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Re: [ox-en] "The science of persuasion"



On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Casimir Purzelbaum wrote:
"Not forced" or "voluntary" seems to just mean: not enforced by
visible application of force (violence) but rather by "a norm
that obligates individuals to repay in kind what they have
received." (Quote from article).

Well, there is this fight about the word 'voluntary'. Economic liberals
want to portray capitalism as a voluntary association of free producers,
never mind that some, if not most, of these producers _have_ to work, or
they will starve. I would not call that voluntary.

As an example: is it not almost impossible (in most cases) to
reciprocally "repay" education "in kind"? Hasn't it been an advantageous
idea to start educating the people regardless of their ability to repay
this back in whatever service they could render to the economy?

Yes, exactly. Reciprocity means only that you feel an obligation to give
_something_ back, it does not have to mean an actual obligation to repay
in any enumerated amount.

In fact, you could argue that when you have an enumerated amount to pay
for something, the reciprocal emotional investment is limited to the money
transaction, and is therefore much more imperfect than a more general
moral obligation. So while you would presumably feel the need to take good
care of gift, since it is a gift, you do not feel any responsibility to
treat something you have bought with 'your own money' with the same
respect.

Economic liberals argue that price is a good means of transmitting
information about a myriad of factors as a single value. However, this is
a double edged sword, because price also hides these factors from our
consideration as consumers, from our conscience. We forget that what we
consume, someone else spent hard ours labouring to produce.

For most of us here, we work less hours producing stuff than the hours of
others' time we consume, due to wage and wealth differences around the
world. Price is in itself an inherently flawed expression of reciprocity,
and an economic system in which price is the only thing that matters, the
idea of reciprocity becomes a slogan instead of a fact.

I think there are many cases where you can *find* reciprocity only after
the fact, not as their primary motivation,or as the guiding norm. In
other words: I don't doubt, that some reflection of reciprocity can be
bolted onto pretty much every imagineable relationship -- however, it
seems also plain that you can find non-reciprocity as often as that.
E.g. research& development in any area have to have a very far reaching
concept of reciprocity in order to be far-reaching.

Yes. Everything we do we do based on the countless efforts of countless
others, living and dead. To paraphrase Newton - we see far because we
stand on the shoulders of a giant heap of people :)

Also, much of what being paid for by money today, is based on unpaid and
non-enumerated work - from ideas in the public domain to the labour of
women in the home.

Maybe FS would develop faster if everybody who uses a certain piece of
free SW would be obliged to repay in kind.

Apache developers do not want me hacking on Apache ;) Much better to let
me continue to hack on the project I am familiar with and love working on
(in my case, Freeciv). Sure, it is possible to imagine a way to enumerate
and control that my contributions somehow match what I consume, but the
administrative overhead and the psychological costs (no longer being fun)
would kill free software.

For all that has been written about capitalism's effiency, there can be no
doubt that the price mechanism and the free market incurs enormous
administrative overheads in terms of marketing, sales, control,
accounting, lawyers, etc.. One of the key benefits of a 'GPL society' is
that this overhead is not needed.

I'm probably not going to spend money on it... Is the article
available online?

No. The Scientific American is a firm believer in the price mechanism as a
means of achieving reciprocity ;)

  - Per

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