Marginalism - the religion
Patrick Anderson
> "production" (duplication)
There is far more to production than duplication.
There are Wages and other Costs associated with the initial
Investment, Installation, Operation, Maintenance, Housing/Storage,
Insurance, Pollution of the Physical Sources (Material Means of
Production) required to *host* any and all information production.
There is also the special cost of Exclusion that users inflict upon
each other when too many try to use these finite resources
simultaneously. Scheduling and allocation is therefore just as much
of an issue for information goods as it is for physical goods. They
both require a physical substrate to exist.
Living things such as a Strawberry plant can be thought of as pure
design (DNA) that has been applied to the minerals and organic matter
causing the plant to grow and reproduce (duplicate). I'm no
Christian, but it may be worth noting this is spoken of in a literal
manner in the Holy Bible (Sun Book) when it is suggested that life
comes "from the dust" or the 'clay' or 'ashes'.
> of info goods is only a copy of bytes, 0 marginal cost
We cannot ignore the ecologic Costs of even 1 bit!
Are costs Marginal for moving 64k from one memory location to another?
Would a programmer agree with you?
Are TeraBytes across the globe Marginal? What is BitTorrent?
Is sharing copies locally cheaper? Are those savings always only Marginal?
In either case, do the copper wires cost nothing to mine, smelt,
purify, cast/form, finish, cover, ship, store and sell?
What about the electricity? What about the noise? What about the
heat? The pollution?
> if you have internet
That's no small if!
Who gets the internet for Free as in Beer?
This view of reality is so perplexing to me.
How can such barriers to entry be so ignored?
Price matters! And we are all being overcharged.
> the only scarcity is "artificial" , copyright law
Copyright and Patents are primarily used in an attempt to make the
holder Royal - in that the rest of us must then pay Royalties.
But it is possible to use Copyright and maybe even Patents in our favor.
The GNU GPL uses Copyright to require Users receive at-cost access to
the "informational" Sources of Production such as source-code, build
scripts, CAD designs, VLSE.
Without Copyright there could be no Copyleft, and without Copyleft,
users could not be guaranteed the 4 freedoms in perpetuity because
some future developers would build upon those informational commons
while making the result proprietary for the purpose of increasing
profit (scarcity measures profit).
When users (consumers) have "at cost" access to the sources of
production (both informational and physical), then competition is
maximized because every potential worker can vie for that job without
external 'owners' getting in the way - for in this case the user and
owner are the same.
> so info goods are not economic goods
This is what I don't understand.
What about the owners of the physical sources needed to *host* those
informational goods?
Are the cost of creating and maintaining Google's server-farms marginal?
What does this guy [
http://www.alex-reid.net/2009/04/from-immaterial-labor-to-immaterial-profits.html
] mean when he says:
"... the costs associated with maintaining all that user-generated
content continue to rise. The article reports a Credit Suisse estimate
that YouTube lost $470M last year."
And $470M is just the *loss*. What about the *gross* costs before the
ad-revenue paid for some of it? Is $1 Billion dollars marginal?
Patrick
Patrick Anderson
From: Diego Saravia <diego....@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ox-en] Marginalism - the religion
To: lis...@oekonux.org
2009/4/21 Patrick Anderson <agnu...@gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Diego Saravia <diego....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "production" (duplication)
>
> There is far more to production than duplication.
>
fixed costs
> Living things such as a Strawberry plant can be thought of as pure
> design (DNA) that has been applied to the minerals and organic matter
> causing the plant to grow and reproduce (duplicate).
organic matter is scarce, the same as pre internet info goods, they
are always related to a physical object
you need paper to carry your book, more paper for more books
you need live beings to carry DNA
you can reproduce a lot of files without any aditional cost
>> of info goods is only a copy of bytes, 0 marginal cost
>
marginal is the key word
> We cannot ignore the ecologic Costs of even 1 bit!
I am not speaking about ecology
> Are costs Marginal for moving 64k from one memory location to another?
