which is why many don't like the idea of a truly free market...
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I would agree with him... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:2, Insightful)
Along the same lines capitalism is 'about' forcing underpaid workers work for slave-like contracts solely for the purpose of creating massive wealth for richest, who already are filthy rich. Luckily for us living in capitalistic soceties, the simple textbook writeups seldom coincide with the world though. Socialism isn't an economic system, its just a basic premise that sharing the wealth and the responsibilites of society is a good thing[tm].
Personally, I would go as far as saying as individualism and socialism need each other. Only when the wealth is somewhat evenly distributed will the population get the necessary resources and freetime to actually develop themselves. The sucker with the minimum wage working 14 hours a day just to afford a place to live in the US ain't got much time for individualism. In comparison the same sucker in Europe works 8 hours a day , with one months standard vacation, and social security as backup if things get too tight. Who's got a better chance of living a worthy life?
Re:Don't worry (Score:4, Insightful)
Years away? In principle, that means exactly the same as if they were available today. I'm willing to wait. Besides, what is the resolution of DVD?
As for using blender for special effects? Please, get real.
Again, today. In a few years? Well...
Digital cameras require as complex lighting as film cameras do, unless you want your finished product to look like crap, amateur hour, home movie quality camcorder work.
Well, you can dismiss 'Dogma' (Lars von Trier's cannons of filmmaking) as arty bullshit, but it shows that you _can_ make arguably professional movies with just the natural lighting.
You don't expect EVERYONE to work for free on films, do you?
No, but sure as hell I don't expect or condone the lead in the movie to be paid $xx million dollars. The theatres of the world are filled with actors who don't get paid that much in their whole career, and still can act so much better than most of the 'stars'. The sooner the 'stars' are out of a job, the better, IMHO. The same goes for all the other talent involved in the making of movies.
Thus, if the costs of making a movie can be brought down to something comparable to producing a stage play, the whole game changes. For the better, IMHO.
Re:There are real issues, but these aren't them (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa. I hope that was a semantic error, and that you really meant, "This calls into the question the basic concept that higher education is an economic good [for the individual worker]. (I was about to mod you up but had to reply instead.)
Education offers important benefits other than increasing one's economic value. You need an education (by which I do not mean an indoctrination, an education-that-is-not-an-indoctrination being admittedly very, very hard to come by) to vote intelligently on issues like the economy, environment, energy, and foreign policy. Most of our voting populace is incompetent to make decisions as voters.
Note that I would never advocate actually restricting someone's right to vote based on whether they have a diploma, or any similarly-spirited criteria, but most of the people voting in the upcoming election will vote for the person who will "fix the economy" and "do the right thing in Iraq," not only without an understanding of the intricacies of those situations, but without an understanding that intricacies actually exist that need to be understood.
For a demonstration, go out on the street and ask about the relationship between Turkey and Iraq, or between interest rates and inflation, or the drop in biodiversity over the last 300 years, or the vulnerabilities in combat of the "Stryker" tank, or what happens if we never pay off the national debt, or what a nuclear winter is.
The irony, I think, is that while we're one of the most "over-educated" countries in the world, we're killing ourselves through our own ignorance. It's a catastrophe.
the future (Score:3, Insightful)
According to this model, the Working Class could use its labour just to support itself, and say a big fat "screw you" to the Ruling Class -- and do less work into the bargain, to the tune of whatever it was costing to keep the Ruling Class in luxury goods. This is what most people think of as "revolution", and it usually goes T.U. when the organisers of the Revolution, having won the respect of the people, start falling into the decadent ways of the former Ruling Class.
Well, that may have worked in a manufacturing economy when the Working Class was doing things like growing food, building houses, making cars, &c. But today, thanks to a combination of automating many jobs out of existence and outsourcing the rest, a new class has emerged: the Consuming Class. The Consuming Class own DVD players and cell phones (made, BTW, using a labour force to whom such things would largely be useless), and think they are above the Working Class. The Consuming Class does work, but it is meaningless and irrelevant: what the heck is a telephone sanitiser going to do after the revolution? And on the flipside, who will till the soil, grind the grain, bake the bread? Who will build the homes, do the wiring and the plumbing? Marxist theory suggests the Consuming Class would perish before the Ruling Class, since the latter at least usually has savings.
