Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Marcel Popescu wrote:

>I can't see a market defined as anything else than "private property and
>voluntary exchange".

Then you really must be blind. Markets not based on private property or
volition abound. The political process is one of them. Social control is
another. Gift economies, like Open Source, are a third. One might claim
most markets are based on something other than the above mentioned
combination.

>Irrelevant. Does Linux scale to your intended target any better?

It does indeed. But unlike movies, Linux is a modular project. The kernel
would exist in the absence of the GNU toolset, and vice versa. X would
exist in the absence of UNIX, too. Each of the common desktop applications
could very well have been coded on top of something else than Linux.

But try constructing an Independence Day without Will Smith. Or the
special effects. Or the soundtrack. Or the distribution chain. Try
guaranteeing that it arrives on schedule without making a loss. I think
you will not be able to accomplish that with a volunteer effort. Try doing
that tens of thousands of times a year (that's for all of what is
currently covered by IP) and you're bound to fail. Unlike with Linux, the
individual parts of most larger projects involving IP are of no use
without the surrounding whole. Unlike Linux, many IP products aren't
modular, reusable or decomposable, and so they can only exist if you can
find a single source of financing for the whole project. In the case of
modular projects, you can rely on overlapping interests to fill in the
voids, but most projects aren't like that. Especially if all that the
creator gets is the ever-diminishing value of a single copy.

Why is it that there's no Buzz for Linux? No decent installer? (Not one of
them survives my hardware...) No workable Unicode support? A stable 64-bit
filesystem? Why is nobody willing to guarantee kernel stability, even when
paid big bucks? 'Cause the project is a gift, and only caters to a single
kind of need: something an individual developer/company really needs and
can afford to develop for him/itself, then losing little by exposing the
code to others. Usefulness thinly spread over a considerable user
community is completely forgotten.

>People do even "grand" things without expecting to be paid (or even
>worse, expecting to die from it), because they want to.

Well, what stupid people they are. I wouldn't go anywhere as far as
gettimg myself killed for the common good. Even paying for software I can
just copy is a stretch. What makes you think most people care enough to Do
the Right Thing? What makes you think relying on Doing the Right Thing is
a good idea? I mean, it's been tried before, and the consequences aren't
worth a second look.

>If you want them to produce more, feel free to pay them. Arguments "I
>don't like that they only produce this much, so YOU should pay them" are
>at least inane.

Indeed they are. So are ones assuming that anything not profitable to a
single person couldn't be to a larger number of individuals. Like most
things, private property rights and economic theory based solely on
bilateral trade are a matter of continuous dispute. It's not that I don't
consider them useful (I do; nowadays you could call me, too, a
libertarian), but taking them as granted isn't the way to go, either.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
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