[ox-en] Re: Physical and other contemporary limits to peer production

• From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
• Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:40:23 +0200

Hi Paul and all!

4 days ago Paul Cockshott wrote:

Stefan wrote:
In fact there are information goods which need pretty big means of
production to be produced. Just think of research. Much research needs
huge and extremely expensive machines to produce machines. Space

                                                   ^^^^^^^^

Oops that should have been "information" of course.

research, sub-atom research, pharmaceutical research, ... All these
types of research more or less produce information. But they face the
same problems in terms of peer production as producing physical goods.
--------------

Paul

Yes but the product of this research, in the case of physics for
example,
is a common good, nobody owns information about fundamental particles.

Where the research is performed under capitalist relations of production
rather than being funded by society as a whole, attempts are made to
privately appropriate the knowledge.

True. What I wanted to point out is that the division is not between
information goods and physical goods. Insofar the question on how to
transfer peer production to the physical world is wrong.

I got that idea because the production of Free Medicine came to my
mind. This is something which is really pressing for poor countries
and for which I remember there were at least one initiative I
unfortunately can't find on the web. But even production of such
medicine is expensive because you need a lot of infrastructure and
machines.

My current idea is that the division has really a lot to do with means
of production. Expensive machines creating information are just one
example. May be means of production in a wider sense. Just thinking
about it...


						Grüße

						Stefan
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• References:
  • RE: Physical and other contemporary limits to peer production (was: Re: [ox-en] reprap, exploitation, free goods etc)
    • From: Paul Cockshott

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