The other reason why Classical Marxist theory doesn't apply anymore is that -- as far as some kinds of things are concerned -- we are now living in an age of plenty rather than an age of scarcity, and that really tends to muck up the traditional concept of value which underpins both Capitalism and Socialism. When it takes hardly any more work to make a thousand or a million examples of something than it took to make the first, how do you decide what price to sell it for?
As a former New Age Traveller [google.co.uk], I have first hand experience of attempting a unilateral declaration of independence, and it isn't easy. Every so often, you still run up against a dependency on some big corporation or another: the supermarkets, the oil companies, and -- for some of my friends -- the NHS.
Social change is needed alright, but a lot of people are going to get hurt when it comes.
Re:There is need for concern... (Score:5, Insightful)
technology has been the backbone of the USA since the industrial age
Since, maybe. During, no. The USA's initial industrialization was largely founded on cotton, which in turn was founded on genocide (providing cheap land) and slavery (providing cheap labour).
after a few years, once everybody sees what's going on, we usually correct our mistakes pretty quickly
Erm... how can I put this delicately...
Re:There is need for concern... (Score:2, Insightful)
Empires have always been about exploiting foreign territories for the benefit of the homeland, but the US is the first to think (not just say, they are true believers) they are doing the rest of the world a favour.
An extrapolation (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing the classic American love of conspicious consumption, I think it had to do with the fact that, before refrigeration, the wealthy elites of American society could afford an icehouse or deliveries of ice. They put ice in their drinks; this was emulated by whomever in the middle class could afford it. Once refridgeration spread, everyone could 'look rich' for a penny's worth of water. Ice used to be valuable, and so it remains as a cultural preference to this day.
elmer FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not Yet the magic kingdom (Score:2, Insightful)
Military security? Nah, who's going to attack us? Economic security? With friends like that, we don't need enemies: softwood, grain... The US has consistently tried to bully us around in both arenas, and this is especially evident when the US wants to go to war under false pretenses or start make-work projects for arms dealers - as they are doing with their missile defense shield.
All the surveys I've seen indicate that despite a rising GDP, people don't feel that their standard of living has gone up. Your GDP is not being shared equitably, and unlike our grandparents generation, our parents can't say that their children have a better future ahead. Something is amiss. Take a look at the Genuine Progress Indicator, or other benchmarks- the trends are pretty scary.
We're only seeing the beginnings of it, but we're moving towards a new mode of production. Just like the Industrial Revolution, we can expect to see major changes ahead, including in the political structure that had evolved to manage the previous economic system. Our trying to apply Industrial era ideas -like patents- to the new system don't work.
The US will only benefit from this change if it has a clear idea of why it is in its current situation, and what the world around them is like. So far it's not looking great, as your election seems to be showing: both candidates are out of step with the rest of world opinion.
I'll tell you what's fictional (Score:5, Insightful)
either in the name of western Capitalism, or in the name of nature-unfriendly Communism (China and the former USSR has/had a HORRIBLE environmental record)
can go on forever
is science fiction.
Re:You mean .. it could all be like an invisible h (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a clue, poopsie: if the government is maintaining barriers, that's not a fault of a free market.
Re:Don't worry (Score:3, Insightful)
Its simple...they do this at football games for the same reason. When you pour your whiskey into the drink...it causes the ice to melt...so, you need that extra in there to make the drink perfect.
Considering the content of most movies today....you generally need a good drink to be able to find humor in them...
Smacks of Utopianism.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Additionally, you have to take into account government. In the US, government consumes roughly 36% of the total economy. In European nations it consumes more. The workforce in these nations must be continually driven to work more, work harder, and work more efficiently to satisfy the monetary needs of the ruling elites. The new economic model would be crushed under this burden.
Finally, the new model is incompatible with 90% of the worlds pre-industrial societies and would not function at all unless the society had a solid foundation of rule of law, property rights, and a highly educated, liberal-humanist population.
