> [Just off the wire. Of course, this insecurity will not apply to teenage
> Internet gurus, empowered with the authority to write their own ticket ;-)
> At any rate, looks like AG's signalling that no half-point rate rise is in
> the offing.]
That teenage guru was over the top, but maybe it can be re-read in a different way. (Why the hell is someone throwing $15 million dollars at Napster, which *admits* that it doesn't even have a business model (what do they do? run a central server which basically connects MP3 swappers with each other, but doesn't force you to see any ads, etc. their other 'core business' seems to involve taking on the world in lawsuits))
Look at some other trends - increasing non-US involvement in the 'hacker' community - the basic business model, from the users perspective, is that 'hacker' activity gets you noticed, which gets you a cool job (or maybe online freelancing opportunities, etc). All of this is damned rational from a capitalist's point of view - your workers get to prove themselves before you hire them. That's rather important in the field of computer programming, which is characterised by a low 'organic content' of capital (i.e. the tools programmers use are a hell-of-a-lot cheaper than the programmers), and where the productivity is highly dependent on the individual worker.
Sure, the Wired-heads are talking shit when they say these trends are the basis for a new, all-singing, all-dancing economy. Rather, you're seeing an extreme stratification of the labour market. There is a danger, though, in writing off the Wired-head propoganda and only focussing on the mass of the working class (which is going to hell in a handbasket). Despite what some people think, I'm not arguing that the new IT / open-source 'labour aristocracy' is progressive or even 'might be progressive'.
Rather, I think that anything which exists in this day and age which is as highly dependent on individual human labour as computer programming, and which is as central to the functioning of capitalist society as computer programming is, had better be looked at seriously.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844