Could someone expand on this point? It seems to me that almost any human activity can be described this way, from watching TV, to posting here (creating emails), to activism and unions.
> 3) Software is a highly unusual product -
> infinitely reproducible and near-zero cost. It is the nonrival good
> par excellence. How can the model be translated into the production
> and exchange of peaches, health care, or transportation? People in
> the computer world have a really exaggerated idea of the size of the
> sector. It's actually rather small.
Note that movies, books, music, etc, are quite similar in this respect. Hence the "Free Culture" movement.
But anarchists warn about this ancient line of discussion. David Graeber writes:
- - - - Anarchist: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker's self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organiza- tions based on consensus and direct democracy...
Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I'm talking about whole societies. [...]
The dice are loaded. You can't win. Because when the skeptic says "society," what he really means is "state," even "nation-state."
-- David Graeber, _Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology_ <http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm14.pdf> - - - -
It's easy to shoot down a case study, even a huge mass of them, with such arguments. Even if you never offered them as more than case studies.
Tayssir
-- "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist." -- Bill Gates