Re:A New Economics System? (Score:4, Insightful)
Many Capatalists corporations couldn't either. they over commited to certain methods of production and died. They went bankrupt. The decision makers took the wrong choice. Thats what happened to the USSR. They mad a choice to try and match military output with the US and it bankrupted them. They were unable to both sustain a non-military production and military production on par with the US. Finally their people just wouldn't support the system. Now, without Soviet bribes and force; the other communist states had no incentive to stay communist. Many changed because the US did offer bribes and incentives to change. Many of these states were forced into communism.
OK, how's this: almost every implementation of communism has failed to produce a lasting, prosperous nation. Wikipedia's list of 20th century communist states reads like a list of places not to live.
Cuba is stable, and has done alright considering the embargoes. Yugoslavia had a good regime for a while and a decent living. China is stable, and their transitioning has many other motives.
Also, many countries with a capatalist system are absolute shit holes. The Philipines. Nice to visit but horrible to live in. Jaimaca is incredible to visit but not so good to live in. Fuck, South central LA, The ghettos in detroit ect.. aren't nice places to live.
Many nations struggle with a lot of systems. A lot don't work out. It's not so much an indictment of the system, but the circumstances.
Take Democracy. It fails a lot, partly due to the US. They take a hardline stance against certain beleifs and governments and will over throw a democratic gov. that does not support the US interests and install dictatorships. Did democracy fail there?
Althrough I see your point. It's not just communism that makes those places shit holes. Just as it's not capatalism per se that makes some other places shit holes, but underlying issues. As well, the ideal of the communism systems are prevalent in many Socialist states and their nice places ot live. Canada, Norway, Iceland, France ect.... They lack the centralised economic planning but they have the focus on workers irghts. Does this mena socialism is more successful then Capatalism because it has more countries you want to live in?
Re:he misses his own point (Score:3, Insightful)
First off the asian (techies) think of IP laws as just another aspect of colonialism.
Paying white males to think and write and direct movies while others have to work.
Respect for IP here is 0.
They are very well organized, in fact I think you would find that most vietnamese, chinese, koreans and thai's have 10x as many DVD/VCD/CD's as the average north american.
They spend money on reverse engineering rather than engineering, about 40% of watches here are quite passable rollex imitations, (My omega imitation is working fine as are my oakly imitations and my Levi's Belt imitation thank you very much all for
By stifling intellectual freedom we are hurting ourselves so badly we may never recover.
In cambodia near tourist attractions children of 7-8 know 3-7 languages which they learned from(sometimes indirectly), you guessed it.
It disapoints me that instead of organizing information to solve problems like education, government transparency, and cultural expression we are fighting to hide everything.
Pathetic.
Semantic games (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee, and here I thought that the British Labour Party was, at base, socialist; the socialists won in Spain, the socialists look like they might take back France; Chavez beats US-backed recall in Argentina...while the US "free market capitalism" won...which is why our deregulated, monopolistic economy is down the tubes.
While we're on those lines, let me say "Dick Cheney" and "Halliburton no-bid contracts", and then quote a favorite explanation of someone who speaks with some authority on the subject, Benito Mussolini: "fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
Tell me again what social system "won", and explain how the current world situation doesn't resemble 1932, with the US starring as Germany?
And if Mah Fellow Amurcans don't like the comparison, try looking at the news from around the world, and you might note that about three-quarters of the world's population is *terrified* of this administration, and what America will be, if Bush is elected this time.
An alternative? If the generation that fought WWII was "the Greatest Generation", then it's time for us to be the children and grandchildren they deserve, and stand up to be counted, to stop neofascism here at home.
mark
Parent == Liar (Score:2, Insightful)
What the supposedly "revisionist" historians are saying is that modern LAW, grounded in FOUNDING law, was not specifically Christian. The Founding Fathers were very specific in minimal government that didn't favor one religion. What modern day Christian Rightists are claiming is that because of the (semi-)Christian nature of the Founders that means that modern Christians should be able to legally enforce what they deem to fit with their view of morality, bypassing the church/state separation. You'd be much freer under President George Washington than President Pat Robertson.
Re:An Original Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There are real issues, but these aren't them (Score:2, Insightful)