Re: [ox-en] [Upd-discuss] Paper:"Digital property" By Sabine Nuss - Response t
- From: Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 04:30:20 -0700 (PDT)
Thanks Franz, that is very valuable, and the first
paragraphs are exactly what I was trying to say, which
is that, property or not, natural goods <are> scarce.
If I would want to read about Daly, where would I
start, what book?
Michel
--- Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada reflex.at> wrote:
Michael Bouvens on list-en oekonux.org schrieb am
Freitag, 07. Oktober
2005 um 12:59 +0100:
I think that peer
production can work for non-rival goods without
reciprocity; but when you dealing with scarce
physical
goods, reciprocity will be required.
Even without capitalism, without 'scarce' money,
the
resources will still be limited.
Michael,
I recenty fund an interesting statement that I want
to add here;
it does not mirror my opinion 100% but it is good as
a matrix of
discussion.
In a later post I will say a little bit more about
scarcity and the way
to transcend from rival to non-rival when it comes
to material
objects and goods.
Franz
-----
The E. F. Schumacher Society is s an educational
non-profit organization
founded in 1980. Their programs demonstrate that
both social and
environmental sustainability can be achieved by
applying the values of
human-scale communities and respect for the natural
environment to
economic issues. So they are a natural match to
global villages.
In their recent newsletter they have published a
speech summary of a
lecture of Herman Daly - professor at the University
of Maryland's School
of Public Affairs and co-founder and board member of
the journal
Ecological Economics. I think although he is not
critsizing money and
value and talking completely in the realm of
traditional economics, he
brings up a lot of important distinctions which help
us understand the
possible path of the development of Free Modes. I
just took these points
of the excerpt
With permission of Jing Cao and the E. F.Schumacher
Society --
www.smallisbeautiful.org
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Sustaining Our Commonwealth of Nature and
Knowledge."
Summary of talk by Herman Daly prepared by Jing Cao
of the E.F. Schumacher
Society.
(shortened,FN)
A commonwealth is a resource created either by
nature, or by aggregate
human effort. Natural resources would fall into the
first category;
knowledge belongs to the second.
Sustaining our commonwealths means using with
maintenance. We must realize
what the maximum amount of a resource we can consume
while still
maintaining our commonwealths. .....
The problem in the current economy is that nature is
treated as a
non-scarce
resource when it is in fact scarce. Knowledge has
the opposite problem, it
is treated as scarce when it is in fact non-scarce.
In economics, goods are either rival or non-rival,
and excludable or
non-excludable.
A rival good is one where if I consume it, that
prevents you
from consuming it. Clothing, for example, is rival.
Sunlight is non-rival
since my consumption of it doesn't prevent you from
enjoying it. Rivalness
is a physical property.
Excludability is a legal concept. Excludable goods
can be made private
property, such as a private residence.
Non-excludable goods are those not
privatized.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1
Rival, excludable goods are the ones the market was
made for
.....market goods.
2
Non-rival, non-excludable goods are public goods.
3
Rival, non-excludable goods give way to the tragedy
of the commons.
These goods, fishing rights or clean air, are rival,
yet because there
is no way of making these excludable, each party
will try to consume
them before another party exhausts the resource,
leading to competitive
depletion instead of cooperative conservation, which
would be in the
best interest of all parties.
4
Non-rival, excludable goods, such as knowledge,
result in the
tragedy of artificial scarcity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sustainability is not a problem with the
commonwealth of knowledge because
knowledge is a non-rival resource. For existing
knowledge, since there is
zero opportunity cost for its use (my use of a piece
of knowledge does not
prevent you from using it) its price should be zero.
However, there is an expenditure of rival resources
for the pursuit of new
knowledge. Some pieces of knowledge, such as the
discovery of subatomic
particles, may come at a high cost. Others, such as
Descartes' fathoming of
analytical geometry while staring at his ceiling
from his bed, may come at
no cost. The acquisition of a new piece of knowledge
may also be for the
delight of discovery.
However conventional wisdom says that without a
profit motive, no new
knowledge will be created. The production of new
knowledge requires
extrinsic stimulation and to this end it is made
artificially rival through
patents and intellectual property rights. However,
since new knowledge is
created from old knowledge, if old knowledge is made
artificially
expensive,
then the production of new knowledge is hindered.
Not all knowledge is equally beneficial to mankind,
and the interests of
private profit isn't always the best filter. The
profit incentive has given
us liposuction and Viagra, but no cure to AIDS or
malaria.
......
We should drastically cut back on intellectual
property rights and rely on
public funds and the human drive to learn for the
continued production of
new knowledge.
---------
Nature, on the other hand, is rival, but treated as
non-rival. Rival goods
sometimes become non-rival if demand is low, and my
consumption does not
hinder your consumption. Water used to be such a
resource.
Some resources, such as timber, are rival
generationally, since within a
generation there is only a limited supply, but can
be non-rival in the
long-term if exploited at levels of sustainable
yield, that is if only
income and not capital is consumed.
It is necessary to protect these fundamentally rival
goods
=== message truncated ===
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