Near zero cost and general infrastructure (was: Re: [ox-en] Re: The Future of Un-Money // was "Re: There IS such a thing as peer money")
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:10:52 +0100
Hi Marc and all!
Last week (13 days ago) marc fawzi wrote:
Bandwidth as well as energy have a cost, even if in the case of
energy it comes from the sun or the wind etc. The cost of production,
while it approaches zero (energy/hour) over time will never be zero.
I think you are making an important point here. That there are cases
where producing new things is near zero. For example today this is the
case for digital copies using the Internet. In fact today in
industrialized countries Internet connections are often flat rated
meaning that you can not put a definite cost label on a certain amount
of copied data.
In such cases I'd say that the means of production became part of the
general infrastructure. Though right now I can not put the finger on
it it changes somehow the character of these means of production. And
for any productive process - like peer production - means of
production are of central importance. Thus this is an important topic.
In addition if you are paying the cost of some general infrastructure
anyway it doesn't matter much how often and for what purpose you use
it. Therefore it is easy to give your share of the infrastructure away
for free.
For a photovoltaic facility for instance you would also have some cost
to maintain it. But when it is general infrastructure this is paid
anyway.
However, there is one limitation: If that share given away could be
used in alienated ways then you probably don't give it away. For
instance: If that bandwidth given away by you could be sold by someone
else you would probably not give it away in the first place - at least
not if this is a big phenomenon.
To give an example: I think Free Software is given away because nobody
is really able to sell Free Software on a large scale basis. If this
would be different then we would probably not see Free Software.
So then with abundant production that "near zero" figure will rise.
Or in my words: When means of production become more and more part of
the general infrastructure.
This cost of energy production that each peer carries has to be
offset so if I pump my excess energy into the grid then I'd like to
get paid for it
Well, all I can say is that peer production doesn't work this way. You
just give excess copies of your software / Wikipedia article /
scientific paper away. You even take the effort / cost of making these
things available.
Why should this be different for a photovoltaic energy facility? If
you see the grid as a storage facility for excess energy then it would
even be easier to just give away excess energy instead of holding it
back.
But may be my alienation argument from above applies here: Your energy
can be used for alienated things. In particular others can make money
from using energy from your place to produce goods they sell
afterwards. But on the other hand: this also applies to Free Software.
There are companies which make money by using Free Software and the
Free Software doesn't mind this. On the other hand the `NC clause`_ of
the CC licences is used much to often pointing at the fact that people
in other realms see this differently.
.. _NC clause: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
Hmm... Interesting questions arising:
* Under which conditions do people give away their excess products?
* How much is such a decision influenced by the possibility of
alienated use of such a product?
* What is considered alienated by people?
The idea of money sitting idle (e.g. in a bank)
Where did you get that idea from? The money brought to a bank does
everything but sitting idle. In fact banks are doing very interesting
things with money brought to them including giving it to capitalists
to apply it in productive endeavors. It sits idle if you put it under
your pillow.
The nature of money in this model does not change. Only its behavior
changes,
Sorry but this is wrong. What you describe is exactly how capitalism
works where money is applied as capital as I explained a few posts
ago. The banks are only an agent to make use of money as capital
easier by utilizing excess money at one point to be invested in labor
at another point.
Gr?ü?ße
Stefan
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