> Would a programmer agree with you?
It cost nothing more to me to move 64k from my machine to your machine via mail
than not moving the bytes.
> Are TeraBytes across the globe Marginal? What is BitTorrent?
I do not pay anything more to use bittorrent than not using it, in
fact I could save money in music.
>
> Is sharing copies locally cheaper?
no
>Are those savings always only Marginal?
yes for me.
> In either case, do the copper wires cost nothing to mine, smelt,
> purify, cast/form, finish, cover, ship, store and sell?
you already pay for it
> What about the electricity? What about the noise? What about the
> heat? The pollution?
my machine is always on
>
>> if you have internet
>
> That's no small if!
yes, digital divide exits, two societies (perhaps more)
I agree, is not a small if, is the fundamental fact about the info societies
> Who gets the internet for Free as in Beer?
for me is not free, but I always pay the same.
> This view of reality is so perplexing to me.
I understand your point, but is not related to mine.
> How can such barriers to entry be so ignored?
I do not ignore them, I am speaking about other stuff.
> Price matters!
yes
> And we are all being overcharged.
could be, I dont know.
>> the only scarcity is "artificial" , copyright law
> But it is possible to use Copyright and maybe even Patents in our favor.
yes, by a hack.
> Without Copyright there could be no Copyleft, and without Copyleft,
we would not need copyleft if we do not have copyright
> When users (consumers) have "at cost" access to the sources of
> production (both informational and physical), then competition is
> maximized because every potential worker can vie for that job without
> external 'owners' getting in the way - for in this case the user and
> owner are the same.
yes
>
>
>> so info goods are not economic goods
>
> This is what I don't understand.
economics goods
useless definition (for my perspective)
Definition of Economic Goods: An economic good is a physical object or
service that has value to people and can be sold for a non-negative
price in the marketplace.
http://economics.about.com/library/glossary/bldef-economic-good.htm
more enlighted definition (in my terms)
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/economic-goods.html
Consumable item that is useful to people but scarce in relation to its
demand, so that human effort is required to obtain it. In contrast,
free goods (such as air) are naturally in abundant supply and need no
conscious effort to obtain them.
---
off course these is true for info goods marginally
you are in or not.
> What about the owners of the physical sources needed to *host* those
> informational goods?
fixed costs
> Are the cost of creating and maintaining Google's server-farms marginal?
yes, for me
--
Diego Saravia
Diego....@gmail.com
NO FUNCIONA->d...@unsa.edu.ar
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Patrick Anderson
> the cost for the generalized infrastructure is socialized and should remain so
Diego Saravia wrote:
> in fact they [physical costs] are socialized, but that is not the point.
How can you possibly say these costs are 'socialized'?
Maybe you guys live in a country where the fiber-optic cables,
phone-lines and satellite communication centers are state owned?
Even in that case I wouldn't call it 'socialized' in a positive sense
- since nearly every current government has been hijacked by
Capitalist Corporations for the purpose of increasing scarcity for
profit...
But no matter where you live, are you saying the costs that Google
pays are somehow socialized?
If so, what do you mean by that?
Kevin Carson
> But it is possible to use Copyright and maybe even Patents in our favor.
>
> The GNU GPL uses Copyright to require Users receive at-cost access to
> the "informational" Sources of Production such as source-code, build
> scripts, CAD designs, VLSE.
>
> Without Copyright there could be no Copyleft, and without Copyleft,
> users could not be guaranteed the 4 freedoms in perpetuity because
> some future developers would build upon those informational commons
> while making the result proprietary for the purpose of increasing
> profit (scarcity measures profit).
I think this is primarily because copyright exists in the larger legal
regime for society as a whole. So copyright has to be piggybacked on,
lest otherwise proprietary interests will seize on stuff in the public
domain and copyright it. If there were no such thing as copyright,
there wouldn't be a need for the GPL as a means of self-defense
against it.
--
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