Re: [ox-en] Free market and the Internet
- From: Russell McOrmond <russell flora.ca>
- Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 19:15:18 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Stefan Meretz wrote:
The apple is not found, it is produced. It is not necessary to share if
we can produce another one.
Just because something is renewable, does not mean that in *this time*
and *this place* it is not rivalrous.
Humans don't produce apples, or much else for that matter. Humans can
claim to do value-add to many things, and may even encourage the time and
place of apple growth, but nature "produces" the apple in the same way
that nature "produces" oil and other "renewable" resources.
As long as I'm not starving (at this time, and at this place), I can
wait around for "mother nature" to grow another apple. Human lives aren't
long enough to wait for oil, so it is generally considered non-renewable.
Where the 'renewability' cutoff is for each person appears to be
subjective. Even if you want to claim that farming is non-rivalrous, it
is hard to claim that the land that food is growing on is non-rivalrous.
One persons desire to pave over the best farmland in Ontario, Canada to
make it more convenient for them to drive their SUV to work from the
suburbs does have a direct (rivalrous) impact on the quality of our air,
water and food.
Nothing is ever entirely black-and-white, but it doesn't help the
general conversation to try to convey the totality of an idea in every
message ;-)
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses,
VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen
and not a third party. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/
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